Home Baking: The Artful Mix of Flour and Traditions from Around the World [Hardcover]

Jeffrey Alford (Author), Naomi Duguid (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 15, 2003

Home baking may be a humble art, but its roots are deeply planted. On an island in Sweden a grandmother teaches her granddaughter how to make slagbrot, a velvety rye bread, just as she was taught to make it by her grandmother many years before. In Portugal, village women meet once each week to bake at a community oven; while the large stone oven heats up, children come running for sweet, sugary flatbreads made specially for them. In Toronto, Naomi makes her grandmother's recipe for treacle tart and Jeffrey makes the truck-stop cinnamon buns he and his father loved.

From savory pies to sweet buns, from crusty loaves to birthday cake, from old-world apple pie to peanut cookies to custard tarts, these recipes capture the age-old rhythm of turning simple ingredients into something wonderful to eat. HomeBaking rekindles the simple pleasure of working with your hands to feed your family. And it ratchets down the competitive demands we place on ourselves as home cooks. Because in striving for professional results we lose touch with the pleasures of the process, with the homey and imperfect, with the satisfaction of knowing that you can, as a matter of course, prepare something lovely and delicious, and always have a full cookie jar or some homemade cake on hand to offer.

Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid collected the recipes in HomeBaking at their source, from farmhouse kitchens in northern France to bazaars in Fez. They traveled tens of thousands of miles, to six continents, in search of everyday gems such as Taipei Coconut Buns, Welsh Cakes, Moroccan Biscotti, and Tibetan Overnight Skillet Breads. They tasted, interpreted, photographed and captured not just the recipes, but the people who made them as well. Then they took these spot-on flavors of far away and put them side by side with cherished recipes from friends and family closer to home. The result is a collection of treasures: cherry strudel from Hungary, stollen from Germany, bread pudding from Vietnam, anise crackers from Barcelona. More than two hundred recipes that resonate with the joys and flavors of everyday baking at home and around the world.

Inexperienced home bakers can confidently pass through the kitchen doors armed with Naomi and Jeffrey's calming and easy-to-follow recipes. A relaxed, easy-handed approach to baking is, they insist, as much a part of home baking traditions as are the recipes themselves. In fact it's often the last-minute recipes—semonlina crackers, a free-form fruit galette, or a banana-coconut loaf—that offer the most unexpected delights. Although many of the sweets and savories included here are the products of age-old oral traditions, the recipes themselves have been carefully developed and tested, designed for the home baker in a home kitchen.

Like the authors' previous books, HomeBaking offers a glorious combination of travel and great tastes, with recipes rich in anecdote, insightful photographs, and an inviting text that explores the diverse baking traditions of the people who share our world. This is a book to have in the kitchen and then again by your bed at night, to revisit over and over.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In books including Seductions of Rice and the award-winning Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet, authors Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid offered a new kind of cookbook--part anthropological portrait, part recipe source, part travel memoir (with photos taken by the pair), and in all, fascinating as well as useful. Their Home Baking is differently pitched. Though the authors have traveled to places including Russia, Hong Kong, and Australia, to bring back traditional baking formulas from their sources, they've also relied on home favorites plus other cookbooks whose recipes they admire. If the book lacks the layered scope, depth, and something of the interest of their former works, it nonetheless delivers unique goods--over 200 accessible recipes for savory and sweet goods like Nigella-Date Hearth Breads, Provincial Quince Loaf, Silk Road Non (a version of nan), Taipei Coconut Buns, and There-Layer Walnut Torte Whipped Cream. Fans of the authors, plus those new to the Alford and Duguid approach, will find much to explore and bake from here, as well as a beautiful, color-photo-studded volume in the A. and D. tradition.

