Culinary schools have long focused primarily on French cooking methods—but not at Hot Bread Kitchen! Our culinary training menus are diverse, featuring dishes from around the world, and frequently from The Hot Bread Kitchen Cookbook. We asked Hot Bread Kitchen Culinary Instructor Barbara Duarte about the importance of a diverse culinary training curriculum and how it helps our members become better prepared for the culinary workforce.
“The goal of the kitchen training portion of the Culinary Fundamentals program is to prepare members for work in professional kitchens. In practical terms, we teach them to work organized, clean, and SAFE. We teach them how to handle and operate equipment, familiarize them with kitchen jargon, expose industry expectations, and pack in as many basic cooking and baking techniques as the 4 weeks in the kitchen allows.
It is an intense 4 weeks! During training, we ask members–many of whom are entering the job market for the first time, or re-entering after significant time away—to learn (and unlearn), to push through language barriers and personal and cultural differences. More often than not, they find themselves completely out of their comfort zone. And while there’s great potential for fast-track evolution in these circumstances, it is tough!
One small way we make training a little more accessible and interesting is by incorporating recipes and culinary techniques from the wide variety of backgrounds represented in our kitchen, many of which our members might already know. Members feel empowered when they realize that the cooking processes they know and have mastered so completely are “technique.” And while there is, of course, great variation across cultures and dishes, there is also a lot of crossover when it comes to food preparation and technique.
From French aromatics to Italian and Spanish sofrito, Southeast Asian oil tempering to the Creole, Cajun, and Cantonese “trinity” (just to name a few), so many culinary techniques are all about building a flavor base. Dry cooking methods are dry cooking methods; wet cooking methods are wet cooking methods. In teaching our Culinary Fundamentals course, I realized: the skills we aim to teach are not recipe-reliant.
Why not, then, include recipes that resonate deeply with some of our members? Why not explore different flavor profiles and cultural food preferences while we learn method and procedure? Or invite members to co-lead demonstrations with instructors? I have been a professional chef for many years, but I do not pretend to know chapati more than someone who has been shaping and cooking it daily for over 40 years; nor do I presume to handle corn tortilla better than a member who learned to nixtamalize corn and make masa as a child. Our members come to the kitchen to learn, but each person brings their own expertise. Welcoming that knowledge helps all of us get better at our work.
Diversifying the curriculum renders our program more dynamic—more interesting to both instructors and members. Adding dishes from different parts of the world to our course, particularly dishes from regions represented in our membership, most importantly promotes empowerment, which builds confidence, and significantly increases connectivity between members. Including a broader array of culinary traditions in our teaching has had very positive effects. It has given me, as an instructor, the opportunity to continue learning. It provides an additional way for members to contribute, share, and connect. And it gives continuity to the collaborative spirit which has been a part of Hot Bread Kitchen since our inception.”
Barbara Duarte
Barbara Duarte is the Lead Instructor of Hot Bread Kitchen’s Signature Culinary Fundamentals course, a 100-hour training that prepares women and gender-expansive people for careers in the culinary industry. Barbara’s professional cooking background is primarily in restaurants, and includes a Chef de Cuisine post at a Michelin-starred Italian fine dining restaurant in Brazil.
