Well I thought I would say a few words after spending last Wednesday in Milton Keynes at the newly refurbished Bosch training facility.
We started the day with a meet and greet with some of the reps and our trainer Paul Stringer accompanied with a very nice latte from one of the Bosch coffee centres, at this point I had a quick nosey around the Showroom were we were going to be doing the training, and i must say i was very impressed the showroom is finished in a very contemporary style with handle-less white doors, chunky white frames and elegant worktops not to mention the vast amount of appliances, which obviously you would expect but they are laid out in a very easy to follow way grouping the different sub brands, Classixx, Avantixx, Exxcel and Logixx.
After we finished our coffees we were seated in the training room to go through the days itinerary and learn a bit of background information about Bosch as a company, which i must admit may sound boring however was very interesting, in the two short films we watched they showed footage of the product testing that takes place, planning and designs of new future eco friendly ideas and a few quotes from Robert Bosch the founder of the company. One thing that was said was that ‘he would rather loose money than trust’, which I believe still to this day is followed in all Bosch products and service.
Once we had finished the films we were taken through into the Showroom to be shown how the 3D Hot Air cooking works. In the Showroom we were greeted by Adrian the chef who had already put two trays of fresh croissants and a large tray of roasted vegetables in the oven, which already smelt fantastic making me even more hungry than i already was, you would think that cooking these items together in the same oven would end up in having vegetable flavour croissants however because the air is drawn to the back of the oven heated up then circulated around individual shelves no smells or flavours are intermingled, this means you could cook fish, sausages and a sponge cake at the same time without ending up with a fishy sausage sponge, however if this sounds appetizing I’m sure there would be something along these lines in a Heston Blumenthal recipe book.
We then returned to the coffee machines for a nice latte along with the freshly baked croissant which i must say were beautiful and for the record roast vegetable free. Elevenses done it was time for us to have ago we donned our aprons, washed our hands and took to the Kitchens, in our groups we prepared ham and pineapple calzones, sweet chilli chicken kebabs and apple and berry crumble. With each course we got chance to programme the ovens and were told which shelves to put certain products on and why along with using different functions for the different dishes, for example we used the hot air grilling function for the kebabs, which alternated between the grill and fan locking in the moisture yet still giving a crispy grilled finish. All food in and timers set Paul showed us round all the different sub brands and explained the differences, before we knew it BEEP BEEP BEEP.. Dinner is served.
Dinner finished we were taken along with our bursting bellies back into the showroom to go through the different ranges of hobs, we covered gas first, Paul explained how as standard all their hobs now come with Flame failure devices, LPG jets and automatic ignition, showing us models ranging from 4 burner gas on glass to 90cm 6 burner stainless steel hobs with wok burners. We were then shown the ceramic and induction hobs which was done with a boiling water race to show how induction hobs benefit from speed, safety and controllability, obviously the induction wins hands down. One product that is soon to be released which may be of interest to some people is a 4 zone induction hob which can be run on a 13amp supply even coming with a 3 pin plug already attached, which will mean alot more people can benefit from induction without having to rewire only downside to this product being that if all 4 zones are ran at once on full capacity the power levels will be reduced.
Having covered quite an extensive range and people starting to flag after the large dinner it was time for abit of fun in the form of the biscuit challenge, we were again split into our 4 teams and each given a large chocolate chip cookie and some icing pens, Paul then shouted out different functions that we had learnt throughout the day and we had to expertly ice the symbols onto the cookie.
The majority of the hard graft done now our day was nearly at an end we just had enough time left to go into the extraction room to show how important having the correct ducting on your cooker hood is. They have set up a hood with 6″ ducting going into a large box with 4 different ducts coming out of it, each duct was blocked by a perspex shutter which when pulled out the airflow went through that channel, this was to demonstrate the noise difference between 4″, 5″, 5″ Compair and 6″ and if you could hear it for yourself you would without a shadow of doubt run every future extractor on 6″.
Returning to the training room we gathered up our belongings and were given certificates and a few little gifts to end our very enjoyable day at Bosch.
