It’s a big, wide world out there, and the opportunities for your culinary education are endless. While many career paths will take you to the big city, that’s not always the case with culinary school. Every town and city has their own recipes and flavors, and you can find inspiration and some top culinary schools in smaller cities as well as in the big cities. So, how do you know which environment is the right place for you?
You probably already know the dynamics of a big city. They tend to be bustling and are filled with people, culture, and things to do. Being so large, however, it’s easy to feel like you’re lost in a crowd. Attending cooking school or baking school in a large city can really give you a diverse education and set you up for working in a city with tremendous opportunities. Some of the things you should think about if you plan to attend culinary college in a big city are:
- Lots of job opportunities after you graduate
- With so much variety in cuisine, it’s easier to specialize
- The variety of cuisines allows you to learn almost anything
- More culinary colleges in the area, so there are more graduates
- With so many professionals in the area, it’s harder to network
Smaller cities don’t have to be one-stoplight towns, however. While they may not have the range of cuisine that a larger city offers, they make up for it with in-depth experiences in regional flavors as well as with a closer-knit society of professionals to learn from and network with. If you are thinking about attending culinary arts school in a smaller town, here are some things you should consider:
- A smaller group of professionals can offer better mentoring
- Fewer cooking school graduates mean your skills are in demand
- More comprehensive experiences with regional cuisine
- Less opportunity to specialize in cuisine uncommon to the area
No matter which way you look at it, smaller cities and big cities each have plenty to offer an institute of culinary education graduate. Just take the time to decide what environment suits you best, as well as where you plan to take your career after culinary arts school. You’ll be able to figure out where the best place is for you to attend cooking school and begin your exciting career.
Most of the time, “baking school” is an umbrella term used to describe everything related to the act of baking, including both baking and the pastry arts. After all, pastry and baking are really two sides of the same coin; each one includes a set of skills that leads to the creation of fabulous pies, cakes, and breads most often associated with the dessert course.
Although most schools offer baking and pastry arts as a combined course or diploma program, they are actually two different concepts. Both are required to become a truly accomplished pastry chef, but it is possible to focus on just one as a specialization.
Baking includes the real “meat” of the baking and pastry arts. It involves the creation of:
- Breads
- Doughs
- Cookies
- Scones
- Pies
- Tarts
- Rolls
Pastry is really just the fancy stuff. It requires the hand of an artist and quite a bit of delicacy. It is the chocolate embellishments on top of the cake, the sugar-sprinkled flowers, and often times the delicate puff of a successful meringue.
When you’re looking for a baking and pastry school, make sure the courses contain exactly what it is you’re after. A straight baking course will probably skip over the small intricacies that make desserts fun and light. A straight pastry course might not teach all the skills you need to successfully integrate ingredients for mass production in an industrial kitchen. If you’re looking for just one or the other, that’s great, and you might be able to save quite a lot of time and money by only focusing on one aspect.
However, if you want a comprehensive culinary education that may lead to a restaurant job or the ability to open a bakery of your own, make sure both baking and pastry get a front seat role. Both sets of skills can go a long way in making your culinary career a success.
Although the two fall under the same umbrella concept of working in the kitchen, baking school and cooking school are two very different ideas. Cooking is very much an art form, requiring students to use their imaginations and their taste buds to come up with new, delicious creations. Baking is more like a science, and although there is certainly room for creativity, there is much about baking that has to do with measurements and proportions of ingredients.
Most of the time, culinary professionals focus on either baking or cooking, although they may dabble a little in both. If you think baking school might be right for you, consider the following skills sets:
- Attention to detail: Because so much of baking school is about creating correct proportions of things like leavening agents, you have to be able to understand how the little things might make all the difference.
- Adaptable and imaginative: At the same time, while you have to be able to adhere to time-honored techniques and recipes, you have to be able to come up with recipes of your own. That means taking the skills you learn and applying them to your own creations.
- Physically capable: Much of baking is strenuous. You can expect to work in a hot, fast-paced environment, oftentimes for long hours at a time. In many types of settings, you’ll also need to lift heavy trays and/or cakes.
- Team-oriented: When you go to baking school or even start a baking career, you’re not going to be going solo. You need to work well with others in both a leadership and a team setting, since commercial kitchens and bakeries often require collaboration from the start of a project to the finish.
Of course, you’ll also need basic kitchen skills. Fortunately all of these things can be learned as you go through baking skill. Some people are born with the type of patience and attention it takes to become a successful pastry chef; others have to develop these things over time. As long as you choose a good pastry arts and baking school, however, you’ve taken the right first step.
Welcome to our new Culinary School and Cooking Education Blog.
GatewayGourmet.com is pleased to announce our new blog dedicated to everyone considering going to culinary school or thinking of entering the food industry. We will be posting informative articles and blog posts about the current culinary industry as well as how to find the right culinary school for your needs and avoid making costly mistakes.
Some of the topics we will be writing about at first are:
- Is Culinary School Right for You?
- Where the Top Celebrity Chefs Went to School
- Competition for Culinary Schools
- Vegetarian/Kosher Culinary Schools
- Where the Best Culinary Schools are Located
- Going Abroad for Culinary Training
- How to Tell if Your Culinary School is Good
- Unique Culinary Jobs
- Culinary School Financial Aid Tips
- Benefits of Classical French Training
- The Truth about Culinary Student Loan Debt
- A Day in the Life of a Chef
We expect this blog to be a useful guide to your culinary education and that you will participate by posting your questions and comments. We also suggest you visit our main web site, www.gatewaygourmet.com, for our directory of top culinary schools listed by city and state.
