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What the stupid little fan does is to concentrate the hot spots and cold spots and increase uneven cooking.

In a commercial bakery, it can lead to hilarity, when cooking some paper thin cookies like Pecan Thins that are mostly egg white.

What happens is that they lift off of the Silpat baking mat and fly out the back top of the oven where the vent is.

LOL! Sounds like fun (or a mess, depending on one's perspective).

How did you go from engineer to culinary school and being a chef? Or is that order reversed?

How did you go from engineer to culinary school and being a chef?

Deep breath...

9/11 happened. I was working for an international telecom operation at the time, and I opened FR to find out we had been attacked.

I left the office and went home to root through my office for my last DD-214.

I didn't actually get re-enlisted until January, because of the waivers for my age and hearing loss. Jim changed my screen name from KD5CTS to JRandomFreeper for opsec reasons, and several freepers from the old ATRW thread helped me work through the waiver process.

When I got back in, with the hearing, electronic warfare was out, and combat services was in. So I took it.

During training (I didn't have to go through basic again, just AFSC tech school), I found I loved feeding lots of folks in a commercial kitchen.

I asked my dad for his official blessing to persue that career. He said I was crazy, but laid hands on my head as I knelt and gave me his blessing. A couple of years before he died.

So that's the long and the short of it, and if I left anything out, someone will correct me.

/johnny

Oh... the Pecan Thins aren't a mess when they blow out. They cook quickly, dry and fly like a piece of confetti.

If you brush them off, you can feed them to the first section students and they will never know the difference. ;)

/johnny

I did leave out that I contracted with a real culinary school while I was still down at the Joint AF/Navy training facility in San Antonio to go to real culinary school after my training was over (I was reserves, this last enlistment, 18 years after my first). And I arranged a polite handover with a large enough payout from the telecom company to pay for school and my living expenses for the duration of the school.

So I've been through two cooking schools. One for the military, where you learn volume.

One on the civilian side where 3 star chefs yell at you if the carrots aren't cut in exactly 1/8" dice and perfectly square.

It gave me an interesting perspective.

Never do anything by half measures, I always say, and double down when things get harsh.

/johnny