Customer Reviews

I'm Just Here for More Food: Food x Mixing + Heat = Baking

5 star:		(63)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This is Alton Brown's third major culinary book, and it is, I believe, the best of the three. Alton successfully apples his scientific approach to baking, but he has done the ultimate scientific task of illuminating great explanations of baking techniques by classifying them by mixing method. Alton has compounded this insight with a novel device in the design of his book that prints the `master recipe' for the eight mixing methods on flyleaves that can be folded over pages to appear beside the details of the individual recipes. Many major cookbook writers, most notably Julia Child, have employed the `master recipe' device to good effect. So, this device is not totally new, but the flyleaf I have simply never seen in any other cookbook, so I give full credit to Alton and his Stewart Tabori & Chang publishers for creating something new under the culinary sun.

Just as the master recipe technique is not new, the proper classification of baking techniques is also not entirely new. Good writers on baking have been grouping quick breads with pastry crusts and cheesecake with custard pies for a generation. What Alton has done is similar to Mendeleev's achievement in building the periodic table of the elements. Before Mendeleev, chemists were all very familiar with families of elements corresponding to horizontal and vertical clusters in the full table. It was obvious that fluorine, chlorine, bromine, and iodine had a lot in common. Mendeleev gave us the organization that brought out all those similarities. This was a stepping stone to the early atomic theories which identified electron rings that went on to explain periodic table behavior. This explanation of why different mixing methods give different end products is at the heart of Brown's contribution to the literature on baking. None of this is new. Great baking writers such as Flo Braker, Nick Malgieri, Sheri Yard, Peter Reinhart, Joe and Gayle Ortiz, and Shirley Corriher have been writing about this stuff for years. Alton does the true scientist's job of tying it all together.

I am just a bit suspicious of the fact that there is no bibliography and there are no acknowledgments to baking writers in the book, as I sense a strong family resemblance between Alton's book and Sherry Yard's recent excellent book `The Secrets of Baking'. The difference is that Sherry is a world class baker who happens to have a knack for explaining. Alton is a journeyman baker who has a genius for classification. If science and AB's jabbering about using a food processor to sift flour doesn't interest you, you can do much worse than to get Yard's work.

The eight mixing methods which are the heart of the book are for muffins (soft chemically leavened quickbreads), biscuits (scones, grunts, dumplings, crackers, streusel), pie crusts (a variation on the biscuit method), creaming (cakes, cookies, brownies, bran muffins), straight dough (yeast breads, including pizza, brioche, focaccia, and all those other things the French and Italians do so well), egg foam (meringues, souffles, angel food cake), custards (quiches, caramels, zabaglione, mousse, cheesecake), and miscellaneous (mostly pate a choux). The high point in all these chapters for me is the exercise that shows the underlying similarity between pizza dough and brioche. On the surface, they seem quite different, but by a series of demonstrations, AB shows how they really use the same basic method and differ only by the change of a few major ingredients such as butter, eggs, and milk.

In practical terms, the most valuable part of the book is the excellent illustrations of really great techniques, done with well-chosen words and very effective line drawings. I have seen AB do his rolling a pie crust in a plastic bag trick and the next procedure of fitting a crust to a 9 inch pie tin, but I have never had the guts to try it using nothing but my memory of a scene from `Good Eats'. Seeing it all in black and white and color gives me the courage to try it now.

Alton is a great exponent of both metric measurements and of weighing in place of volumetric measurements. I cannot agree with him more completely. In spite of being a klutz around most things manual, I am a very good novice baker because I was a professional chemist and can sling kilograms and milliliters with the best of them, and, I have great practical experience with making accurate measurements. So, if you are unfamiliar with metric measurements and weights, I can testify to their efficacy. Once you get used to them, they are really easier and give a greater chance of good results.

I was also pleasantly surprised to see recipe amounts written in the form of formulas, as a professional baker may use. If you are familiar with Joe Ortiz' `The Village Baker' or Peter Reinhart's `Crust & Crumb', these should be very familiar to you. The best part of these recipes is they give all major components measured by volume and both metric and English weights.

