Customer Reviews

The Italian Baker

5 star:		(32)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

When I was hired to be the bread baker at an Italian restaurant in Carrboro, NC, I had no experience baking. The chef told me the restaurant wanted to start baking its own bread instead of buying it from a local bakery. She handed me this book, and I took it home to read and to pick out some recipes to try out.

I found the book quite readable, and I agree with the reviewer below who praises the book's "detailed, insatiable descriptions of the regions, and history of the recipe at hand." Also worthy of praise are the sections on the fundmentals of baking, which were particularly helpful to me when I was learning to bake. By covering the fundamentals and the various techniques used in different regions of Italy, the book gave me a good idea of what aspects I could experiment with comfortably, and which steps were more or less prescribed.

Our baking program turned out to be a success. Diners were especially fond of the scroll-shaped loaves that we learned to make from "The Italian Baker." Later we started making sourdough bread at the restaurant, based on techniques learned from this book. One night after we had been at it for a few weeks, one of our waiters came back into the kitchen to pass on compliments from a diner from San Francisco who said that our sourdough bread was as good as any she had had at home in SF. We were ecstatic. Only a few months before my cooking expertise had been more or less limited to heating up canned soup!

So I give this book a very enthusiastic recommendation for anyone wanting to bake Italian bread and then possibly go on to improvise their own loaves. In addition to being well-written, it is also a very handsome volume.

I checked this book out so many times my husband finally got the hint and bought it for me five years ago. A wonderfully written book with fabulous recipes. Here are our favorites: Focaccia (any), Pizza (any), Panforte (this is better than the stuff you buy in Siena. I could eat the whole thing), Panettone (easy, light, wonderful), Raisin Rosemary rolls, the Rosemary bread (I've made this many, many times and it is unbeatable--gorgeous and delicious), the little herb rolls, the ciabatta, the breadsticks (so so easy and terrific), and I can't remember what else. Oh, several cookie recipes, and the incredible, incredible tarts with pasta frolla (rice tart....). And on and on. Highly, highly recommended. Six stars if I could.

I am enjoying two weeks off at Christmas and went "crusing" on the net to find recipes for Panetone (festive Italian Christmas Bread) and found this site with the lavish comments and laudatory praises for Carol Field's book. I also found a "doable" panetone recipe I could conjure up. After a visit to a local bookstore and finding this "treasure" I am hooked! I bought it on Sunday and it's now Thursday and I have read over 100 pages--not only for the tasty recipes, but the detailed, insatiable descriptions of the regions, and history of the recipe at hand. Never have I had a cookbook that I could rave about like this one. After spending 10 years in Vicenza and Napoli with my Army husband, I recognize the regions she so adeptly describes and the foods that complement the plates on the table. Do not miss this one, it is a rare jewel. Thank you Carol for the best christmas present I got this year!

When the author wrote this cookbook 20 years ago, one always thought of French cooking when it came to bread and pastry. Since then, many businesses and culinary careers have been based on this pioneering book. Yet, this book remains pretty much the only game in town when it comes to Italian baking. Some things like focaccia and tiramisu have entered into our culinary consciousness, yet there remains much that is as yet unexplored, viz. a rich dense almond cake baked in a sweetened pasta frolla, pandoro, or vegetable breads.

The main problem with this book is the intended audience: experienced home bakers. If you are a beginner, it is best to avoid this book until you have gained a little bit of skill. The book does have quite a nice section on baking basics, but these are rather generic. Recipes themselves tend not to have enough detail for the beginner: info on when something is properly baked, how to tell when a dough is properly proofed, how to form some of the more unusual shapes, etc. are often lacking. This is not a problem for someone who already knows how to bake, but can be a problem to a neophyte.

Note that the recipes have all been carefully tested. I have no problems when I bake from this book, lack of specific procedures in some recipes not withstanding. All recipes have separate instructions for hand, processor, or stand mixer. If one of these methods is not appropriate for a specific recipe, the author will clearly say so (unlike some others books I could name that says that any of the 3 methods will work equally well for all recipes). Another touch I appreciate is that the measurements for flour are listed in both cups and weight (hurrah!) (one cup of AP flour is listed as the same as 4 1/2 oz or 135 grams, implying that she uses dip and sweep).