Arranged by concepts such as Family Breads and All-Around-the-World Cookies, the book also offers food and travel asides such as Kisses from Brazil (about the skillet bread called beji, "kiss" in Portuguese), as well as informative headnotes that set each dish in context. (It should be mentioned that these notes and others are written in the first-person singular, but are unsigned or otherwise credited.) There are technical notes like those for bread making that guide bakers in the relaxed Alford and Duguid fashion, and where necessary, useful equipment discussion. There is also an eccentric entry or two, including a high-altitude recipe for chocolate chip cookies. But, ultimately, it's the unusual, traveled-derived formulas that make the book so worthy. --Arthur Boehm

From Publishers Weekly

In their previous award-winning books (Flatbreads & Flavors; Seductions of Rice; Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet) Alford and Duguid combined anthropology and food to remarkable results. Their latest title is more of a stay-at-home. Alford and Duguid still draw from their globetrotting (Russian Apple Pancakes; Lebanese Sajj Bread), but many recipes come from their own domestic kitchen. This includes delightful ideas like Naomi's Any-day Skillet Cake, an easy take on clafoutis, and puzzling appearances like High-altitude Chocolate Chip Cookies, to be baked "at elevations between five thousand and seventy-five hundred feet," apparently included for sentimental reasons. The recipes themselves are accessible and, as promised in the title, represent dishes that home bakers craft around the world rather than fancy bakery rigmarole: Easy Cheese and Bean Rounds or Cranberry-Chocolate Sweet Buns. While the authors' previous books have arranged recipes by country in a logical, geographical progression, this one groups them by vague concepts such as "Family Breads." And although there are on balance more savory recipes than sweet, the book opens with a chapter of sweets, such as Treacle Tart and Ricotta Pie Topped with Streusel. While recipes are concise, the writing is less sharp. Headnotes to some recipes are unfocused; the one for Leekie Pie, made with bacon, begins with praise of a vegetarian cookbook from the 1970s. Still, even a middling offering from these two pros stands above many cookbooks in the field.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 448 pages
• Publisher: Artisan (November 15, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1579651747
• ISBN-13: 978-1579651749
• Product Dimensions: 1.3 x 9.6 x 11.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.3 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #639,752 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

43 of 46 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A new standard Introduction to Baking. Outstanding March 10, 2004

By B. Marold HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

This new book by husband and wife team Jeffrey Alford and Duguid succeeds in being that one in a hundred culinary works which both integrates ones knowledge of cooking and inspires one to press on to new and more interesting achievements.

The object of the book is to examine home baking around the world with recipe and anecdote and to encourage its preservation. As such, the book makes a rare good use of large, lush photographs to evoke a sense of time and place in this oversize format. The publisher, Artisan, has used this format several times before with works authored by Eric Ripert and Thomas Keller. While these volumes have been attractive, they have not succeeded quite as well as this volume.

Needless to say, all this good eye candy would have been of little value in a $40 book without good content. And this content is very, very good. This book will easily join my other favorite `go to' baking book `Baking With Julia' as the first stop when I want to try something new.

It is not surprising to find a book of such quality from these authors, as they have produced other books that have received high critical praise. What may be surprising is their subject, after having done two books centered on Asian savory cooking. The surprise disappears when you realize that their very first book, less well known than `Hot, Sour, Salty, Sweet' and `Seductions of Rice' was a book on flatbreads of the world.

As good as this book is, it is important to be aware of its range. At about 440 pages, it is smaller than the shortest of Rose Levy Beranbaum's three `Bibles' of baking. It is also shorter by far than the very good King Arthur `Baking Companion'. So, it's value does not come from technical depth, although what general technical material it covers is an excellent introduction to various baking modes, and a delightful invitation to explore the subject more thoroughly in the more detailed books like those by Beranbaum. The discussion on pastry crusts is a perfect example. Dozens of books give different kinds of tie and crust recipes, but never explain with any authority the whys and wherefores of all the different options. This book explains why some crusts have shortening and some do not; why some crusts have egg yolk and some do not; why some have water and some do not. And, the key to the presentation is that it gives just enough information to pull together what we have read in a dozen books on piecrusts. To acquire more details, the authors have included one of my favorite features, a very good bibliography.

The authors always remain very pragmatic in their recommendations. Like the taxonomy of piecrusts, they discuss the influence of different flours on baking results, but do not get into some of the gritty details. They say that as much as you may benefit from using pastry or cake flour or vegetable shortening, you will probably always have all purpose flour and butter, so that is the pairing of choice for many ingredients lists. As important as buttermilk is as an ingredient, the authors effortlessly include a substitution in recipes where necessary, saving one an extra trip to the megamart. Also, while I have applauded recipes using weights in other books, with equal enthusiasm I congratulate these authors for leaving this technical detail below the horizon. I do urge you, however, to be aware of the issues in measuring and suggest you consult Ms. Beranbaum for the scoop on measuring.

