My application to culinary school
Below, you’ll read a redacted version of the essay that helped me get into culinary school, and a glimpse of what I hope to learn while here in France. It’s something I’ve gone back to often through the chaos of moving cross-country, and then globally, over the last two months. This now feels as though it only scratches the surface of “why bread” and “why France,” but hopefully the rest can be explored in future pieces.
Over the course of a few years, I tried to make sourdough 4 times. I failed disastrously every time, each time in a new way. Then, in November of 2024, I found a small book that explained that while bread is a science, creating it also requires intuition and sense. After this reading, it all came together. I sustained a starter, and then made a couple of (very dense, albeit edible) loaves of bread. Voila!
I then found another cookbook, Flour Power by Tara Jensen. She challenges readers to make the same loaf 30 times as quickly as possible to earn your “bread sense.” I decided to try this; and increase it. I’ve set out to make 100 loaves of sourdough in 2025 and have loved the journey. I run experiments on my starter and my dough. I try fresh milled wheat versus store-bought. I’ve made several loaves from one ball of dough, just changing the proof time to try and better understand what impacts the outcome of the loaf. My small apartment has become a well-stocked mini-bakery, and my ultimate happy place.
Coincidentally, at the same time that I set this goal, one of my best friends went to school in Paris for the Introduction to the Fundamentals of French Cuisine. He came back full of knowledge, and I’ve cooked and baked with him as much as possible since. He’s taught me many things, including how to differentiate meringues, the art of turning a carrot, and introducing me to the name of this highly regarded school. I know that learning from French experts at an Intensive Bread Baking & Viennoiseries Program will help me to transform from a self-taught home baker to someone ready to work in a bakery, and potentially open a bakery of my own.
Since I was a child, I have loved France. When my older brother started learning French, he would teach me phrases. When I had the chance, I took French language classes in school. When I travel to France and French-speaking countries, I find friends willing to teach and practice with me. I have yearned for the opportunity to live in France and become proficient at the language. Now, I wish to learn even more from France.
I would like to live in France for a year to study the food, to study the language, and to study the way of life. To learn, if I can, how to create a moment out of a bite of food. To learn how to make and find beauty in things as simple and common as language or bread. Through a year of layoffs, budget cuts, and management changes in my corporate engineering job, I have gone home and almost daily turned to the comfort of folding dough, or piecing together a tray of brownies to share with colleagues, or experimenting with things like Pavlova and Swedish cinnamon buns. I find peace and joy in the art of baking and sharing a moment with loved ones over food that is made from scratch with ingredients that nourish us – body and soul.
If I am accepted, and succeed in my time in France, perhaps I can bring back the gift of hospitality through bread to my own home. I would like to show people what it looks like to delight in the creation of delicious things, and how to delight in the consumption of them. I hope to open a café, to offer a space for people to connect over single-source coffee and exquisite pastry while they also learn the art of French butter spread generously on fresh bread.
It's a small gift to offer a world which has given me so much. But what’s so meaningful, and memorable, as good food?
Sincerely,
Jesi
