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My original question was asking about gluten free baking schools for my 22 year old daughter, and stated we were already aware of the Culinary Institute in NY (with chef Richard Coppedge). I also asked for advice on baking classes in general as an option.   Below are the helpful responses to both questions. Thank you everyone!

Classes:
  a.. Try the Natural Gourmet Institute in Manhattan
  http://naturalgourmetinstitute.com 
  b.. Johnson & Wales in Connecticut and Denver
  c.. a FABULOUS session on gluten free baking at the CIA in Hyde Park, NY in 2009.  I attended because it was on my bucket list and found Chef Richard Coppedge to be a great teacher/baker
  d.. Southern Alberta Institute of Technology teaches chefs to cook gluten and gluten free
  e.. Raw, GF and Vegan: http://www.kenneycuisine.com/academy
  f.. Annalise teaches GF cooking classes in New Jersey. It also says she maintains a website www.foodphilosopher.com
Advice sent in:
a.. I attended cooking school prior to being diagnosed with celiac and trust me nothing I learned applies to GF baking.  It would be a big waste of time/money and very unhealthy for her.  After 10 years I can honestly say trial and error is the only way to learn to bake GF.  Practice makes perfect.  Good luck :-)

  a.. I think your daughter is right to believe to truly understand how GF baking works, she should understand conventional, wheat-based baking first. I trained in baking, bread making, pastries, etc. long before I was diagnosed, and if I didn't have the skills and knowledge I gained there, frankly I couldn't do half of the things I do as a GF baker. How to work with yeast, what pastry dough should feel like, how baked goods behave in the oven - all that sort of knowledge is key to successfully developing a range of GF baked goods of your own. You can simply follow basic recipes, but, well, I don't think that is what your daughter wants to do. I also know that it would be highly dangerous for a celiac to spend many hours in a conventional baking situation. Since going GF almost 8 years ago, I have become so sensitized to wheat that handling gluten goods at all causes a contact rash for me (no, not DH). Being in a kitchen where flour is all around you - how she NOT ingest some? Perhaps she could start with a video training program, and after a course of study that way see if this really what she wants to do? There are many aspects of GF cooking that wouldn't require the same background, has she considered any of them?

Thank you!
Tina Turbin
www.TinaTurbin.com 
www.GlutenFreeHelp.info "My Other Undeniable Cause"
Voted #2 .Info Site In The World- 2010

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