FoodBanter.com - View Single Post

at Tue, 04 Oct 2005 23:20:32 GMT in
.com>,
(chembake) wrote :

>Alex Rast wrote
>>I will voice a philosophical disagreement here. In my view limiting
>>your initial learning to a narrow range (of materials, techniques,
>>etc...) risks setting notions in your head that become more difficult
>>to escape from in the long run and develops skills along a particular
>>direction that can be very hard to undo.
>
>I think that is the reason that I found you to have limited and narrow
>capabilities in your craft, I t think in your formative years your are
>trained also in a narrow minded manner

I'm sorry if my comments rubbed you the wrong way. Please understand that I
wasn't trying to make a personal attack or to dismiss the value of your
opinions. In fact, that's why I called it a "philosophical" disagreement.
In other words, what I meant to say is that my comments were open for
debate and certainly not to be taken as gospel but rather just a different
point of view.

>I had experienced and seen similar individuals that have narrow range
>of perspective that right at the start they want to work with the best
>ingredient and they cannot tolerate if somebody who wants to exert
>development of skills first on ordinary materials before trying out
>different and advanced mediums.

However, that wasn't my position. In fact, that was rather the reverse of
what I was trying to say because if you were to do that you would simply be
limiting yourself to a different skill set. My thinking, however, is more
experimental - i.e try a lot of different ideas with many different
methods, materials, ratios, etc. Now, in this approach you'll get a lot of
disasters, that much is certainly true. And you would need to be willing to
accept the possibility of disaster at the outset - i.e. instead of going
for a steady build-up of successes, you accept failure as part of the
learning process. But in so doing you will learn the underlying reasons
*why* something is done in such-and-such a way. And by "why" in this case
I'm not speaking from a standpoint so much of chemical or mechanical
processes as much as from a standpoint of effects on end results. In other
words, "why" in terms of "that will make a cake flat" as opposed to "water
molecules will bind to starch grains..." - and again not that these 2
counterexamples are meant to correspond to the same effect.

>> If we start out learning as a "blank slate" a lot of the
>>basic structure of that slate gets set in the early phase of learning
>>and, once it's set, is difficult to change.
>
>I would disagree on that, if you had grasped the science at the start
>while gradually improving your skill you will never become a fanatic of
>a certain medium. You are even open to cross training and
>multi-skilling and trying out different ways how to interpret a recipe
>a technique etc. . But from how I see in many of your post I presume
>you have a narrow scope in your training. You are just a mere
>tradesman

I'm an amateur baker and have never made any representations as being a
professional. However, it is my opinion that it is not automatic that the
professional will know everything that any given amateur might know, or
that the expert will know everything the beginner knows. It's also not
automatic that the opinions of the expert are more valid than the opinions
of the beginner. And people opinions can differ, and be equally valid, no
matter what their comparative level of experience.

Meanwhile a good example of the risk I was outlining is in driving a stick
shift vs. an automatic transmission. I've seen many, many drivers
experience great difficulties in learning how to drive a stick shift,
having learned on an automatic, difficulties far greater than those the
absolutely new driver learning on a stick shift from the outset seems to
encounter. Not everyone is like that - some make the transition
effortlessly. But others don't, and by confining their learning at the
outset you risk creating additional difficulties later.

Now, there are some drivers who from the beginning, don't want to learn a
stick and never do want to learn. That's their choice and, as long as
they're comfortable with an automatic, it's not an issue. However, for
those who wish to learn both, I believe it's productive to start learning
from the beginning with many types of vehicles.

<long counterexample snipped for brevity>

>I can in equal competence work in the home kitchen and in the food
>research laboratory and in a industrial bakery/confectionery and even
>other food processing plant such as prepared mix plant to the envy of
>other tradesmen( including you Alex).

From your posts in the past it's clear you have a wealth of technical and
practical experience. Your focus and specialisation is professional baking
and it's hard to deny that the professional arena confronts the would-be
baker with a wide variety of situations to adapt to.