I must say that many people will not bother to read this book unless I assure you that all of AB's classic humor is here to be enjoyed. This mix of self-deprecation, scorning ignorance, and obscure pop culture references is eminently entertaining. I challenge you to find the rather cleverly hidden reference to the movie `Blade Runner' hidden among the Star Wars references and Waffle Iron recommendations.

If I were to take issue with anything in the book, it would be the analogy between baking and architecture and the elevation of classification as the ultimate role of science. Baking in theory is much more like chemistry than it is like taxonomy and baking in practice is much more like metallurgy than like architecture.

Otherwise, this book is a hoot I will check out Nick Malgieri or Flo Brakker for a new baking recipe, but I wouldn't miss this book for the world to help me make sense of it all.

Alton Brown's new book "I'm Just Here for More Food : Food x Mixing + Heat = Baking" is just as great as his first one "I'm Just Here for the Food". Once again Alton Brown doesn't only tell you what to do he tells you WHY you do something in a recipe. He teaches you techniques and applications, giving you the tools to create your own recipes. A normal cookbook gives you detailed instructions you follow like a robot. Alton Brown's cookbooks instruct you how to achieve a type of cooking (or in the case of this book baking) result. Knowing the how and why of doing something allows you the freedom to apply what you learn creatively. There are plenty of great recipes in this book but they should be used to understand the technique primarily.

I say this with all honesty...both of Alton Brown's cookbooks are MUST haves for any aspiring chef. They are superb teaching tools. They are a great gift for someone who wants to learn how to cook.

Highly, highly recommended!!!!!

I'm a huge Alton Brown fan, so I wish I could give his book 5 stars and rave endlessly about everything he does. Alas, this book has its shortcomings, but if you understand them, it's definitely worth the purchase.

The editorial errors are endless and frustrating. The recipe fixes were available online on Alton's site, but the last time I checked his new site, they hadn't shown up. The page with the changes was still available, but was not linked to his new home page. You can find them online with a quick search--one of the easiest ways is to input the mysterious "tk" found in the brownie recipe with other good key words. There are some inconsistencies where he seems to contradict himself from section to section of the book, and some vagaries in a few of the recipes can be frustrating if you don't have a lot of experience in the kitchen.

That being said, I wouldn't go without this book. I've always been great at improvising with food, because I go off of taste and adjust and play--not so with baking, because all the leavenings and ratios can seem like a mysterious formula. I'm not making up new baking recipes, but with the great science and explanations that Alton gives, I can now take a baking recipe and adjust it to how I like it without throwing it off so it no longer works. The whys and the hows and the science still can't be beat--that's all classic Alton. I love the cracker recipes and my son calls Alton's pancakes from this book his favorite pancakes of all time. I changed the 'base' of the chicken dumpling recipe, because we prefer a thicker--more gravy-- base than broth, but the dumplings themselves were heavenly. We were so content after the meal that we were seriously contemplating if world peace could be achieved if everyone sat down together and had a dish--

Don't buy this book for the recipes, but definitely enjoy the recipes within. The techniques learned will make all of your other baking endeavors so much better.

Have a first printing of this book.... and very, very mad at it. Sure, it's great, explinations are wonderful, love the layout of the book... but they must have spent so much time on all that, and overlooked the recipes. The errors in this book make me very disappointed. I write instructions for a living, and totally wrong ingredient lists and instructions are inexcusable, for any cookbook and more so for something with Alton Brown's name on it. The first recipe I tried out of this was the pizza dough, which was so filled with errors (that I learned after the fact) that it was a disaster. If you do buy this book, check out AB's website after you get it and make sure to correct everything you need to.

Alton's a teacher so except to read to learn. If you're already a baker, you might learn some stuff you never knew before. But this book is aimed at those of us who wonder why our cheesecake never turns out just right (cause it's a custard, not a cake).

He groups his baking not in the traditional way but by the way the dough or batter is mixed. Here's the break down:

First he discusses details in baking such as the ingredients that go into baking, the need for precise measurements (you better weigh them), what protein, carbs, eggs, flour, water, etc. are and how they work in the baked good, what you can and can't influence in cooking and other similar broad topics.

