King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking: Delicious Recipes Using Nutritious Whole Grains (King Arthur Flour Cookbooks) Hardcover – October 9, 2006

I see this book does not have a way to "look inside" on Amazon. So I'll take the time to list the chapters:
1. Breakfasts (e.g. spelt pancakes, making your own whole grain pancake mix, Banana-oat pancakes, various waffle recipes, and making your own whole grain granola;
2. Quickbreads (loaves, muffins, biscuits, scones, coffeecakes, all made without yeast)
3. Crisps, cobblers and puddings (yummy and easy-to-make fruit desserts mostly, and then puddings made with brown rice, whole corn meal, quinoa, or whole grain bread as a base)
4. Flatbreads (including pizzas) and crackers
5. Yeast breads (Including "Easiest 100% Whole Wheat Bread Ever" - no kneading required, stir it up and bake in a loaf pan - other loaf pan and free-formed loaves, rolls, etc)
6. Sourdough
7. Cookies and bars
8. Cakes
9. Pies and quiches
10. Pastry
11. The whole grains (A comprehensive description of 8 whole grains that are readily-available in N. American stores, including their history, their varieties, and what sort of recipes they work in and why. The recipes you can use each in depends upon qualities of the grain like protein content, moisture-absorbing ability, flavor, etc. Featured grains include wheat, oats, corn/maize, barley, rye, spelt, buckwheat, rice. Each of these descriptions is followed by a recipe chosen to "showcase" the grain's most important features for you. Following those 8 grains, there are short paragraphs about some grains that were not so common in 2006 when the book came out - those are amaranth, teff, triticale, quinoa, millet, and kamut.

After those 11 chapters there are appendices, including a general guide to cooking a pot of each grain in water on the stovetop (how long each takes and how much water to use, basically, when you want to eat the grain plain as a side dish); where to buy the ingredients and baking equipment used in the recipes, if not at your local stores; a glossary of baking terms; and a good index.

Some general observations: The book is designed to teach you how to bake with whole grain, and it's extremely effective for that, IMO. There are plenty of easy recipes for beginners, and they work up to triple-layer cakes that I would probably never attempt. There is lots of info about how each grain behaves in cooking in combination with other ingredients. The authors explain why you need some wheat flour for breads and cakes that need to rise, even if you use another grain as the main one. They supply guidance on using other grains for cookies and quick breads, where rising is not so much needed and you can use other grains 100% and do without the structure of wheat.

Most of the yeast bread and roll recipes in this book use a method that includes lengthy "rising" periods for the yeast, and kneading of the dough. If you want to try out a simpler method, I recommend "Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day," by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë François, which is here: http://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/0312545525?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00 -- But the King Arthur book is far more comprehensive in its coverage of baking with whole grains, as you can see by the chapter titles I wrote out above. Lots more than breads in this book!

This is not a "health food" book. White and brown cane sugars, and some white flour are used in some of the recipes. This book starts from the premise that you want to eat delicious food, and incorporates whole grains as much as possible within that concept. Many recipes use 100% whole grain, but others use some unbleached all-purpose flour, where it's needed to get a moist crumb, a good rise, or other qualities that the King Arthur tasters thought were important to the finished product. If you have some experience at baking with alternative sweeteners, or are willing to experiment, then you could use these recipes as a guide for their whole grain expertise and sub in your own favorite sweetener.

Every recipe is followed by a complete analysis of the nutrition per serving, including the number of grams of whole grain the recipe contains per serving. (I always appreciate that in a cookbook.) There are few photos, and really they could not have had more because the book is quite large, as it is. Where needed, they have photos and drawings in the margins and in boxes around the recipes, that are quite good at illustrating techniques (like letter-folding a yeast dough) or what a batter or dough will look like at a specific stage in preparation.

On a final note, one of the things I like about this book is that the recipes do not harangue you to use King Arthur brand flour. There is information about how their brand compares to other flours on the market, particularly in their protein content, and there is info about how to compensate with increasing or decreasing the liquid used in a recipe, if you use a different flour. Then they leave it up to you.

This is the baking book I use the most, and the only one I decided to buy rather than check out from the library. Though I'm sure there are some things it doesn't have a recipe for, it is quite comprehensive. There are recipes for lots of different pancakes and waffles, scones, coffeecakes, fruit desserts, sandwich and rustic breads, crackers, cookies, bars, muffins, cakes and pastries. If you want to make whole grain croissants, pretzels, chocolate chip cookies, or Russian tea cakes, your recipe is here. Each section has a whole grain version of familiar classics, and a few exotic or unusual ones. A very few recipes call for unusual ingredients you would have to order from King Arthur Flour's website or catalog, like cinnamon chips, or things even they don't sell, like barley flour (which is delicious and worth a search). Most, though, can be made with common ingredients found in a well-stocked pantry or at an average grocery store. Best of all, the recipes are reliable. KAF runs a test kitchen and it is clear that each of the recipes in the book has been tested many times with different techniques and ingredient combinations and that you are getting a recipe that they think is a winner. Once or twice, I have found a recipe that was not quite to my liking (the peach coffeecake comes to mind), or that I think is worth making with white flour, but generally if I read one of their recipes and it sounds good on paper, I like the way it turns out. Though many of the recipes here do not try to hide the taste of whole grains, people are often pleasantly surprised to hear of the wholesomeness of what they have just gobbled up. Purists may object that most of the recipes are only about 80% whole grain (though many are 100%), but the authors really show whole grains at their best without sacrificing flavor and texture on the altar of nutrition.

The recipes are interspersed with helpful little informational boxes on technique or ingredient choice relevant to a nearby recipe, like what kind of apples to use for certain things, the best way to cut biscuits and why, or when to take muffins out of the pan. Throughout the book, they are very good about explaining why they call for a certain ingredient or tell you to do something one way rather than another.

Many of the recipes, especially in the cookie and bread sections, require an overnight rest for the dough or the final product, after baking, so if you are looking for something to whip up for a quick afternoon treat, you may find what you had in mind wouldn't be ready for another 24 hours. It depends a lot on the section, though; some contain mostly recipes that need to rest and some have very few. Allowing them the full resting time called for in the recipe really improves their texture dramatically, so I have started planning my desserts a bit in advance.

The only other thing I can think of that might bother some readers is that it is not one of the coffee table style cookbooks that have become fashionable lately. It is printed in dark brown font on cream pages, with line drawings when illustrations are necessary to show a certain step. The hardcover edition has a sturdy binding that does not develop unsightly creases, and that stays open on the counter. There is a section in the middle with color photographs of several recipes, but most recipes you just have to imagine. I find that the introductory paragraph at the top of each recipe usually gives me a pretty good idea of how it will turn out, and don't mind the lack of pictures.

My favorite recipes so far are the whole grain pancake mix, the spelt pancakes, corn and green chili muffins, cherry-chocolate scones, brownies, soft barley sugar cookies, and whole wheat pita. The whole grain pancake mix is amazing! I make a batch every month to keep in the fridge, and we have waffles or pancakes on the weekends. It's foolproof for groggy breakfast makers, and tastes better than any other pancakes or waffles I've encountered. The recipe doesn't give instructions for converting it to waffle batter, but I just add a tablespoon of melted butter to the batter and put it in the waffle iron.