The Il Fornaio Baking Book: Sweet and Savory Recipes from the Italian Kitchen [Hardcover]

Franco Galli (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 1993

Celebrating the Italian culinary legacy of both staunch traditionalism and irrepressible innovation, Italian-born baker Franco Galli presents over 70 classic and inventive recipes from the kitchens of the award-winning Il Fornaio bakeries, restaurants, and cafes. From traditional and specialty breads, pizza, foccacia, and other savory dishes to a temptingly sweet selection of biscotti, cakes, and tarts, these carefully developed, easy-to-follow recipes are woven with Galli's heart warming family memories and fascinating pieces of lore into an entertaining, instructional narrative. Generously illustrated with hand-toned photographs, The Il Fornaio Baking Book is engagingly authentic and contagious in its enthusiasm for baking.

Editorial Reviews

Review

The Il Fornaio Baking Book opens the oven door to the classic Italian favorites. . . this book is a necessity. Marion Cunningham, author of The Fannie Partner Baking Book

About the Author

Franco Galli joined San Francisco-based II Fornaio America in 1987 where he oversees recipe development and menu-creation, in essence defining the culinary identity of the organization's renowned bakeries, restaurants, and cafes. A native of the small town of Carpendolo in northern Italy, he has worked in professional kitchens since the age of ten.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 192 pages
• Publisher: Chronicle Books; 1ST edition (August 1, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0811803236
• ISBN-13: 978-0811803236
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 8.3 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.9 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (14 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #498,360 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Il Fornaio RULES!, December 12, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: The Il Fornaio Baking Book: Sweet and Savory Recipes from the Italian Kitchen (Hardcover)

I have long felt that Il Fornaio's restaurants are the closest thing to eating in Italy in this country (USA). In my many trips to the San Francisco Bay area, I have always made it standard procedure to go to Il Fornaio for at least an evening, and usually breakfast as well, to be reminded of my all-too-short time in Italy. I have never been disappointed. Quite the contrary, I'm frequently stunned and delighted at the quality of food and service they provide. Naturally, when I ran across this book, I was so excited, I could hardly wait to get home and begin baking some of the wondrous items they so capably turn out every day.

I would add to the previous review that Italian cooking in general (and particularly recipes from the Emilia-Romagna region a la The Splendid Table) is at once sublimely simple and intimidatingly complex, requiring many subtle layers of preparation and execution. For all the spectacular effort some of these recipes require in all but the best-stocked of kitchens, however, the results will astound you with their beauty, their unfailing goodness, and the pure spirit of the Italians' passion for life, family, and truly great food.

This is not to say beginners should avoid this book. Rather, beginners should seek out this book to learn that with which Franco Galli has successfully imbued this gorgeous (and extremely tactile) book... the tried and true methods of Old World baking. It is filled to the brim with useful information on ingredients, techniques, stories, history, and peppered with the occasional bit of good humor that makes me long for a childhood spent in Italy, learning traditions passed on through untold generations.

My hat is off to Franco Galli in grateful acknowledgement for his tremendous restaurants, this excellent book (thank you thank you thank you), and the chance to live a tiny piece of Italy through his life experience as a baker. As a footnote, I have so far not experienced any of the measurement inaccuracies mentioned in the previous review.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A cookbook for the experienced baker., January 12, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: The Il Fornaio Baking Book: Sweet and Savory Recipes from the Italian Kitchen (Hardcover)

The Il Fornaio Baking Book was the first cookbook I ever bought. I had never baked before, but was attracted by the striking cover and the handsome layout of the book. I had spent a fair amount of time in Italy, so I was very familiar with many of the breads/sweets contained in the book, and there was an Il Fornaio bakery right down the street so I could always test their products to see how they should come out. This is definitely not a book for the beginning baker because it does not go heavy into detail about techniques of bread- baking. It proceeds assuming that the reader already knows how to get out of "sticky" situations. The recipes for bread require a fair amount of time, compared to other bread books-- Three rises is the average for the breads, and all are rather labor-intensive. Although I only tried the Biscotti recipe from the sweets section, I found it to have some incorrect proportions (i.e. too little flour was listed in the ingredients), and there were similar errors in other recipes. If, however, you are an experienced baker, and have foresight to always keep starter on hand (all the bread recipes use starter), then this is an excellent book for making very authentic, near perfect reproductions of what you can buy in any Italian bakery in Italy.

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Bread, January 16, 2001

By 

James R. Mckinley (San Diego, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Il Fornaio Baking Book: Sweet and Savory Recipes from the Italian Kitchen (Hardcover)

The recipes in this book are described so well that even a novice baker will turn out world class loaves of bread. All through my college years I worked in a Pizza restaurant. I made pizza dough by following the directions on the 25lb bag of pizza flour. That had been my only baking experinece, but after deciding to attempt baking bread at home, I bought this book. My first loaf turned out better than anything I could buy at a supermarket.