“The Essential Baker”
By Carole Bloom
(Wiley, $40)
What it is: Subtitled “The Comprehensive Guide to Baking with Chocolate, Fruit, Nuts, Spices and Other Ingredients,” this attractive, 645-page tome sets out to teach technique as well as share oodles of recipes (there are more than 225).
Praise (and quibbles): Bloom, a pastry chef with an impressive list of European and American credentials, writes with clear, clean prose. The recipes are arranged, gridlike, with ingredients to the left of the directions that use them. Right margins list equipment requirements, always-welcome storage information, ways to alter the recipe and streamlining tips (either how to make it easier or ways to work in advance). Preparation and cooking times are not listed, and they’re missed. Also, the copy is small and light, but granted, any bigger and this book would be heavier than a leaden poundcake.
The mixed berry puff pastry rectangle tart was complex and time-consuming but turned out beautifully. (To Bloom’s credit, she suggests store-bought frozen puff pastry as a substitute.) An anise-fig cake would have benefited more from finely chopped figs than the coarsely chopped called for (we ended up with tunnellike holes) but it tasted, as the author predicted, sensational. Among the other recipes we would like to bake from this book: passion fruit and macadamia nut layer cake, Kahlua cupcakes with Kahlua ganache icing and pomegranate butter cookies.
Why we think you’ll like it: Bloom states in her introduction that this is the only baking book you’ll need. Quite a claim, and naive to the fact that diehard bakers can never have enough books! The better claim is that this may be the only teaching book a home baker, rookie or veteran, will need; it really can fill in the gaps for missing skills. And don’t forget: 225 recipes!
———-
renna@tribune.com