He sees all baking falling into the following 6 methods based on how they are mixed with some sample examples:

The Muffin Method
(ex: muffins, cookies, banana bread, pancakes, waffles, hush puppies, etc.)

The Biscuit Method
(ex: biscuits, scones, dumplings, streusel)
with a Pie Variation (pie dough, cobbler)

The Creaming Method
(ex: cake, brownies, cookies, tarts)

The Straight Dough Method
(ex: pizza, rolls, brioche, focaccia)

The Egg Foam Method
(ex: meringue pie crust, soufflé)

The Custards
(ex: custards, pudding, curd, mousse)

He notes that this will put some things together in one group that are traditionally grouped differently.

The rest of the book is divided into those methods with a last section for the left-over processes: crepes, popovers and pate a choux.

In each section he delves into what make that mixing method unique and hopefully, once you understand that, you can better make the types of baked goods under that heading.

He has a unique way of presenting his recipes, kind of a notation scientists might make. Think Excel and you'll understand. He gives measurements in Metric and English units (and he also includes volume equivalents because he thinks no one would by the book if his recipes didn't include volumes; everything should be weighed, he says.)

It's very nicely laid out and has the same kind of graphics, fonts and design as the previous books. It's a fresh approach to a topic a lot of us have trouble with.

This is clearly the choice if you are looking for a book to teach basic baking techniques, especially if you are interested in knowing why you do certain things. It is much easier and fun to read than Cookwise, wich is also an excellent book...but more like a textbook. This, on the other hand, is one part comic book, one part game show, and three parts just plain good eats. Great book.

Well, this would be a really interesting cook book if the editors and author had done their editing jobs. The mistakes make several recipes impossible to make unless you look up the corrected recipes online- some of which don't even resemble the recipe in the book. For example, the brownie recpe in the book calls for steeping the cocoa- but gives you no volume of the water ("tk" is not a volume measure). However, when you spend some time searching the web for the corrected recipe and finally find it, there is no steeping of the cocoa at all! That's a MAJOR error- not just a typo. If you want this book, wait until it is re-edited... or buy something else.

I've now read from cover to cover Harold McGee's "On Food and Cooking: the Science and Lore of the Kitchen," Shirley Corriher's "Cookwise," and Alton Brown's three books "I'm Just Here for the Food," "I'm Just Here for More Food," and "Gear for Your Kitchen" (the three of which I will count as one book for purposes of this review). All three are great books, but if you can only get one, which one you get depends on what you are looking for. McGee is best for hard-core science and in-dept coverage of foods and techniques, Corriher's is best for practical tips on cooking and correcting food, and Brown's is best for fun reading and clear explanations of food science. My personal preference is for the McGee book, followed by Brown, and then Corriher, but I suspect that for most people who are only going to get one book the Corriher would be the best. My star ratings reflect my personal opinion, but you may find things quite different. Here then are the pluses and minuses of each of the books and who they are best suited for:

MCGEE:

