Pastry-Cooking To Be Taught To Apprentices

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27376, 15 June 1954, Page 6

Pastry-Cooking To Be Taught To Apprentices

A well-organised invasion of women’s traditional stronghold, the kitchen, is promised by a course in pastry-cooking that eight young men will begin in Christchurch tomor-, row. They are apprentices studying the art and craft under an arrangement made by the New Zealand Apprenticeship Committee and the Wheat Research Institute; it is trade training, but this sort of learning may be regarded as dangerous by those in charge on the home front. On the other hand, it will be welcomed as a forward step by those advocating equal rights for men. The course is the first of its kind to be held in Christchurch, and it will be under supervision of Mr J. Nolan, who came to New Zealand less than a year ago as a cooking tutor from the Wrexham Technical College in Devonshire. His pupils, whose ages vary from 17 to 20, will arrive from Auckland, Napier, Wanganui, Dunedin, Wellington and Picton—and Christchurch—and their course will take a month.

Mr Nolan said that the syllabus would follow that laid down by the London City and Guilds’ intermediate standard. In more ordinary terms, the apprentcies will be taught

how to make buns, pastries, scones, cakes, sponge goods, meat pies, and savouries, as well as the intricacies of icing and decorating, the pitfalls of ► cream work, and the use of chocolate. The course will be held in the old experimental room at the Wheat Research Institute’s premises in Hereford street, where the apprentices will use equipment that would satisfy the most demanding housewife—seven electric ovens, six modern cake mixers, and all the complicated equipment that goes with the baking business. It has not yet been decided what is to be dqpe with the course’s output. It may go to orphanages or institutions or hospitals, but Mr Nolan says it is not desired to injure trade in any way. It says much for the competence of the apprentices and the confidence of their tutor that there is no fear of the injury being to patients. Three more similar courses will be held in Christchurch this year, in an effort to combat the recent reduction in the number of apprentices to the baking industry. It should be an interesting study for the apprentices, and it seems quite clear that this will be one school at which there is no repetitive complaint about “too much homework.”