The summer semester started this week. It's so good to be back at school. I wish we were able to be in class physically, but cooking from home is better than nothing.

Our lab classes meet for an hour in the morning on the day of our scheduled class, and then we spend the rest of the time cooking on our own. We have to drive up to school every Friday to pick up our ingredient kits, which contain everything we need to make our assigned recipes.

I am taking two lecture classes that meet on Mondays: Food Prep Two and Menu Planning. I am taking three lab classes: Baking, which meets on Wednesdays, Food Prep Two, which meets on Thursdays, and Garde Manger, which meets on Fridays.

I don't mind the online setup. I am pretty comfortable working online and managing my own time after 12 years of working from home. I have a well-supplied kitchen, so it's pretty straightforward. I know some of my classmates are struggling with the format, but I'm pretty happy cooking away in my kitchen. I do think being in a professional kitchen would be more of a challenge for me, so I'm looking forward to the day I can be back at school physically.

This first week we made French-style baguettes, entirely by hand. My baguettes turned out okay. The color was right on the outside, but the dough was a little overworked (surprisingly!). It was an excellent exercise to learn how bread is made without machines. I'm looking forward to all the bread making!