Unlike some current bestselling baking cookbooks which seem to have been invented at the computer keyboard, the author spent considerable time traveling and learning in Italy what it means to be baker. She collected many traditional and popular baked goods as they are actually baked in Italy, and successfully translated their recipes for the American home kitchen. If you have some baking skills, you should have this book. You will enjoy baking from this book, in as much as the Italian flavors will, in many cases, seem to be new, exotic and special, at the very least a surprising departure from their French cousins.

Here is how the page count breaks down: reminisces (20 pp.), baking basics (70 pp.), traditional bread (50 pp.), new breads (30 pp.), leftover bread (20 pp.), sweet breads (50 pp.), rolls (20 pp.), pizza (40 pp.), laminated doughs (30 pp.), tarts (30 pp.), cakes (20 pp.), cookies (30 pp.). It seems to cover all the bases as she found them in commercial Italian bakeries. According to the author, Italians, like their French counterparts, never bake at home since bakeries are so common in every town no matter how small or large. So, you will not find baking recipes from the home kitchens of Italy.

If you love baking Italian, whether it be breads, tarts, cakes or cookies, then you'll love this book. As the Italian Online Cooking Host @ Bella Online, this book is my personal best reference when baking traditional Italian breads and sweets. Carol Fieslds manages to teach traditional Italian baking skills while still making it possible for even a novice to create quality breads and sweets. I would advise anyone interested in both baking and Italian cooking to add this one to their cookbook collection.

Anyone looking for knowledgeable information on Italian baking will find it in The Italian Baker. Carol Fields has provided, under a single cover, a virtually all-encompassing collection of recipes that define the art of Italian Baking.

With a strong emphasis on regional breads, this book will satisfy anyone's desire to acquire traditional southern european bread-baking skills.

I personally have found the section on Pizza most helpful--I have received nothing but compliments from everyone who has tasted my pizza since I started using the dough recipes that are found in this book.

The Italian Baker should have a prominent spot on every kitchen's cookbook shelf.

This classic kitchen text is an essential addition to the library of any cook interested in serious bread baking. When I bought this book, I'd never baked a loaf of bread in my life. I started reading on page one and quickly read the whole thing. In six month's time, I could bake a wide variety of Italian breads, all thanks to Carol Field's clear directions and wonderful recipes. The book covers everything from rustic country breads to holiday and celebration breads to biscotti to fococcia and pizza. Also, there are great suggestions and recipes for using left over bread.

This is a superb book that turned me into a baker. The author coversa wide variety of Italian Breads, cakes and holiday specialties (like Pannetone). I regularly make all the breads we consume at home and am thinking of making some items for sale at a local store, like Focaccia. The Ciabatta recipe is one of my favorites. One of the virtues of the book is that each recipe discusses three ways to make the item; 1.) by hand, 2.) with a mixer and 3.) with a food processor. I have found no other book that covers as many types of Italian bread as this one. BRAVA, Ms. Fields!

The Italian Baker by Carol Field covers a unique niche market for English-language bakery and pastries: the art as practised specifically in Italy. There are tons of French-inspired bakery books around, and I recommend you to go through Rose Levy Beranbaum's three 'bible' series on bread making, pies and pastries, and cake making, and Sherry Yard's works, and perhaps Dorie Greenspan and Pierre Herme if you decide to learn from French-inspired pastry making. Of course other English-speaking countries have slight variations as to what baking and pastry making consists - the Australian Women's Weekly Bake book will be the best choice for baking as practised in Australia (and New Zealand).

