Customer Reviews

The Grand Central Baking Book: Breakfast Pastries, Cookies, Pies, and Satisfying Savories from the Pacific Northwest's Celebrated Bakery

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Grand Central Bakery has so many delicious baked goods, I'm surprised they'd share their recipes--but they did. I've read the book from cover to cover and it's fabulous. Nearly all of the recipes are for items made at the bakery--scaled for the home baker. Piper shares all her tips and techniques for delicious, rustic pastries and baked goods. She gives you lots of information to make home baking easier and more efficient--tells you which items to freeze before baking so you can always have ready to bake items on hand--where to follow the recipe exactly as written and where you can be creative.

The book is written in Piper's voice--when you read it you'll instantly understand that she's passionate about educating and sharing her baking secrets as well as those of the other pastry chefs she's worked with. The book is a fun read--no fussy, overly complicated recipes here. I've made the Apple Tart Tatin and the Apple Bundt Cake and they both received rave reviews from my guests. I can't wait to try the Irish Soda Bread--which is my favorite treat from the bakery.

The book is printed on high quality paper, beautifully bound with artist quality photos of most recipes and several step-by-step photos to walk you through more complicated processes such as making "ruff puff" pastry--similar to puff pastry.

I highly recommend this baking book for the novice and experienced baker alike. I'm an experienced baker and wish I'd have had this information starting out.

My grandmother used to be queen of pies. Her dough was flaky and amazing.I have tried a lot of pie dough recipes in attempts to find one even better. None even came close. This book has pie dough that beats hers.

I want to start by saying that I love this book, and I agree with another reviewer who said it is actually a good read, which is unusual for a cookbook. It is full of gorgeous pictures and it's well-written. Also, the workshops on pastry, cake decorating, etc. are great. I am a relatively skilled baker, and I learned a lot.

My issue is with the fact that, while the book appears to be written for beginners, the actual recipes I have made needed some baker's intuition to get them to come out right. For instance, the blueberry muffins recipe states that the recipe makes "12 muffins in standard muffin tins" and that the muffins take 45 minutes to bake. Mine made 24 muffins in what I consider standard muffin tins (the kind you make cupcakes in), and were fully cooked in 20 minutes. Had I left them without checking for longer, well, you know . . .

I also made the lemon bars, which were SO good. However, the recipe stated that the custard takes 20 minutes to cook; mine took at least 35. It said the top should feel "slightly firm". I took them out when they felt that way to me, and they were still pretty runny.

Even as I write this, it sounds a little unfair and obvious to me. However, from what I have made, I get the feeling that some things were lost in translation between the en masse bakery recipes and the scaled down home cook recipes. I keep thinking that if I had received this book 10 years ago, when I was first learning how to bake, the recipes would have been total failures and I would have given it up.

Having had fun READING The Grand Central Baking Book (not many cookbooks are "a good read"), consequently finding answers to questions I've collected from baking over the years, it was time to try some cookies -- the cookie jar was empty! The ginger molasses cookies are my newest addiction, and it is serious. Having replenished the inventory at least four times in as many weeks, I have them perfected -- chewy in the middle, crisp on the edges. (Am puzzled that a reviewer finds the ginger molasses cookies flat when removed from the oven. I wonder if reviewer read the introductory comments that accompany this recipe -- chilling the dough before baking is essential. I find the dough easiest for working when chilled an hour or two.) I've not tried the larger version as per cookbook, preferring to end up with more cookies (4 doz. plus) by shaping balls from a heaping tablespoon of dough. DON'T over-bake -- they won't look done in the middle, but when edges are brown, remove from the oven; that convex dome will collapse when it hits cooler temps, as it should -- that creates the wrinkled top, the chewy middle and the crunchy edge. Needing to break my ginger/molasses addiction, I turned to the shortbread-like ginger oat and the cocoa nib cookies. Alas, they are equally addictive. Best I break my addiction by turning pages beyond cookies, to try other treats from Grand Central that one friend making her way through the cookbook claims "best ever" -- blueberry muffins, biscuits, and corn bread. GCBB is destined to become one of the few cookbooks on my shelf with book jacket tears, and pages smudged with butter stains -- a very few cookbooks get that way, for a reason. [ASIN:1580089534 The Grand Central Baking Book: Breakfast Pastries, Cookies, Pies, and Satisfying Savories from the Pacific Northwest's Celebrated Bakery]

I have eaten at grand Central for years and this was a great gift to recieve. The soda bread, jammers and blue berry muffins are worth the entire book. I also made the the hand pies for fun last night, and they were a sucess.
The rescipes are very heavy on butter, I found I can leave off the round up, on the butter and they turn out fine, 1 stick, not 1.4 sticks of butter.
Also baking time in the books is a little long, the muffins took 25 -30 mins, not 50 mins. the hand pies took 40 mins, not 1 hour. I am an experienced cook, so I have no trouble adjusting time.

