Let Your Light Shine Through

It’s that time again: Graduation Day for JB 43! It’s always happy and sad as we say goodbye to our students we’ve gotten to know so well over the last three months. Bee and Jazmine have been rockstars through this program: they both passed all their tests, nailed their final presentations, and dealt with all of torture with smiles on their faces! We are so proud of these ladies and are very excited to see where they go in their journeys-and hope they keep in touch! 

Let’s hear from Bee in her last blog about their final week in the kitchen:

“Goodbyes are hard and this week went by fast, as all endings usually do. We made fancy fruit and nut danishes and gooey pesto parmesan kringles to start the week. Nothing like a little creativity while braiding buttery laminated dough to get us warmed up for the big Final Project.

We have been brainstorming long and hard about what to make and this week we finally had to complete a from-scratch recipe on our own. The protocol we had to follow was:  It had to be a recipe that was not from the bakery, we had to use one of the 3 main baking methods we have been working on (Creaming, Muffin, or Straight Dough), we had to make it our own by changing the recipe in some way, and we had to write up an upscaled version of the new recipe for production baking. Doing all the baker’s math was a fun time (especially with some of the goofy conversions) but I think that we have proven we know our stuff 🙂 Everyone really liked trying what we baked and it was fun to present our projects to some of the Just Bakery staff 🙂 (even from afar over zoom haha!)

Making our final recipes in the kitchen together has really had me thinking today. Looking back, Jazmine and I have really improved in every new challenge we faced in this program and we started to let our light shine through about who we are on the inside. That is always going to be a hard part of such an accelerated program- getting to know each other better just as things are coming to a close (with our peers and instructors alike)- but I am glad to have finished this class out with Jazmine 🙂 She is funny and her smile is contagious- even through a mask 🙂 She is speedy yet effective with her cooking and cleaning abilities and is open to learning new things everyday. She is smarter than she ever gives herself credit for, and encouraging her has helped teach me a lot too.

I really appreciate how much creativity and positivity she carries with her every week, and I am glad that I was able to get to really see that come out in the kitchen. Jazmine is really accepting of other people which I value a great deal and I think we work well as a team and have balanced each other’s energy well throughout the whole 12 weeks. We have made it a long way together and I am going to miss her as my class peer! I hope many great opportunities come her way as she continues to find exactly what she wants for her life and how she is going to go ahead and get it 🙂

On that note, Thank you Just Bakery and Just Dane staff!! With your talents and patience you really know how to bring out the best in us as students and help us to see all that we can accomplish. We appreciate all the energy and hard work you put into the program every day, and without you we wouldn’t have made it this far on our journey with Just Bakery!

We are off to our next big adventure, tons the wiser and ready to show the world our shiny new baking skills (and maybe even teach them a thing or two about effective nutrition programs and safe & efficient foodservice operation management!) Thank you Jaclyn! Thank you Zack! Thank you Sonja! Thank you Justin!

I am certain your voices will be playing through our heads for years to come! Jackie will be ever reminding us that math CAN be fun 🙂 and encouraging us to find who we are while working on the hard things that get us closer to our goals.  I know for me, Zack will be getting “Shigella spp” stuck in my head every time I see a fly (Thank you for that-haha!) and I will remember all of our management stories as lessons to learn from moving forward toward having my own restaurant.  Sonja’s passion will be in my home kitchen inspiring me to keep creating new recipes and, in life, trying new things. While in the workplace, she and Jackie have taught me to learn to play to my strengths and find where I excel.  Justin taught us some really good tricks to working with straight dough while we have been in the kitchen, which I was really excited to gain knowledge about. (They have already proved helpful during my final project!) I love working with yeast dough and it was nice to have someone in the kitchen with that same passion to teach us a thing or two 🙂

Thank you to our peer support specialists for all you do! This program is a big step for all of the Just Bakery students and although it is not always an easy process, your support and kindness help us to continue to look inward and learn to be the best people we can be and keep pushing forward on our path to success and fulfillment!

There have been many recent changes with the program and many firsts with much of the classroom going virtual. This has come with its own challenges and I know I for one have given far more feedback than many of you were expecting going into this. I know that has not always been easy, and I really appreciate your openness and patience. I am very grateful to those who have heard my feedback and put in the extra time and energy to help make things run smoother through these difficult times, and really prove yourselves to be what makes Just Bakery as a program, the best it can be. As we learned about in Management, “You’re only as good as the sum of your parts, and one person can’t be a team.” (-David Schwimmer) I hope the Just Bakery program keeps helping more people and grows into something even greater than it is today :)”

 

And now let’s check in with Marlene from JB 44 for what we covered in the classroom this week!

The text book presented the nutritional information -chapter 10 mainly dealt with nutrition programs and the different changes to the menu and the food preparation  process– and how the operational staff are trained to implement the nutrition  program. Most restaurants rely upon front of the house staff whom greet the guest and the back of the house are responsible for the preparation of the food.

Chapter #11 went over basic marketing plans, specific towards implementing viable nutritional programs and how it can be designed, implemented, and utilized by restaurants. The beginning chapters introduced nutrition principles, nutritional analysis of food, and menu labeling. The later chapters dealt with assessing an establishment marketing program and developing a nutritional program goal as part of the marketing plan. 

Chapter #12 dealt with the topic of menu labeling.

As I have understood, the classroom is just the first part of the program, so what  have written above is what I have learned and it has benefited me greatly. Since covid-19, the educational system in the community in which I live has gone online, so I have adjusted to that.

I’ve also learned during Anesis that dealing with trauma can also mean dealing with rejection and how to handle it when it happens to you, such as getting a bad grade upon a test which you studied for quite a long time. Yes I am really starting to understand this about me section of the program. It deals mainly with my goals in the program which could be using my skills which I have learned in the hands on application. The just bakery program gives me the confidence to improve my mathematical skills.

For ServSafe this week I learned quite a bit! With the preparation of food, there are several important steps: the equipment must be cleaned, the correct quantity of the food must be prepared, the storage area must be properly prepared for the unused items. The book discussed the proper methods for thawing food and the correct temperatures for the internal cooking temperature of TCS foods.  Staff should understand that partially cooked food is not really healthy, and the book provides guidelines about how to handle partially cooked foods. Partial cooking is a method of half-way cooking the food then completely cooking the food to doneness at a later time.

TCS foods are really important to cook properly to prevent illness. Meats, especially, have different temperatures and which must be followed in order for the meat to be done. This minimum internal cooking temperature helps reduce incidents of pathogens. The chapter also presented methods for cooling foods, which were new to me. It goes through the proper method of cooling and reheating the food such as using thermometers to check the internal temperature of the cooked item. It also presents hypothetical case studies so that you as the reader can understand what not to do when preparing food. Chapter #9 talked about policies should be put in place for handling and storing food. With TCS foods, the hot holding procedure is to keep hot food at 135 degrees, or higher and to keep the cold food at 41 degrees or lower.  The internal temperature of food should be checked at least every four hours and you should discard food that is not at the proper temperature.”

I bet Marlene is excited to finally get out of these books and into the kitchen- two more weeks!!

Thank you for joining us for this weeks blog and thank you for your continued support of our program! We put out a plea for some hot spots and data cards to help students with internet costs to take our program and we have already received some-you guys are awesome! We could not do this without you 😍.

Remember, you can purchase our products for pick up every Saturday here!

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