Real Africa is very proud to be financially supporting the Karen Blixen Hospitality School based at one of our favourite safari destinations in Kenya, the Karen Blixen Camp. The Hospitality School is a new venture set up last year in 2012 so that the camp can help fund local community projects in an area where youth unemployment is extremely high. Over the past few weeks we have followed the local Masai students as they learned all about the basics of kitchen hygiene, knife skills, developing their palate and their food knowledge.
Our Daily Bread
This week was a tougher week for the students as they spent the week learning all about bread. The Head Chef Rune described how he always sees bread as one of the fundamentals of basic cooking; “If you can’t bake descent bread, you can’t cook!” So he started the week with an idea of making his students as confident and as expert as he could in the fine art of bread making. Breadmaking is harder than you would think as success lies in all the finer details and oftern in the things which cannot be seen.. If the yeast is dead, the flour past its best, the temperature incorrect etc then these can all scupper your attempts.. Then there is the mixing of the dough and kneading it correctly before even getting it into the oven. There really is so much more to learn and observe for the students this week..
Sourdough
So the first day was of course about making a sourdough as this is the only type of bread made without yeast. Then later on the students would start making their first real dough and then finally some cookies. The sourdough starter was created this week but as starters can last forever we hope to use the very same sourdough starter again with our students next year! Rune has been talking a lot about how to keep the starter alive, how much it helps the flavour of the breads they will make and how much pride there is in saying that they are using sourdough that has been alive for months already!
Basic Loaf
At the same time the students had started working with a basic bread recipe. This was a simple bread without any additional flavours. Head Chef and teacher Rune spent more time carefully explaining the steps and ingredients than he spent actually making the bread so the students would start with a good knowledge about baking. This introduction to baking last for 2 whole days before the students could move on to the next level.
Speciality Breads
The next stage was to teach the students all about speciality breads. They were introduce to wholemeal , granary and other flours, to baguettes and bread rolls and how they can shape the bread and how flavours can be added to the bread itself to suit a particular dish or meal.
Assignments
While this practical learning about bread was going on, the students have continued to be given small homework assignments about cooking. Twice a week they draw a random subtopic related to the topic of the week. This week they could end up with the topics ranging from flour, to raising agents, bread types, egg custard and plenty of others. Within the following two days, depending to how much time was left each day, they would then have to talk about their topic for at least 8 minutes to the rest of the class. Chef Rune started this in early on to get the students to talk more freely about food. His experience these past few weeks as been that thes tudents seem to be almost afraid of talking with him about food. Perhaps it is because they are afraid of talking to the teacher or because they are afraid of saying anything wrong. However he has tried to tell them that this is not primary or secondary school anymore and they have nothing to be worried about. This type of teaching and learning is very different from school. It is much more relaxed and inclusive, and it is geared towards treating the students as independent adults learning job skills rather than school curriculum. However the students are finding it hard to relax and learn in this new style. By getting them to talk about food Rune hopes it will ignite a passion for food, even if slowly and surely.
The food makes it to the camp restaurant!
This week so a mjor step forward in the professional aspirations of the cookery students as their food was actually served in the restaurant for the first time! As the whole week was given over to breadmaking there was an awful lot of bread left over at the end of every day. It is not really possible to make smaller portion as it gives the students too little to work with and although the students did plenty of happy tasting there was still plenty leftover on a daily basis. They all agreed that they would give the rest to the main kitchen of the Karen Blixen Camp which would help the kitchen out and which would be far better than letting all their hard work and good food go to waste. The waiters in the camp restaurant would present today’s bread to the guests as special offering from the cooking school and tell them a bit more about the whole project. Rune has no problem with this as the bread the students made was actually surprisingly good, especially it was their first time baking as professionals. The students could feel very proud that their bread made the camp’s kitchen happy and that the guests were all very enthusiastic about it too.
A Handmade Picnic
Saturday was the day for deep cleaning the kitchen as always at the end of the week. The kitchen jobs are now up to a massive 28 tasks which are all assigned to individuals. The students are very thorough with their cleaning, and also pretty critical if something is missed. There was also time for some fun with an eco-walk around the Karen Blixen Camp, which ended with a snack back at the school. The students made the snack themselves with their own handmade bread, pesto and pickled turnips, which they could proudly say was all made by their own fair hands……a good end to a good week!
Posted by Ruth Bolton
