In the first practical class a couple of days ago, Chef H gave us a tour of the pastry kitchen and told us some of the rules we must adhere to. For example:
(1) We have to wash the sifters ourselves; we cannot ask the dishwashers to do it for us. We also have to wash our own tools. (Aside: The dishwashers are employed to wash items such as mixing bowls and pots -- we use 3 to 6 of these per person per class, so the School hires dishwashers to help out.)
(2) No knives to be put into the soapy water in the kitchen sink. No hot items (e.g. hot baking trays) allowed on the chilled granite benchtop. Chef H joked that we would have to work for him for 8 years without pay if we damage the benchtop by putting hot trays on it. Seriously, the School does provide students with quality tools to work with, and it is up to us to take good care of them.
(3) We have to clean up the kitchen and refill the ingredients for the next class at the end of our class.
(4) When the oven timer goes off, we must tend to the oven right away. We cannot let it continue beeping. If everyone allowed their oven timers to continue beeping, it would defeat the purpose of having a timer, because no one would know whose timer was beeping in a noisy kitchen.
(5) No one is to remove the salt container from the corner of the kitchen. It stays in the designated corner, and we take only what we need for the recipe (e.g. 3 grams) and then return to our station. We are not to scoop a few spoonfuls into a container for later use. Reason: When put into a mixing bowl, salt looks like sugar, and it is easy to confuse the two. We wouldn't want students to put 50g of salt (instead of sugar) into their cakes now, would we?
(6) When we open an oven door, we have to yell "OVEN OPEN"; if we are walking behind someone, we yell "BEHIND YOU", and if we are carrying something hot, we say "HOT POT". This is for the safety of all the students, since we work in a somewhat confined space. (Aside: All 38 of us attend the Basic Pastry demo class together in the demo room with ceiling mirrors and cameras, but then we are split into smaller groups for the prac class. There are about 13 students in my prac group, and they all have to fit into the kitchen you see in the photo.)
(7) Later in the term, all the students will take turns being the "sous chef" in the prac classes. The job of the "sous chef" is to turn up 15 minutes early to help the chef instructor prepare ingredients and lay out tools for the class, as well as organise the cleaning up of the kitchen at the end of class. It is to get students to develop their organisational skills, and possibly communication skills (since you will need to ask your classmates to perform certain cleaning duties).
(8) Always keep spare batteries handy for the electronic kitchen scale and thermometer in our toolkit. For example, should the batteries give up the ghost in the middle of exams, we would have replacements to use right away. (It has happened to other students before, that is why Chef H reminded us to prepare spare batteries.)
As you can probably tell, I am learning a lot in a short space of time. :-)
