An ‘a-typical’ day on my externship with Jeff Larsen
Times are changing and the number of career pathways in the food industry has increased exponentially. San Francisco Cooking School understands that not everyone enters culinary school to become a restaurant or bakery owner.
Our Food Media Concentration allows students to get hands-on experience with cookbook writing, food styling, recipe testing, and more. We place Food Media students in an externship that guides them through these fields so they can learn about the business from top to bottom.
Jessica Milanes graduated from the full-time Pastry & Baking Arts program in 2018 and did her externship with Jeff Larsen as he was bringing his forthcoming cookbook, Gluten-Free Baking at Home, to life (coming Fall 2019).
I had the chance to work with Jeff through a few different stages of his cookbook — reading and editing the recipes based on the publisher’s guide, recipe testing, and shooting the pictures for the book. Every day was a bit different as we moved along the process and got closer to a finished product.
In the beginning, it was mostly reviewing recipes and providing notes and feedback. With recipe testing, I would test anywhere from 7 to 10 recipes a day, many recipes more than once (some maybe 5 times!) until we got them right. It was very important to be meticulous in tracking all of the details of the recipe. This includes timing, specific recipe cues (i.e. desired color, texture) what kitchen tool to use, specifics on ingredients. We also spent a lot of time making sure the wording and methods used for each recipe were very clear — this was really important to Jeff since people will be making these for the first time in their homes.
For the shoot, we spent an entire week baking all the recipes in preparation and then spent a week shooting everything at a studio. As Jeff’s food stylist assistant, I got to work closely with the artistic director, photographer, photographer’s assistant, and another food stylist assistant on shooting all the pictures. It was an amazing, and incredibly unique, opportunity to see the entire process from start to finish.
My experience was definitely different from my classmates that were working in bakeries or a restaurant — but nonetheless creative. In fact, I feel like my experience was dynamic in comparison because I was exposed to a few different career possibilities, recipe developing and testing as well as food styling.
Following my externship, I continued to work with Jeff as he completed his book. And even now that his book was complete, I’ve had the opportunity to work on other jobs with him as his food stylist assistant.
I’m currently baking out of my house for friends and families — mostly cakes and cookies — and am working towards getting my own business started in the next year or two!
