Baking: From My Home to Yours

Greenspan knows her stuff, of course, but it's her droll, anecdotal style (readers learn, for example how a chocolate cake got her fired) and her recipe-making expertise that sets the book apart. Precise descriptions of the baked goods--a pound cake, for example, is said to have a "moist, tightly knit crumb"--help readers understand baking anatomy. Equally exact, and reassuring, are her recipe guideposts--she notes, for example, that rubbing butter into the dry ingredients when making a biscuit recipe will result in "pea-size pieces, pieces the size of oatmeal flakes, and pieces the size of everything in between." With recipe variations and enticing color photos, the book will inspire--and inform--baking novices and experts alike. --Arthur Boehm

Product Description
Dorie Greenspan has written recipes for the most eminent chefs in
the world: Pierre Herme, Daniel Boulud, and arguably the greatest
of them all, Julia Child, who once told Dorie, "You write recipes
just the way I do." Her recipe writing has won widespread praise for its
literate curiosity and "patient but exuberant style." (One hard-boiled
critic called it "a joy forever.") In Baking: From My Home to Yours, her
masterwork, Dorie applies the lessons from three decades of experience
to her first and real love: home baking. The 300 recipes will
seduce a new generation of bakers, whether their favorite kitchen tools
are a bowl and a whisk or a stand mixer and a baker's torch.

Even the most homey of the recipes are very special. Dorie's
favorite raisin swirl bread. Big spicy muffins from her stint as a baker in
a famous New York City restaurant. French chocolate brownies (a
Parisian pastry chef begged for the recipe). A dramatic black and white
cake for a "wow" occasion. Pierre Herme's extraordinary lemon tart.
The generous helpings of background information, abundant stories,
and hundreds of professional hints set Baking apart as a one-of-a-kind
cookbook. And as if all of this weren't more than enough, Dorie has
appended a fascinating minibook, A Dessertmaker's Glossary, with
more than 100 entries, from why using one's fingers is often best, to
how to buy the finest butter, to how the bundt pan got its name.