The Culinary Arts

Several months ago, I had a conversation with some friends about Life Goals. One of our friends had three goals that he wished to achieve in his life and not only were they all ridiculously easy, but he is 29 and has already achieved two of the three - he has managed to not achieve the third through simple lack of effort. I poked some good-natured fun at him, but at the same time was well aware of the fact that I didn't have a Life Goal. At one point, my Life Goal consisted of NOT marrying a pastor; once I got married to a non-pastor, the LG became obsolete and I never replaced it with anything.

I made the decision yesterday that someday I want to go to school to be a pastry chef. Unfortunately, we'll either have to move or have a lot of extra money to spend so that I can live in a different city. There are two schools within commuting distance that offer culinary classes, one in Moorhead, a mile east, and one in Wahpeton, 45 miles south. Both of these are full Culinary Arts degrees, but I would really prefer to focus just on baking. My main motiviation for this is that I HATE onions and I currently refuse to cook with them. On the other hand, I wouldn't grow fatter sampling dishes that had onions in them, so maybe I could cook exclusively with onions and be skinny. Ha! Seriously, I prefer baking to cooking, and not just because Wookie Cookies are so yummy. There's just something so great about eating a meal with friends and then being able to say, "And we have Bananas Foster Cheesecake for dessert!"

There are several books out there for people who want to take baking to the next level, but the vast majority of them have the word "Professional" in the title, which means that I would have to know what the hell I was doing. The book I have (mostly) settled on as a good introduction is "How Baking Works" by Paula I. Figoni. This book has the quality of being comprehensive without being incomprehensible, as well as the added bonus of not costing $100. I'm mostly attracted by the chapters that deal with oven cooking temps and substitutions; the concept of measuring by weight instead of volume is also very intriguing. The discussion questions and worksheets at the end of each chapter also sound really helpful, but maybe I'm just a geek.

I realize that I have a long way to go in terms of just following the freakin' recipe already, but I'm willing to give it a shot!