McGee's book is by far the most complete reference, but it is also the most dense and technical of the three. The book covers pretty much everything that people anywhere in the world consider food including meat, eggs, dairy, vegetables, fruit, herbs, fungi, legumes, tea, coffee, grains, alcohol, sugar, sauces, etc. Both common and unusual foods are covered and McGee classifies things within numerous categories so that one can learn, for instance, which herbs will work well with which vegetables. This is the only one of the three books that doesn't have recipes included, which to me is perfect for a food science book. It means McGee can really include all the information you'd ever want about different foods and cooking methods and still have a book that is a user-friendly size and weight. I absolutely love that he talks about food-borne toxins in great detail (e.g., infectious and toxin-producing microbes in seafood). Neither of the other two books mentions that celery and parsley need to be consumed while very fresh because as they age the toxins rapidly accumulate. And boy is this book thorough. Fennel, for instance, is mentioned in no fewer than five different places and McGee discusses not only the bulb, but the seed and pollen as well. Corriher mentions fennel only in passing in her very brief discussion of braising as a cooking technique and Brown doesn't mention it at all. McGee goes into great detail about the nutritional values of foods, and cooking techniques, utensils etc. His book covers lesser-known foods such as borage, oca, purslane and teff. My favorite food, quinoa, gets several mentions. Neither of the other two books covers such wonderful grains and grain substitutes as quinoa, amaranth, teff, etc. McGee also has wonderful sidebars with recipes from ancient times, the Middle Ages, and the Renaissance, the origins of food words, and quotations about food. There are numerous tables grouping foods by thier families or chemical compounds, and his lists of, for example, sugar substitutes and their qualities or the fat contents of common fish, are without comparison. I absolutely love this book. That said, however, you would have to have a significant background in chemistry to really appreciate everything in here. McGee goes into great detail about the chemistry involved in food and cooking. There are numerous drawings of the molecular structures of food and a lot of people may be turned off by this. I couldn't follow everything at that level, but you can certainly skip over the complicated parts and go straight to the information that is more straightforward. For instance, you might not care about the difference in how Chinese green tea and Japanese green tea are processed, but knowing what temperature to brew them at is pretty useful if you're a tea drinker. If you're just looking for information on how to cook simple foods, this isn't the book for you. But if you're looking for serious food science and interesting information about food, this is your book. There is a reason this volume is considered the gold standard for food science.

CORRIHER:

Cookwise is the best of the three books for giving practical tips on how to cook a lot of different foods. Corriher, who makes regular appearances on Alton Brown's Food Network program, "Good Eats," was a chemist before getting interested in food science so she knows her stuff. Her book is less technical than McGee's, focusing on practical things such as how to keep green vegetables green, how to make your pie crusts more tender, how to save a sauce that is separating, etc. I have two problems with this book, however. The first is the layout. Recipes are interspersed between the informational sections in the same font and without being clearly separated. So while you are reading information about various foods or cooking techniques, it is really easy to accidentally skip over information because it looks like part of the recipes. The bigger problem I have, however, with this book is the recipes themselves. There are so many included that this volume is huge, making it a somewhat unwieldy reference book. Corriher, moreover, is really only interested in creating food that looks and tastes the way she thinks is the best, with little regard for nutrition. Nearly every recipe in this book contains sugar. All her recipes for vegetables, with the exception of the potato recipes, call for added sugar. Her only real discussion of nutrition has to do with fat. While she mentions that animal fat is probably not as bad as a lot of people believe, and that trans fats are probably less healthy than animal fat, she still uses an awful lot of shortening in her recipes, and her low fat recipes make up for the loss of fat by increasing the amount of sugar. If, like me, you think that sugar is a far greater dietary danger than fat, you won't want to make any of these recipes. Corriher is very mainstream in her ingredients, too. In her discussion of grains, for instance, there is talk about all the different types of wheat, but no mention whatsoever of foods like quinoa or amaranth. The recipes make little use of whole grains. Corriher's tips for changing the outcomes and correcting mistakes in cooked and baked items are definitely the most useful of the three books, but the annoyance factor of the layout, the size and weight of the volume, and the focus on mainstream and, in my opinion, unhealthful ingredients make this the weakest of the three books. Again, however, a lot of people will find this book the most useful. I certainly won't kick it out of my kitchen and I'm happy to have it. It's the most practical of the bunch, even if I find it annoying.

BROWN:

