Hi class, welcome to baking school. I am Kristin "Baker Bettie" Hoffman, a trained
chef and the baking instructor over at BakerBettie.com. Now this is the very
first day of baking school. I am so excited to get started and we are on the
Baking Fundamentals Course of baking school. Today I wanted to talk to you
about the most important thing that I learned when I went to culinary school
and that is the concept of mise en place. Now if you're not familiar with
the term mise en place, it is a French phrase that translates to mean putting
in place and everything in its place. So I actually started working in
restaurants when I was 14 years old. My very first position was as the salad bar
girl at a pizza place in my hometown. Now my job at that time was to restock the
salad bar, keep it clean, and prep things to put on the salad bar and I have
worked every position pretty much from front of house to back of house and over
15 years of working in restaurants. I've worked in a lot of very casual
restaurants but also some pretty fancy restaurants. And as I've worked more and
more in restaurants I started noticing that this phrase is used interchangeably
as a noun and a verb so you might hear a cook refer to all the ingredients that
they've prepped for a dish that they are going to prepare as their mise en
place but they'll also use the phrase "I'm going to mise my station" talking
about the action of getting all of these ingredients ready. This phrase is thrown
around a lot in restaurants and professional baking scenarios but I want
to talk to you today about how we can use it in our home kitchens for baking
specifically. And I'm going to share with you my five principles of mise en place.
The first principle of mise en place is that I want you to read your recipe
through from start to finish all the way before you ever start baking. And ideally you
probably want to read it more than one time especially if it's a new recipe
you've never tried before. Now this is something I still follow every time I go
to bake something even if it's something I feel pretty comfortable with. This just
gives you the opportunity to really understand the workflow and the timeline
of the recipe. And number two I want you to identify any techniques and
terminology in the recipe that you might not be familiar with. So ahead and get on
the computer use YouTube, use Google and gain a clearer understanding of what the
technique and terminology means. And actually in lesson three of the baking
fundamentals course we are going to review all the basic techniques and
terminology used in baking so that's going to be a great resource for you.
Number three I want you to start with a completely clean slate. Now admittedly
this is the part of mise en place that I struggle with the most. I often think
to myself I'm going to have to clean my kitchen after I'm finished baking
anyways so why don't I just wait until I'm done. But I've learned the hard way
by dumping an entire ramekin of salt into a cookie dough thinking that it was
sugar because I didn't clear my workspace first. So learn from me
definitely start with a clean workspace and empty sink ideally an empty
dishwasher so that as you're baking you can easily work cleanly and it'll just
be such a simpler process. Number four gather everything you need for the
recipe before you start combining any of your ingredients. So I want you to get
out any equipment any utensils and then all of the ingredients that you're going
to need for the recipe and then before you start combining those ingredients I
want you to measure each one out before you start putting them together. Now I've
heard the argument that before that this creates so many more dishes to wash and
as somebody who is constantly recipe developing I
get this dilemma because I'm constantly washing dishes but I'm telling you this
can prevent so many problems. You don't want to get in the middle of making your
muffin recipe and realize that you're out of baking powder and have to run out
to the store and get it. It also ensures that you won't forget to add any
ingredients into your recipe and that you won't accidentally add something in
twice. So I actually like to group my ingredients together by how they will be
used in the recipe. So for instance if I'm making a muffin recipe all the dry
ingredients are combined together and all of the wet ingredients are combined
together before I combine the two parts together. So I would group all of my dry
ingredients together over here and then all of my wet ingredients together and
then I'm all organized and ready to go for when I'm going to start making the
recipe. Number five: after I've put into place all of my mise en place, I've read
my recipe I understand all of the techniques and terminology I have a
clean workspace and I have all of my ingredients and equipment ready to go
then I'm going to start baking. I have to tell you that even though I worked in
restaurants for thirteen plus years before I ever went to culinary school, I
didn't take this principal quite so seriously until it was drilled in my
head once I was in class and I'm here to tell you that I still utilize these
principles every single day, every single time I cook. It has made me a more
confident baker and a baker who has so many more successes in the kitchen. So I
can't stress enough how important these principles are. So now your homework
assignment. Now this is completely optional but I would love it if you
participated. Some time in the next few days I'd love for you to bake something.
It could be something new or something you've made time and time again. Go
through these principles of mise en place before you start baking. Snap a
picture of all of your mise en place ingredients at some point during the
process and share it with me and the rest of the class. Now there are a few different ways you can share it. You can share it on social media either
Facebook, Instagram or twitter using the hashtag #BBbakingschool you can also
share it in our private Facebook group which i will link down below or you can
email it directly to me if you don't want to use social media. I am so excited
that you've decided to enroll in the Baking Fundamentals Course. We're gonna
learn so much over the next few weeks and i can't wait to dive in. Thanks guys.
See you next time!