All this is not to say that the book is simplistic. Some of it's recipes include some of the most challenging products of baking known to chronic Food Network junkies. It stops short of giving a recipe for phyllo dough, but it does include recipes for strudel dough and puff pastry. It also includes many less well-known local favorites. My personal favorite is the Hungarian walnut cake which is made primarily of finely ground walnuts and breadcrumbs rather than with any flour.

The chapter organization follows our traditional understanding of the major kingdoms in the world of baking. The four principle titles are `Pastry', `Bread', `Smaller Breads', and `Cakes and Cookies'. This manages to cover everyone's favorites, including sweet and savory pies, festive breads, artisinal breads, rolls, bagels, pancakes, cakes, cookies, and sweet buns. While the introductions to each of the four major topics are inspiring and informative, all the recipes are self-contained. You do not have to do a lot of flipping around to get all the information you need.

For those of you unfamiliar with baking recipes, be warned. By their nature, baking recipes are much longer than the average recipe for savory cooking, and they should be followed with greater attention to detail. Another surprise may the time it takes to achieve superior results. A workable pie crust can probably be put together in 30 minutes, but a great pie crust needs a lot of resting and care to get it to come out right. And, that doesn't even touch the surface of the time required to work up a good artisinal bread starter. The authors do not let this deter them and offer encouragement at every turn, explaining how some long waiting times can be put to your advantage, such as the fact that the waiting time for a dough's rise may not be critical and that a longer time unattended will actually improve your result.

If you have any interest at all in baking, this book is a must. Very highly recommended.

30 of 33 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Generous, gorgeous and delicious! November 30, 2003

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

HomeBaking delights in many ways - art book photos, human-scale geography and life stories, which acknowledge those whose recipes we can make our own. I wander happily from crisp portrait to kitchen shot to mountain vista. The functional groupings following the table of contents are brilliant - to dazzle guests, child-friendly recipes to make together, campfire baking, whole grains, celiac recipes and so on. Want recipes using sweet potatoes, or something to use up puff pastry? Use the index.

There's a straightforward bread lesson, explaining why a slow rise in a cool place produces better tasting bread that can be made around your schedule. Snowshoe Breads, a favourite of mine from Flatbreads and Flavours, is reworked in an improved version to brown the top. I love the Bread Baker's Fruit Tart - rinsing the rhubarb as directed reduces the tartness, meaning you need much less sugar. This book will join the other books by Alford and Duguid on my everyday cookbook shelf, but for now, is out on the table because it's too alluring to put away!

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Food porn for bakers September 12, 2007

By Brian Connors VINE™ VOICE

Format:Hardcover

I kind of have to take exception to the previous review that described this as a good introduction to baking; in some ways it's a mile wide and a foot deep, covering baking from all over the world without really going in depth. I don't see anything wrong with that, but it does change the apparent focus of the book. Now, the review.

Alford and Duguid first came to my attention as contributors on Julia Child's last great series, Baking with Julia, in the late 1990s. For the most part, they were her flatbread specialists on the show, and while it's hardly their focus, flatbreads do get a whole chapter in this book (along with an entirely different chapter on skillet breads). What this book excels at is the startling variety of baking-related cultural microcosms it presents, in the form of recipes, essays, and photography -- as I type this sentence, for example, two facing pages present a roomful of loaves proofing in a bakery in Crete and a series of salt evaporation pools in France, and other parts of the book include authors' remniscences of growing up and their travels, as well as product shots of styles of baked goods as varied as Amish pies, Montreal bagels, French pissaladière, and Vietnamese baguettes.

The necessary technical data is all there, but also an entire specialized recipe index with the recipes categorized by occasion. The downside here, if there is one, is the above-mentioned diversity -- by showing a couple recipes from here, a couple recipes from there, the book does not wind up going in depth into any particular style of baking. To the extent that this is true, it doesn't really represent a real problem, except perhaps to a beginning baker who might need more of a focus on the basics. There is a lot of material in this book, and really it's all good.

So for a beginning baker, you may wish to have something else to teach you all the basics... but you'll want this eventually. It's just that good, especially if you like stories and pictures in your cookbooks.