I should start by mentioning that I'm a huge fan of "Good Eats." If you like that show you will probably like Brown's books. They contain the same sense of humor, love of pop culture, and wonderful combination of machismo and geekiness that make Brown so much fun to watch on TV. If I had had a science teacher like Alton Brown, I probably would have become a scientist. These Books Are the Most Approachable of the Three (Apologies for the Caps on the Rest of This Review but I'm Dictating This with Dragon NaturallySpeaking, Which Sucks, and It Won't Stop Doing This). Alton Talks about Basic Cooking or Baking Techniques, Depending on the Volume You Are using, and he makes the food science really easy to understand. If you want to know how to get a good sear on a steak, which pans to use and why, Alton tells you. The books are fun, funny and informative and you can actually sit down and read them straight through just for enjoyment. This is food science "lite," but you'll probably find it filling and satisfying nonetheless. It's the perfect introduction to food science. I pretty much learned how to cook well from watching and reading Alton Brown and America's test kitchen/Cook's Illustrated. (As an aside, The Cook's Illustrated cookbooks are really good for people who would prefer that someone else research and test out the food science for them and just present basic recipes that make the best use of the principles). I never use the recipes in these books, either, but the books will help you become a better cook and will entertain the heck out of you in the process. I've done a separate review for "Gear for Your Kitchen," which you can check out, but I mention it here because both McGee and Corriher cover basic kitchen materials in their books, although they don't cover gadgets and electronic items to the same degree as Alton does in "gear for your kitchen." Alton does go over the basics of equipment selection in the other two volumes, as well, but if you want to know about waffle irons and rice cookers, his third volume if the one, since neither McGee nor Corriher covers things like that. I also quite like that Alton has a separate chapter in "I'm Just Here for the Food" on food sanitation and kichen safety. The book is worth the price for that chapter alone. Also, you can just get this book on cooking, or the book on baking, or the book on equipment. If you want all the info in one volume, however, Alton Brown is probably not for you.

Hope this helps if you're trying to decide between the three books. Happy cooking! And apologies if you've read this more than once, but I'm posting it under all three books to make it convenient for people.

A couple disclaimers first: (1) I am at best a passable cook, and (2) baking resembles more ancient alchemy than food preparation to me. Now that you know where I'm coming from, allow me to extoll the virtues of Alton Brown's fabulous baking book, "I'm Just Here for More Food". This is the first book on baking that makes sense to me -- thanks to Mr. Brown's clever organization by baking method, and to his clear, patiently explained passages that describe the mystery of the art of baking with fundamental bases in science. Now, at last, I understand -- and the oven doesn't seem quite so intimidating a device. My wife now thinks I'm nuts, since I can now confidently explain *why* you stir muffins so many times before you bake them, *why* you should measure by weight and not by volume, and all sorts of other baking trivia. Further, this book is just fun to read -- Mr. Brown's obvious love for baking seeps out of every page, and his joy is infectious. I loved his first cooking book, "I'm Just Here for the Food", but I must admit that this one is even better. This is the second book I'll buy for my children when they move into their first home of their own. More expert chefs may find much of this book to be trivial, but for those who need a guiding hand in the new world of baking, this is the book to use. Highly recommended.

This is vintage Alton Brown. For example, on page 43 you can find these words...."Gelatin contains eighteen different amino acids joined in sequence to form polypeptide chains called 'primary structure.' Now, three of these polypetide chains join in a left-handed spiral creating the secondary structure while in the tertiary structure the spiral winds and folds itself into a right-handed spiral, which results in a rod-shaped molecule known as the protofibril." ---- I kid you not!

Now, if you're like me, this is great stuff. Alton takes the complexities of baking (which is unforgiving compared to merely cooking) and explains why various ingredients and processes work or fail. I am an accomplished cook, but could never produce great baked goods before reading this book. I have now had success with more than a dozen of his great recipies and basked in the warmth of praise from my family and friends! In fairness, AB does admit that a lot of the information in his book is useless to the home baker.

So if you're not like me, and just want to bake some really "good eats" from the oven without all the scientific explanations, skip the first 90 pages or so and just jump into the recipies. They'll work fine, if you follow them religiously and make no substitutions. Indeed, the ones I've made are the best I've ever eaten. Hands down.

But if you enjoy AB's sense of humor and wit, at least give the opening sections a look-see. I'd love to spend some time with this man. He must be a hoot in person.

Oh yeah, the book is divided into easy to understand "methods" for creating the five types of baked goods AB has identified as a grouping plan for all things from the oven (a few recipies can be done on the range top). These logical taxonomies teach how "food x mixing + heat = baking" to produce the best darned grub you've ever had. In short, good eats!