As finals loom and papers are due, you may be feeling anxious. You really shouldn’t worry. If you fail out of school, you still have plenty of options. We all have these “fail-out” alternative choices, and late April is the time to start thinking about them more seriously.
For me, this option is baking, and frankly, my fail-out of choice often looks a lot more attractive than my other “SFS-worthy” job opportunities. So, last year, when I was planning my post-high school activities and found myself with a month of dead time, I knew if I didn’t start to cultivate my craft, I’d be squandering a perfectly viable fail-out option, and that wouldn’t do at all.
This is how I entered The New School’s Culinary Arts Master Certificate Class in Baking, with classes held in a charming inn on 23rd Street in New York City. Beyond advanced certificate classes, they offer courses in cooking and baking, wine appreciation, culinary history, restaurant business and management, culinary events and even walking tours.
The New School caters to people looking for a career change, so when the other 11 industrious fail-out opters and I sat around the table there was a palpable air of camaraderie. The cast of characters I baked with included one ex-chef who had recently suffered a breakdown, two Chinese men whom no one would work with because they couldn’t read the recipes and had a penchant for sabotaging everything they tried to bake, a pregnant Mexican girl, a tenured high school teacher on leave and a frustrated secretary. The line-up was rounded out by a Jewish newly-wed with a diamond the size of my head, which she refused to take off when baking, and an overweight housewife named Rose who would sneak whatever we baked that day off the table and into the big zip-lock bags she had stashed in her purse.
Despite the personality quirks, we did a lot of heavy baking. They were intense and long days standing on our feet, baking quickly but accurately. I learned everything from which brand of flour to buy, to the store with the cheapest spatulas, to just how egg whites can be whipped into “soft peaks.” I learned to bake muffins, cookies, cakes, pies, tarts, bagels, bread, pate choux (cream puff dough), gnocchi, puff pastry and souffl?s. I learned to make fillings and icings and perfected cake-decorating techniques. And at the end of the day, we got to taste everything and discuss what was successful.
As our course drew to a close, we began to talk of the future. Some decided to continue on to the Masters in Cooking course, others were placed in apprenticeships in bakeries throughout the city and still others decided that they had enjoyed the experience, but a career in baking was not for them. So, while I may not start my professional career in the kitchen, it’s nice to know I have a fail-out option, especially one that tastes so good.
