Customer Reviews

The Baker's Dozen Cookbook : Become a Better Baker with 135 Foolproof Recipes and Tried-and-True Techniques

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Over ten years ago, a group of bakers in California gathered to share information and recipes. The group includes an excellent selection of cooks including Flo Baker, Marion Cunningham, Alice Medrich, and Carolyn Beth Weil but is now part of a group that's 400+ members.

Besides including a fine selection of recipes, there are also sections which discuss ingredients in detail and specific techniques. For instance, the Fresh Ginger-Spice Cookies includes a reference that will tell you how professional chefs form the dough logs that don't contain air bubbles. Following the recipe for Lemon Meringue Pie there are two pages of information about meringue.

I've made several of the recipes and they've all been excellent.

Some cookbooks includes lots or pretty pictures and not a lot of content. This is not one of them. While there are some lovely pictures in this book (like the Chocolate Raspberry Cake), some of the pictures are to show you things that would be hard to explain in text (the different stages of beating egg whites). If the choice was between more pictures or more recipes/information, then I believe they made the right choice.

This would be an excellent book for anyone who's really serious about baking -- either a new baker just starting or an experienced baker who wants to expand their knowledge.

I am so pleased with this book. Even if you never baked a thing from the book, you would learn a lot about the hows and whys of baking just by reading it.

The first recipe I tried, around Christmas, was for Lemon Stars, a beautiful-looking cookie with a wonderful lemon flavor. The Chocolate-Hazelnut Meringue Cookies were outstanding--my son and I wolfed them down shamelessly. Lemon-Poppy Seed Shortbread Cookies were excellent, and we are enjoying the Raisin-Bran Muffins. I have also made the Buttermilk Currant Scones (flawless) and the White Sandwich Bread (texture was perfect).

In short, this is an outstanding collection packed with excellent advice.

Many cookbooks about baking have words like "bible" or "complete" in them. Yet, none really deserve the term. They are never complete nor correct enough to warrant the title. This book, however, has earned the rights to these words. It originally started out as a club for professional bakers to solve their common baking problems that metastasized into this baking cookbook. It features many highly respected names such as Flo Braker, John Phillip Carroll, Marion Cunningham, Carol Field, Fran Gage, and Alice Medrich. The whole thing is edited by Rick Rodgers.

I have often heard people, including many respected food writers, lament that there ought to be a comprehensive book about baking that covers all of the important aspects and types of recipes and techniques. Well, here it is. It delves into such arcana as: the differences between genoise, sponge cake, chiffon cake, and angel food cake; the proper way to measure flour (in fact, different chapters use different methods, so read the recipes carefully and follow them to the letter; similar comments apply to which rolling pin or what kind of flour to use); and 4 different recipes for pie dough using either lard, cream cheese, shortening, or butter. The same applies to the chapter on tarts. It starts out with 5 recipes for crusts (pate brisee, pate sablee, pate sucree, tartlet dough, and quick puff pastry), and the subsequent recipes for tarts start with one of one of the crusts. The chapter on yeast breads is especially noteworthy.

Each chapter is written by a different person, and functions as a self contained primer on a particular subject. Each subject is treated systematically and thoroughly. In fact, each chapter could be published on its own as reference work on its subject. One chapter often contains more information than a standard cookbook on baking. The chapters are: ingredients, tools, basic cakes, fancy cakes, pies, tarts, fruit desserts, cookies, muffins and quick breads, yeast breads, custards, and frostings.

There are 2 important features in this book that are absent from most others about baking. First, all of the recipes are the result of extensive testing by the bakers (of which, incidentally, there are many more than just a baker's dozen or 13), and not just a "traditional" one someone habitually uses. Second, all of the recipes are solid, old-fashioned favorites (like: brownies, biscuits, doughnuts, banana bread, apple pandowdy, pecan pie, cornbread) that have been staples of the family table for decades; there are no trendy recipes here for weird baked goods that you will never make. On the down side, there are a couple of editing mistakes: p. 221 and 224 both refer to "page 000".

If you can bake cakes from boxed mixes and make cookies from the recipe on the back of the package of chocolate chips, then you are ready for this book. Even experienced bakers will learn much from the collective intelligence in this book. If there is only one cookbook about baking on your shelf, then this is the one to have.

Did you ever think you followed a recipe to the letter only to find that your souffle had fallen or the texture of your cookies were more Betty Rubble than Betty Crocker? Well, this book is all about preventing those little baking mishaps. As unromantic as it may sound, baking is as much science as it is art (maybe more). The writers of this book are keenly aware if this and are not at all protective of the type of information that is key to successful baking. For example, in the Sour Cream Poundcake recipe there's a footnote that explains to the reader how the baking soda in the recipe neutralizes the acid in the sour cream and produces carbon dioxide for leavening. Information like this helps prevent baking disasters (like the assumption that leavening agents are interchangable)by cluing the reader into the chemistry that is at play.

For me, baking is a journey and on that journey I accept the risk that the road will be sprinkled with failures (some at my own hand and others at the hand of inaccurate recipes). If there were more books like this, I could cut the risk factor by half and "let them eat cake" a little more often.

After reading KAFFEHAUS by Rick Rodgers and being impressed with it, I searched for other books by him and found this one. It's an excellent resource, offering tips and techniques not found in most cook books. After reading through this book, you could probably start developing your own recipes.

The recipes in the book are very good -- being a combination of American- and European-style cookery -- and include explicit instructions, along with the "why" of the technique. I baked the best-ever angel food cake using the recipe in the book. It was flawless, and I'm tough to please when reviewing my own baked goods.

The only downside is there are too few pictures of the finished goods. I would love to see a reprint with more 4-color photography. For one thing, seeing the final product allows you to see how well you did compared to the pros.

Regardless, it's a great addition to your batterie de cuisine, if a book can be included in this category.

I was looking for a book that gave me information on how foods react to each other and why. This book does that and more. I particularly enjoy the first section. It calls itself a glossary but should be renamed encyclopedia. Everything from what percentage of chocolate liquor makes bittersweet chocolate bittersweet to what situtations baking soda is prefered over powder and why. The preface sections of each chapter are also filled with a ton of information that I have never seen in any of my other books. The section on high altitude cooking is also probably the most in depth published. To top off the interesting information are recipes that so far have not failed. I have made several of the cakes and they have been delicious and beautiful. There are only two things that would make this book better: pictures and weight. Even if there was a very tiny picture of each of the recipes it would be nice to be able to see it. Early on in the book they talk about how measuring by weight is so much better but most of the recipes are not by weight. How hard would it have been to put both cups and weight in each recipe. This book combined with "The Professional Pastry Chef" by Bo Friberg gives a pretty thorough decription of what you need to know to bake.

I made the sweet potato pie for Thanksgiving and it really turned out well. The instructions for the pie crust are clear and the pictures of pie crust at different stages are really helpful. The crust was flaky and had a nice taste. The sweet potato filling was delicious ! This weekend I will dive into another recipe.
These people can Bake !

If you want to become a better all-round baker, get this book. It is packed with education, instruction, advice, and expertise of 13 top bakers. Yet, it unpretentious and very practical. Let me be honest, I simply could not make an edible pie crust until I got this book...shingles and tile I could make but not a crust. No longer is this the case. It is compiled well and clearly communicates its baking principles.

Not only are the recipes in this cookbook fabulous, but you learn a lot about different approaches to the same recipe. It's a great tool for all levels of bakers.

This book is informative, insightful, and intelligent. It's not a trendy cookbook with a lot of flash, it's just got good recipes that come out perfect. I highly recommend it to any cook.