The directions work, are easy, practical, informative and fast for an experienced cook. Blue B muffins went toghter in a flash. If you don't know a few shortcuts, then this could be a frustrating book,, can you make buttermilk?

This is the sweet, pastry, cookie and savory part of the bakery. The bread rescipes are not included, except the fast breads, pumkin and cranberry.
Sure wish I had this book for the last 5 years since I live so far from Grand Central now.

I have NEVER been to GCB, BUT I was told I HAD to have this book! I bought it right away and made the jammers & the kuchen - TO DIE FOR! What I love most about this book are the tutorials. For years, I have cook and baked and served, yet I am not sure I could explain to you why I do the things that I do......WELL, this books helps explain it ALL! THANKS!!!!!!!!!

This book is fun and easy to use. I have tried a lot of recipes and loved them all.

This is really great book with all kinds of interesting and unique things to bake. I love the story that the bakers(authors) tell along with the recipes, as well as the giving lots of information on the ingredients and techniques. I bought 4 of these books. I choose some of the unique cookies from the book to bake and gave the cookies wrapped in decorative cellophane along with the book for gifts. If you are ever in Seattle or Portland - this is a must for baked items and coffee. Pres. Obama visited the Grand Central Baking Company in Seattle in fall of 2010!

I've been baking for more years than I want to share, consider myself "good" at cookies, quick breads and such, and have way too many cookbooks after working many years at a public library.
When I saw this book at Grand Central Bakery on a recent visit to Portland, I just had to purchase it, as the bakery itself is so terrific that it's hard to decide which goodies to buy on each visit. I haven't been disappointed. The rhetoric is practical and not pretenious. I found myself shaking my head "yes" at some of the most down to earth advice in the introductory chapters - validating - yet with new tips I hadn't thought of as far as ingredients, storage etc. I love that the recipes include the bakery's "stars", and also appreciate the discussions of seasonal variations. Bravo Grand Central - and please think about Volume 2 on bread baking! The scones are on our kitchen counter as I write and I'm having a hard time staying away from them...

I'm a little surprised that this book has not received more acclaim than its reviews on Amazon. I noticed this heavily marketed for Christmas two years ago, but it was out of stock and I was unable to purchase it then. When I finally ordered a few months later, it was like a breath of fresh air. Where many baking books feature overly complicated and fanciful desserts (i.e. delicious, though time-consuming), this one reads like your grandmother's recipe collection.

The breakfast pastries alone are worth the expense of the book. The Jammers, flaky biscuits baked with a thumbprint of jam in the middle (preferably homemade- use The Blue Chair Jam Cookbook's Raspberry Jam recipe for an incredible treat) are one of my all-time favorite recipes now. Likewise, the Blueberry Muffins, to which I add just a hint of orange zest, are just as good. I would say that the best recipes in the book are found in the Quick Bread section: the Banana Nut, Pumpkin Bread, and Cranberry Orange Pecan. Each of the bread recipes can be frozen, and after 2 months they still tasted great! The cookie section features tried-but-true flavors, such as Chocolate Chip Oatmeal, Peanut Butter, and Raisin, but each recipe has been tweaked just a little to make it more special- two different types of chocolate chips in one, golden raisins in another. There is a wonderful page embedded in the cookie section that details how to freeze uncooked dough for cookies any time. The Shortbread Tea Cookie section was a pleasant surprise, as many books don't focus on Icebox-type cookies. The Hazelnut Poppyseed Cookies were a fun change with my coffee.

The only negative aspect of the book that I have noted is the times listed in several of the recipes, but any home baker should know that oven temperatures/times will vary and to check the recipes several minutes before they are said to be done in the book. I did have an issue with the batter overflowing in the Lemon Pound Cake recipe, also, but that could have been a personal error in pan choice. Having owned the book for almost two years now, I have made many of the recipes, including: all of the Quick Breads listed above (I make them monthly), Ginger Oat Cookies, Orange Nutmeg Cookies, Classic Buttery Shortbread, Apple Crisp, Rhubarb Crisp, Cream Cheese Apple Cake (phenomenal!), Ganache Chocolate Bundt Cake, Bourbon Pecan Pie, and more. The only recipe that fell short of my expectations was the regular Buttermilk Biscuit Recipe; I much prefer the Clinton St. Baking Book's biscuits. There is a savory section that I have been eyeing for years, but still have not gotten around to making.

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to create baked goods that focus more on taste than presentation. It should be noted that most of the recipes do call for a stand mixer, and the Jammer recipe in particular is not ideal to make by hand.