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Learning to Cook |
| All of the cooks in the Coast Guard are trained at the
Coast Guard Training Center in Petaluma, California, and Robert Flath (Barb's
son) is the baking instructor. While we were in Petaluma we got to sit
in on several of his classes and I learned quite a bit about baking too.
Class starts at 6 p.m. and goes until they are finished baking which is
usually 3 or 4 a.m.
The three month long food service school is broken up into several parts. The students spend the first month in the classroom and lab in what is called the upper galley on base. The upper galley is a small version of the large galley down the hill and during the lab time they learn the basics of food preparation and proper care of the galley equipment. The second and third months are divided up between preparing morning and afternoon meals, lunch and dinner meals and baking. The students rotate so they each have experience with each type of food preparation. The students must re-calculate recipes depending on how many are being served. Short lectures precede the day's assignment and at all times, the students are supervised. The baking class is an evening class and the galley is basically empty except for the students and instructor. The class we followed consisted of six men and two women. We were amazed at the amounts of food that had to be prepared before
we understood that the galley serves the whole base. The food service school
is only
After the lecture (the first night was on cakes) the students were given their recipes and amounts that had to be baked that night. Three huge cheese cakes, a spice sheet cake, hundreds of cookies, six pies, hundreds of dinner rolls and more plus puddings and jello were made that night. The next night we sat in, the lecture was on cookies and the evening baking was basically the same except for the varieties of cakes, pies, cookies and so on. Some of each night's baking is frozen and there is always a big variety for each meal. The third lecture was on bread and the fourth was on pies.
It seemed strange to hear about recipes which call for pounds of flour,
sugar,
When Robert was giving the lecture on pies and explaining the ingredients, he said, "For example if the recipe calls for one quart of water, start out by using three quarters of the water first." Any time I made a pie the amount of water used was only one or two tablespoons. It was comments like those that made us realize the scope of their work. Robert has been in the Coast Guard for over 13 years and in that time has served on large ships and very small boats. For example when we visited him five years ago in Port Townsend, Washington, he was the cook for the 10 man Point Bennett. We followed him to the grocery store one day as he was stocking up for a week long cruise and were amazed at all he bought and how well the crew ate. Making the dinner rolls is a
big job
1) 1) Weighing pie dough into seven and one half ounce rounds to be rolled later. 2) Measuring ingredients for cheese cakes. Because we only sat in for the first hour or two of class, we didn't get to see the finished products except at dinner the next day. Before the next class started, we captured one of the bakers with two of his pecan pies from the night before.
Robert baked and decorated my birthday
cake
I felt so lucky to be able to be with Robert for my birthday. It was a beautiful cake and delicious too. He is a gourmet pastry chef. When my children were growing up, Saturday was my day off (from cooking) and everyone had to fend for themselves. Robert would do everything in his power to get his brothers or sister to cook for him. Isn't it funny then that this is where he chose to end up. |
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2) 
