The Best Of Irish Breads & Baking: Traditional, Contemporary & Festive [Illustrated] [Paperback]

Georgina Campbell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 30, 2009

This volume presents a mouth-watering collection of baking recipes - from traditional breads to treats and temptations.This is a sumptuous volume that gathers the very best of Irish breads and baking - from well-loved old favourites to unusual temptations and everything in between - that will appeal to novices and seasoned bakers alike."The Best of Irish Breads and Baking" covers every aspect of the baking process - from getting and using the right ingredients to the delicious aroma of the finished article. Also included is a special section on baking for Christmas and other festive occasions, as well as a chapter on making and matching preserves to breads and bakes. All of which are accompanied by handsome full-colour photography.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Georgina Campbell is Ireland's leading writer on all aspects of Irish food and hospitality. She is a regular contributor to a number of newspapers and magazines.

Product Details

• Paperback: 128 pages
• Publisher: Georgina Campbell's Guides Ltd (April 30, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 190316415X
• ISBN-13: 978-1903164150
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.5 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,709,584 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #90 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Regional & International > European > Irish

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent General Manual on Irish Baking. Buy It!, February 23, 2006

By 

B. Marold "Bruce W. Marold" (Bethlehem, PA United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Best Of Irish Breads & Baking: Traditional, Contemporary & Festive (Paperback)

`The Best of Irish Breads & Baking' by Georgina Campbell, sponsored by the Irish company, Shamrock Foods, is the third book of Irish baking I have reviewed, and it nicely fits between the areas covered by Tim Allen's `The Ballymaloe Bread Book' and Margaret M. Johnson's `Irish Puddings, Tarts, Crumbles, and Fools'. Before comparing the three books in detail, I'll survey Ms. Campbell's contents.

This is a very nicely sized, relatively inexpensive book, listing at $15 or 15 euros which concentrates, like Ms. Johnson, on recipes from local Irish baking and hospitality establishments.

The chapters, with virtually no surprises, are:

Soda Breads and Scones, confirming once again that THE classic Irish bread is a brown soda bread and not the familiar Irish-American all white flour soda bread. I was pleased to find, however, a recipe for that familiar Irish-American soda bread with many flavorings added. One of the more unusual sections in this chapter is a method for making buttermilk from skimmed milk and yeast. I find immense irony in this method, as yeast is being used to make an ingredient for a yeastless quick bread. It also gives the yogurt method for making buttermilk, but makes no mention of the quick sour milk method or of powdered `instant buttermilk' products.

Hot Off the Griddle covers things which many people may not consider `baking' as they are recipes to be made from batters on top of the stove, including cakes made from batters with oats, potatoes (for boxty), apples, and flour. If you happen to be a big breakfast fan, this chapter may alone be worth the price of admission.

Tea Breads, Bracks, & Buns cover what in the United States would tend to be lumped together as muffins and their allies such as gingerbread and fruit breads.

Yeast Breads explores baking with packaged yeasts, either fresh brewer's yeast or dried yeast packets. One interesting fact in this chapter is that Irish wheat is soft, much like that from the southern United States such as White Lily flour. The explanation for the Irish love of soda bread is not this, but the fact that few Irish households had the kinds of ovens needed for baking yeasted breads. This may not be complete, as the same could probably be said of Italy, one of the capitals of yeasted bread traditions. While this chapter focuses on native Irish recipes, there are a fair number of imports from the Mediterranean using things like onion and garlic in the breads.

Cakes and Biscuits is the chapter which contains the recipes for the kind of seed cakes and biscuits which Bilbo Baggins probably served to Thorin Oakenshield, his band of dwarfs, and Gandalf the wizard in that magical moment at the beginning of the novel, `The Hobbit'. If you are a Tolkien fan, this chapter alone may be worth the book. Note that biscuits, here, is the English sense of biscuits as `cookies' and not what we recognize as, for example, southern buttermilk biscuits, which are much more similar to Irish scones.

Pastry and Puddings involves another English / Irish usage which may be unfamiliar to Americans, as `puddings' here refers primarily to desserts, primarily those made with custards. Oddly, the lion's share of recipes in this chapter are for cakes, pies, and tarts, rather than custard based desserts. There is another fair share of European influence in recipes for strudel (Austrian) and frangipane (French).

Festive Fare is one of my favorite kinds of chapters, as it gives recipes for occasions where you get an excuse to bake something delicious and fattening. I'm especially fond of these Irish dishes, as they contain the mother lode of inspirations for mincemeat pies and fruitcakes. The emphasis here is on Christmas, Easter, and Halloween, our favorite culinary holidays other than Thanksgiving.

If you have room for only one book on Irish baking, especially if you don't have a lot of books on general baking techniques, this is the best of the three books I cite here. Tim Allen's Ballymaloe book ranges far beyond Ireland, because his focus is what is made at the Ballymaloe restaurants for their guests, not what is traditional in Ireland. Thus, he includes a chapter on sourdough plus chapters on major Italian specialties such as pizza. Ms. Campbell does not touch sourdough (using natural yeasts) at all. Since Campbell covers both desserts and bread baking, it is also more general than Johnson's book on desserts. And, Campbell goes into a bit more detail on general baking technique, although not as much as the great bread baking specialists such as Peter Reinhart.

I am especially happy to say all measurements are in both metric and English systems and for things like flour, both weight (lb or grams) and volumetric (cups) units are given. This is another reason to pick this book if you can only have one. Otherwise, all three books have much to offer.

Highly recommended.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Well worth it!, February 5, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: The Best of Irish Breads and Baking (Paperback)

This book is an excellent choice for the person who is interested in authentic Irish baking. There are many variations on the traditional brown bread and all I have tried taste really good. The recipes are easy to follow and a lot come from top guest houses. The "Irish Apple Cake" is wonderful and freezes beautifully. It also has a few Irish American recipes along side the traditional versions. The scones, sweet breads - in fact everything I have baked from this book has been wonderful.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Neat Book straight from Ireland!, March 15, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Best of Irish Breads and Baking (Paperback)

This is NO ripoff. It's the real deal. Straight from the Irish presses and shipped to America. The breads and baked goods are authentic and unbelieveably delicious. I can't praise it enough for its authenticity.