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Title: The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion: The All-Purpose Baking Cookbook by King Arthur Flour ISBN: 0-88150-581-1 Publisher: Countryman Pr Pub. Date: 25 September, 2003 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.58 (12 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: So good, it's lip-smacking
Comment: I have a huge cookbook collection and this book is so good I gave it for Christmas to 4 of my family who bake. Having baked for many years, I enjoyed the tips about yeast - wild and not, ingredients as a factor in rising times and how to incorporate additions into various flour types. These tips gave credence to my own experiences. I found the book through the King Arthur Flour baking catalog and was impressed to see that they did not advertise in the book. Nice touch. Development of new baking products, which are available from the company, have made my baking more efficient and healthful. I recommend this to new and experienced bakers alike.
Rating: 5
Summary: This Will Be Every Baker's 'Companion'!
Comment: Having loved the original King Arthur Flour 200th Anniversary Cookbook, I anxiously awaited my copy of the new Baker's Companion. And a wonderful 'companion' it is! Novice and expert bakers will enjoy the many tips, descriptions, discussions and suggestions for producing baked goods. At 640 pages, there are a LOT of them too! As a New Englander, I loved the chapter on Buckles, Cobblers and Crisps. I can attest that a warm piece of Blueberry Buckle is just the perfect start to the day.
I was pleased to see that nutritional information is provided for each recipe. Surprisingly, there are lots of recipes that don't fall in the category of 'diet buster'. To be sure, there are plenty that do, but a little hedonism once in awhile makes weight watching a little less stressful.
The recipes are simple and straightforward. These are creations that many of us grew up with or have sampled. The ingredients are easy to find and the directions are so straightforward that you may want to get the kids to help. Each chapter begins with some background on the topic and may include special tools or techniques and how to use them. This is a great gift idea for newlyweds or for the kids who have left the nest. It answers most, if not all of the questions that arise when you venture into the kitchen to prepare what many people consider the best part of the meal: dessert. But it is not merely a dessert book. Breakfast fare, yeast and quick breads, flatbreads and crackers are thoroughly discussed as well as the requisite chapters on cookies, cakes, pies and pastries.
I really appreciate cookbooks that not only provide recipes but instruct, explain and in general, broaden your knowledge of the subject. The Baker's Companion succeeds on all fronts...it is a great reference. I like it a lot...you will too!
Rating: 5
Summary: The First Baking Book You Should Buy
Comment: This volume, subtitled the 'All Purpose Baking Cookbook' perfectly fits the criteria I typically apply to a book in order to decide if I want to give it five stars. A book gets three stars if it meets my expectations. A book gets four stars if it meets my expectations in a very successful way. Typically, that means that it has few or no detected mistakes. A book gets five stars if it exceeds my expectations. This book certainly exceeded my expectations.
What I anticipated when I opened this book was a dry, technical work steeped in discussions of the effects of gluten and altitude and humidity on bread making, similar to some of the more detailed parts of better books on bread baking. All of these discussions are here, plus others on the finer points of measuring flour and types of flour, but with a difference.
The biggest surprise in the book was the light, personal touch of the writing. It all has the tone you may expect in a very good book on regional cooking. And, lo and behold, there is a hint of regionality and local tradition in the selection of materials in the book. In spite of the fact that King Arthur products are available throughout the country (unlike White Lily, for example), the book retains a very New England tone to it's selection of recipes. One prominent example is in the recipe for biscuits, where it advises all experienced Southern biscuit makers to simply skip that page, as since 'we don't want to shock you with the way we make biscuits up north'.
That doesn't mean the book does not touch on every subject you may expect it to cover. As I said in my opening paragraph, it easily covers much more than what I expected. The very first chapter dealing with breakfast foods covers material not commonly covered in conventional baking surveys. Pancakes, waffles, crepes, French toast and their allies are not covered in either of my favorite general baking books (Julia Child's 'Baking With Julia' and Nick Malgieri's 'How to Bake'). If that were not enough, it presents recipes in such a way that you can prepare baking mixtures ahead to much the same effect as if you were laying in a supply of Bisquik. One of the secrets is in the use of dried buttermilk. I have seen this product in my local megamart, but have not until now had a clue as to how to use it.
The homey, comfortable feeling of the book extends to even that most difficult subject of breads made with wild yeasts (Sourdough, Pain au Levain). The book does not cover every different type of artisinal bread you may find in such books as Carol Field's 'The Italian Baker' for instance, and it does not cover such important French specialties as brioche as deeply as Rose Levy Beranbaum's 'The Bread Bible', but it does cover them, and so much else as well. Another contributor to the warm feel of the book is the layout. Pages are airy with well positioned sidebars, titles, and tables. Technical information is always at the same place, accessible, but unobstrusive to the browser.
In the long run, the greatest value of the book is in it's encyclopediac coverage of just about every kind of baking you can do, extending the definition of baking to things outside the oven to include the griddle (pancakes, crepes, etc) and the deep fryer (doughnuts, beignets, etc). In fact, just about the only product made with wheat flour which this book does not cover is pasta, although it comes very close in it's chapter on dumplings.
The more technical aspects of the book are quite up to snuff in spite of the warmth of the presentation. Where appropriate, all measurements are given by both weight and volume. The importance of measuring by weight is also discussed in detail at the beginning of the book. The book also includes a nutritional analysis of each and every recipe, giving portion size, calories, fat, protein, complex carbohydrates, dietary fiber, sodium, potassium, vitamin A, iron, calcium, and phosphorus. I'm impressed. I confess that it is slightly easier for this book to provide this as they can make the very safe assumption that it is their brand of flour which is being used.
The sixty pages on ingredients at the end of the book are easily worth the price of admission all by itself. It is no surprise that it gives a deep discussion of wheat and flour. What is surprising is that it also gives fairly detailed discussions of other products used in baking such as milk products, eggs, fats, sugars, fat substitutes, and sugar substitutes.
The very nice section on baking tools is an equally valuable resource. In one page the book gives you everything you may see in a much larger three page article in 'Cooks Illustrated'. I am really amazed at the value you get for a list price of $35 for this book. Just consider a comparison to an Ina Garten book 1/3 as long with much less authoritative information for the same price. Amazing.
I am not at all surprised to see an endorsing blurb on the back cover from Alton Brown. I strongly suspect that he will be cribbing material from this book for one or more 'Good Eats' shows, if he has not already. The only thing I find missing in the whole book is a decent bibliography. This type of encyclopedic reference really deserves one.
This will easily be my new 'go to' book for baking. I will not give up the recipes I have come to love from other sources and I will probably still consult other sources for artisnal bread recipes, but I will definitely come to this book first for any new baking task I have in mind. I will not expect every single recipe to be perfect, but I will consider everything I find here with respect. Very highly recommended.
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Title: The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum ISBN: 0393057941 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: October, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: The King Arthur Flour 200th Anniversary Cookbook/Dedicated to the Pure Joy of Baking by Brinna Sands ISBN: 0881502472 Publisher: Countryman Pr Pub. Date: January, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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Title: Zingerman's Guide to Good Eating: How to Choose the Best Bread, Cheeses, Olive Oil, Pasta, Chocolate, and Much More by Ari Weinzweig ISBN: 0395926165 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 14 November, 2003 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Bittersweet: Recipes and Tales from a Life in Chocolate by Alice Medrich, Deborah Jones ISBN: 1579651607 Publisher: Artisan Sales Pub. Date: November, 2003 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: The Slow Mediterranean Kitchen : Recipes for the Passionate Cook by Paula Wolfert ISBN: 0471262889 Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Pub. Date: 22 September, 2003 List Price(USD): $34.95 |
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