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While I'm at it, I might as well tell you about my #1 must-haves in your cooking library. These people are geniuses. And they do all of the work for you. You just have to follow their instructions. I've had this book for about 3 years now, and I seriously turn to it at least a few times a week for recipes, inspiration, information, or just plain good reading:) I am a completely different cook because of them.
If you don't know much about the good people at America's Test Kitchen, let me tell you a little about how they work. They slave away for hours, days, weeks, sometimes months at one recipe to get it perfect and fool-proof. They test different methods, ingredients, products, utensils, appliances, anything you can think of in the kitchen, to tell you what's best and why. It's amazing. And recently they came out with this book:
Another new Christmas addition to my library. And I seriously think I sat and just read it for a couple of hours straight yesterday. They have all sorts of classic recipes, explained and simplified. I love these people. This book is a little more complex, I think, than the cookbook counterpart, but mostly just because by nature baking is more complex than cooking. I love that this book has a little note next to recipes that are "great for beginners", and almost every other page has little "don't make this mistake" explanations as to why this certain bread recipe won't rise if you make this mistake, or why your frosting won't go on in a clean layer if you make this mistake. I love it. This is definitely another must-have in your home. Honestly, I think that if you were to only buy 2 cook/baking books for your kitchen library, I would say these are the 2 to get.
My very generous in-laws bought me this fascinating book for Christmas:
And this is what resulted:
Isn't it gorgeous? I'd give you the recipe, but since it's more of a concept book, I'm going to have to tell you to just go out and either borrow it from your library or buy it. It's SO ridiculously easy, and gives you amazing results. So this is my first cook book review. And it is definitely a positive one. They're not kidding when they say 5 minutes a day. Of course including baking and resting time it's a lot longer, but you really only put in probably less than 5 minutes of hands-on work a day. And it's a no-knead method, so you can't even really call it work. And with this basic method, you can make a boule, baguette, ciabatta, bâtard, couronne, pain d'epi!, and basically whatever you can dream of. Those are just the ones I'm the most excited to create. We had leftover Christmas roast beef sandwiches on this bread for lunch today, and I just melted. It was too good to really have come out of MY oven!
Reading through this book can seem a little dry, though, so be warned. It's a lot of language (fascinating language, but a lot of it), and very few pictures. But this concept really needs a lot of explanation, so it's justified. And I'm the kind of person that loves to just sit and read cookbooks from cover to cover, so I have to admit I had a lot of fun studying it.
If you love good, crusty, chewy, delicious artisan bread (and who doesn't?), I highly recommend this book to you!
If you don't know much about the good people at America's Test Kitchen, let me tell you a little about how they work. They slave away for hours, days, weeks, sometimes months at one recipe to get it perfect and fool-proof. They test different methods, ingredients, products, utensils, appliances, anything you can think of in the kitchen, to tell you what's best and why. It's amazing. And recently they came out with this book:
Another new Christmas addition to my library. And I seriously think I sat and just read it for a couple of hours straight yesterday. They have all sorts of classic recipes, explained and simplified. I love these people. This book is a little more complex, I think, than the cookbook counterpart, but mostly just because by nature baking is more complex than cooking. I love that this book has a little note next to recipes that are "great for beginners", and almost every other page has little "don't make this mistake" explanations as to why this certain bread recipe won't rise if you make this mistake, or why your frosting won't go on in a clean layer if you make this mistake. I love it. This is definitely another must-have in your home. Honestly, I think that if you were to only buy 2 cook/baking books for your kitchen library, I would say these are the 2 to get.