I must say as an amateur cook I only baked bread once when I was a child and it ended up in abject failure. From reading the recipes, it covers most of the pastries and bread making under the sun under Italian-style cuisines. Panettone is a pretty standard baking item, which in an interesting twist, is not commonly available in almost all Italian cookbooks (most common cookbooks don't have it, and the only cases of common type of cookbooks that have this recipe are Mario Batali's Molto, Ursula Ferragano's La Dolce Vita, and Michele Scicciolone's 1000 Italian Recipes). This book does have one, and there are many more far more specialized pastries around. Even though the book was published almost a quarter of a century ago and despite the limited availability of gourmet or artisan ingredients in the English-speaking world in the early 1980s, I did not sense the recipes have been watered down to cater for Anglo-American ingredient availability of the time. In addition, Field does emphasise in the book that whenever substitutions are made, she would provide sufficient contextual information as to what the original undiluted recipes would be like. Despite the time of publishing, it is still at the forefront of Italian-style baking today.

A few reviewers have complained about a lack of measurement by weight. I did not quite notice this myself, and in fact the recipes I have gone through so far all have weight listed in metric system as well as volume.

The only other book that can be said to cover essentially the same subject is Giuseppe Orsini's Italian Baking Secrets. It is not apparent to this reviewer that the far more recent publication date of Fr Orsini's work means it is more up to date or more able to faithfully reproducing the authentic recipes than Field's book. I would suggest buyers to pick Field's work over that of Orsini's.

Highly recommended this book for Italian-style baking.

Americans have fallen in love with traditional European breads. I purchased this book seeking to broaden my knowledge with good formulas for authentic regional specialty breads that I expected would make generous use of baker's pre-ferments, in addition to a heavy reliance on naturally leavened indirect methods. Of the meager 17 traditional bread recipes contained in this title, none fit my search parameters.

I should have noted the copyright date is 1985. This was during a previous bread making revival in the U.S. when most bakers, including myself, were blithely content to subject the process to short cuts, compromises, and direct method bread baking. Recipes at that time reflecting America's taste preferences, frequently used gobs of cheese, peppers, onions, oils, eggs, herbs, condiments and commercial packaged yeasts. This title is somewhat a reflection of that era when bakers unfamiliar with long fermentation processes relied on packaged yeast as their prevailing leavening agent and used condiments to compensate for the bread's lack of integrity.

The Italian Baker reflects many of our former preferences with newly added concessions for the busy homemaker who will enjoy Field's food processor directions to further speed up the bread-making process, and at the same time diminish the quality of the end product.

Today, when I read a recipe such as one in The Italian Baker that calls for nutmeg and two packages of frozen spinach, sugar, olive oil and packaged yeast, I cringe. Alternatively, as with a rye bread recipe in The Italian Baker that calls for 7 ounces of pancetta cubes, a quarter-cup olive oil, commercial yeast and is out of the oven within 3 hours. It is difficult to ponder which is more objectionable today. the pancetta hunks and olive oil in a direct method rye bread, or substituting bacon chunks for unavailable pancetta.

To make consistently good bread, one must accurately scale all ingredients and maintain ideal dough temperature at every step of the process. The recipes in The Italian Baker combine Imperial volume-measurements for all liquids, and offer both Imperial volume measurements AND metric weight for (some) dry ingredients. Other dry ingredients retain Imperial volume measurements. The result is a hodge podge of inconsistent weight/volume and metric/Imperial measurements that causes needless confusion, and is sure to provoke bakers who now depend on weight measurements for accuracy.

Perhaps the most useful volume in my kitchen reference library is a professional text, The Taste of Bread, by Prof. Raymond Calvel, translated from the French by Ronald Wirtz and James MacGuire. - - - Another suggestion is, The Village Baker: Classic Regional Breads from Europe and America by Joe Ortiz. Ortiz's admirable dedication to thoroughness and accuracy will please those who aspire towards consistency and great tasting breads. - - - Daniel Wing and Alan Scott's The Bread Builders, published by Chelsea Green - This latter book's slant is toward building wood-fired masonry ovens and naturally leavened breads, and includes well-researched information on flour, fermentation, and dough. The later used simple chemistry and a bell curve to explain to me why it is unnecessary to waste humongous amounts of flour to maintain an active superbly balanced levain such as instructed by others (Reinhardt, Silverton). I now begin with only 25 grams of starter, and double it in each build until it reaches approximately 400 grams of levain that is roaring to sponsor about three and a half pounds of dough.