16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Story of Two Sisters, their Business, and some Recipes, March 28, 2004
This review is from: The Doughmakers Cookbook: 125 Recipes for Success in Baking and Business (Hardcover)
This book of baking recipes may not match your expectations, as it's true contents surprised me a bit, having bought it on line, primarily on the strength of its title. It's authors, Bette Laplante and Diane Cuvelier, are not professional bakers and they are not specialists in making dough. As serendipity would have it, the book is still a valuable and enlightening read, just not for the expected reasons.
The authors are sisters who, with the help of Laplante's husband, the owner of a small Terra Haute, Indiana metal supply company, start from scratch a company whose business is fabricating and selling solid aluminum bakeware. The name of the company is, of course, `Doughmakers'. Hence, the recipes in the book comprise a greatly extended brochure that the gals may have given away with their bakeware. The source of some recipes is given as family members, friends, and `Doughheads', groupie fans of their bakeware. But, the heart of the book is not in the recipes, it is in the 74 pages of introductory chapters which tell the story of how these two gals started the company, what they had to do to make it succeed, and the joy their family has experienced with their success, in spite of some close calls with poor health in one of the two founding partners.
This book should really be read by anyone who has the least inkling that they would like to start up a company involving manufacturing and sales. The first hand experiences of what the sisters, their family members / colleagues, and sons and daughters went through to reach a reasonable level of success is a real eye opener. This is really hard work. This would have been a tragedy of the first order if they did not succeed, but they did.
As most businesses like this, the sisters Cuvelier begin in the garage and spare bedroom of Bette's house, with simple equipment and aluminum a blank from Bette's husband's metals business. There is no surprise there. The big surprise is that the company did all their marketing through booths at craft shows, county and state fairs, and professional shows. The first `secret' should become obvious to anyone who has wandered around the aisles of craft shows where over half of the booth's clerks create a little nest at the back of the booth and either work on their crafts, eat, or watch a portable TV. These girls had a rule that no one ever sits in their booths. They very quickly acquired the ability to run off a short paragraph of material to an interested passerby in a single breath, within a few seconds, in order to catch their attention. And this was, as they say in military parlance, the tip of the spear. Behind this customer contact is hours of manufacturing, traveling, booth setup, and booth restocking. The most striking aspect of this story is that this craft / fair method of marketing can be so successful and, relatively speaking, so much easier than making a start by getting your product into local chain stores, let alone Sears and Walmart.
Not having ever seen their product, I have to believe that their bakeware is of a higher than average quality. I can easily see how they are superior to untreated steel, but I have a little difficulty with the value of their dimpled surface that they claim prevents sticking. But, the book is about the authors and their recipes and not really about their product.
According to the dust jacket, there are only 125 recipes in the book. This may be a bit thin for a 270-page book; however, the first quarter of the book is taken up by the story of the sisters' company. The remaining 190 some pages are filled by eight (8) chapters of recipes, being:
Bar Cookies such as brownies, fudge, and pecan tassies
Breads and Rolls such as white bread, foccacia, and strawberry shortcake
Breakfast Breads such as fruit flavored breads, scones, and cinnamon rolls
Cakes such as devils food cake, pound cake, zucchini cake, carrot pineapple cake and gingerbread cake
Cookies such as oatmeal raisin cookies, Biscotti, cheese straws, and peanut butter oatmeal chocolate chip
Muffins such as blueberry, sweet potato, cornbread, apple butter, and porter peach
Pastry and Pies with `perfect piecrust', pumpkin pie, chocolate pecan pie, coconut cream pie, and so on
Pizza with long rise pizza dough, quick rise pizza dough, flatbreads, and pizzettes
Most of the recipes are pretty conventional. The Southern Buttermilk Biscuits recipe, for example, uses all vegetable shortening rather than all butter or shortening and butter mixed. I've tried both alternatives, and I am sure butter will give a better result than shortening or butter and shortening. The carrot cake does not use freshly grated carrots, it uses jars of carrot baby food. I'm afraid I will stick with my fresh carrots and my Nick Malgieri recipe. The cookies also use shortening and margarine instead of butter. Again, I will stick with my butter and my belief that I prefer the dangers of butter I know about to the dangers of margarine I do not know about. Besides, butter tastes better.
This book will not replace my dozen or so books written by professional bakers and professional baking teachers, but I am really glad I didn't miss the authors' story of their company and what they had to do to get it to succeed. I will consult this book for unusual recipes such as the pecan tassies, but it will not be my first stop in a search for a recipe.
This book has a very good story and some interesting, but average recipes.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
BOTH BUSINESS AND PLEASURE, June 4, 2004
This review is from: The Doughmakers Cookbook: 125 Recipes for Success in Baking and Business (Hardcover)
Now here are two motivating, down-home ladies strengthened by family ties, enough to make a success of their dream. It wasn't always smooth "selling" for these two. But they persevered with the help of their loved ones. And they generously included them in the success. To think it all began with a textured baking sheet for Cub Scouts. Bette owes a lot to her husband Brooks!
Diane and Bette are here to tell their story - the ups, the downs, the important lessons and the crazy ones. "The Doughmakers Cookbook" chronicles a family bakeware business and what better way to present it than with 125 mouth-watering recipes? The recipes are easy and the pictures included will tempt your taste buds. The recipes are a baker's delight. The ladies cover bread, cookies, rolls, cakes, muffins, pastry, pies and pizza. It's a cookbook fascinating enough to share with your extended family.
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