It's also probably true to say that in the professional arena there isn't
the opportunity to experiment in the way one might do as an amateur. When
time and money are critical and you have to make a profit in the here and
now you can't most likely afford any failures. However, it's also my
opinion that to a certain extent it would be wise if not essential to have
experimented with multiple techniques, materials, ratios, etc. long before
even deciding to enter the professional field.

>>that aren't compatible with new skills or materials, then one can end
>>up spending more time "un-learning" ideas that only work for what you
>>learned on in order then to re-learn with whatever new concept you've
>>introduced. So, for instance, if you were working with shortenings you
>>might get used to certain aspects of handling properties (a good
>>example is that they have a much wider range of working temperatures,
>>so the priority to work fast is relaxed), then essentially expect, if
>>not mentally then from a standpoint
>
>I don't agree with that either, I worked with wide variety of fats
>flours, real chocolates and compounded ones, various . sugars and
>other functional ingredients that only an extremely few bakers and
>pastry chef ever had...
>.With these wide range of competence I did not unlearn anything ,
>rather improved my flexibility, knowledge and market value as a
>professional in food processing..

Your experience, fortunately, seems to have been a good one. In my initial
post I'll concede that I didn't make it clear when I indicated the risks
that these possibilities wouldn't happen to everyone. Indeed, some people
seem to be able to learn entirely incrementally and can adjust skills
without difficulty with new information. However, there are others who, not
given the most general principle at the outset, will *never* really cope
successfully with situations different from the examples they were given.

There really is a difference in learning style. People from the former
group often learn best by example and in fact get frustrated and confused.
when people try to give them the general principles from the start or to
introduce them to a wide variety of scenarios early on. People from the
latter group learn best by being given the widest possible information base
to draw from right away and instead encounter frustration if much later
people introduce variables that they'd previously withheld.

....
>The poster ( Giggles ) I presume is a neophyte in cake decorating, and
>therefore its her best interest for( if that what she want) her cake
>decorating career to be focused on acquiring sound skills first than
>collecting recipes which can only lead in confusion.

Well, part of the difference here is that I didn't assume the OP was
specifically aiming at a professional career. The post never mentioned
his/her long-term goals.

Meanwhile, as I was talking about above, collecting recipes would lead to
confusion for some, understanding for others. Some would be best served
doing the same thing until they mastered that one thing, others by trying a
variety of things and developing an understanding for the principles
underlying *all* variations on the skills or recipes.

>GET TO THE BASICS and BE GOOD AT IT AT THE START IS THE ESSENCE OF
>GOOD LEARNING AND INSTRUCTION in any craft including baking and other
>forms of cookery.

I think the method at least as you outlined it - by "Get to the Basics" I
am interpreting that you mean that process of mastering a specific skill or
ingredient set - is one valid learning style but not the only one.
....
>And that is the way how proper training goes, in stepwise manner and
>not in SPRINTS and JUMPS.

Some people learn much better by incremental learning, some by much more
discontinuous "jumps". One of my work colleagues, for example, is of the
"jump" style. If you try to train him on anything by an incremental
process, he very quickly gives up in frustration. And this frustration is
real, not arrogance or narrow-mindedness, because one can watch him learn
very effectively and quickly exactly the same information by a "jump"
process. It's amazing to watch. He will immerse himself in a field and
experiment with *everything* - even options you hadn't even conceived of.
His level of competence initially is all over the map, but then suddenly he
makes the big jump and then he's truly an expert and you can see he's
really mastered the field.

Where I think problems *do* occur is when you pair an instructor who
believes in one approach with a pupil who responds to the other. Have, for
instance, this colleague try to train another person who learns
incrementally, (as in fact happened a couple of times) and both fail
miserably.

This is why, as I say, it's a philosophy. There are probably other
approaches as well - I've simplified things by talking about 2
diametrically opposed learning styles. But I don't believe it's one-size-
fits all and because of that I see no difficulty or risk in giving recipes
to the OP as they requested.

--
Alex Rast

(remove d., .7, not, and .NOSPAM to reply)