The Baker's Dozen Cookbook: Become a Better Baker with 135 Foolproof Recipes and Tried-and-True Techniques

By The Baker's Dozen

Book Overview

More than ten years ago, cookbook author and teacher Marion Cunningham and professional baker Amy Pressman met occasionally to talk about the wonders and mysteries of baking. They chatted, exchanged ideas, offered suggestions, and ended up solving some of their difficult baking problems. Slowly a concept took shape. Suppose groups of like-minded bakers were to meet to exchange ideas and solve baking problems? At the first meeting of The Baker's Dozen, forty people showed up with forty lemon meringue pies. The topic of the meeting was weeping and shrinking meringues and how to prevent them from happening. (The solution: Heat the egg whites and sugar while beating to avoid weeping; use more egg whites to solve the problem of shrinking.) The word spread quickly, and The Baker's Dozen has grown to more than ten times the original number -- there are now more than four hundred members in the Bay Area. The groups continue to have two simple goals: Share what you know about baking and learn from one another. Now you can share the collective experiences and favorite recipes of The Baker's Dozen in The Baker's Dozen Cookbook, with recipes selected and tested by some of the most respected and most accomplished bakers in the business.Lindsey Shere, co-founder and pastry chef of Chez Panisse, shares the secrets of tarts. Authors Carol Field and Fran Gage and baker Peter Reinhart offer their collective wisdom on yeast breads and flatbreads. John Phillip Carroll teaches about easy quick breads, coffee cakes, and muffins. Renowned author and baker Flo Braker and her team share their years of cake-baking experience. Carolyn Weil and her group offer the ultimate advice and techniques for pies and piecrusts. Robert Morocco and Julia Cookenboo divulge their trade secrets of making foolproof cookies equal to those of any quality bakeshop. The Baker's Dozen Cookbook goes far beyond recipes. You'll benefit from what these bakers learned on their field trips. You'll learn tricks such as using dental floss to cut neat slices of creamy cheesecake. You'll learn the differences between a pastry bag and a parchment cone; between a pate brisee, a "broken dough," and a pate sablee, a "sandy dough"; between butter and shortening in determining the flakiness of a crust; and so much more. So whether you simply want to become a better baker yourself or to form a Baker's Dozen group with others, all you need is The Baker's Dozen Cookbook. It puts four hundred of America's best bakers and everything they know right by your side. For baking tips, recipes, and information on starting your own Baker's Dozen, visit www.bakersdozen.org

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060186283
• ISBN13: 9780060186289
• Release Date: November 2001
• Publisher: William Morrow & Company
• Length: 368 Pages
• Weight: 2.34 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.1" x 8.0" x 10.0"

Customer Reviews

I LOVE LOVE LOVE this book!

Love the organization, with topics/equipment/ingredients all discussed in discreet sections. Really appreciate that the many contributors have tested and re-tested these recipes: Seriously tired of poorly written or completely untested recipes elsewhere. Have only been able to try one recipe so far (the angel food cake), and it was PHENOMENAL. The crumb was so lovely and soft. Decorated it with dark chocolate ganache for my BFF's birthday. The bitter chocolate and the not-too-sweet cake went wonderfully together, and froze perfectly, so that it could be enjoyed one slice at a time. If you are a home cake baker get get get a copy of this book & revel in it!

The Baker's Bible

Many cookbooks about baking have words like "bible" or "complete" in them. Yet, none really deserve the term. They are never complete nor correct enough to warrant the title. This book, however, has earned the rights to these words. It originally started out as a club for professional bakers to solve their common baking problems that metastasized into this baking cookbook. It features many highly respected names such as Flo Braker, John Phillip Carroll, Marion Cunningham, Carol Field, Fran Gage, and Alice Medrich. The whole thing is edited by Rick Rodgers. I have often heard people, including many respected food writers, lament that there ought to be a comprehensive book about baking that covers all of the important aspects and types of recipes and techniques. Well, here it is. It delves into such arcana as: the differences between genoise, sponge cake, chiffon cake, and angel food cake; the proper way to measure flour (in fact, different chapters use different methods, so read the recipes carefully and follow them to the letter; similar comments apply to which rolling pin or what kind of flour to use); and 4 different recipes for pie dough using either lard, cream cheese, shortening, or butter. The same applies to the chapter on tarts. It starts out with 5 recipes for crusts (pate brisee, pate sablee, pate sucree, tartlet dough, and quick puff pastry), and the subsequent recipes for tarts start with one of one of the crusts. The chapter on yeast breads is especially noteworthy. Each chapter is written by a different person, and functions as a self contained primer on a particular subject. Each subject is treated systematically and thoroughly. In fact, each chapter could be published on its own as reference work on its subject. One chapter often contains more information than a standard cookbook on baking. The chapters are: ingredients, tools, basic cakes, fancy cakes, pies, tarts, fruit desserts, cookies, muffins and quick breads, yeast breads, custards, and frostings.There are 2 important features in this book that are absent from most others about baking. First, all of the recipes are the result of extensive testing by the bakers (of which, incidentally, there are many more than just a baker's dozen or 13), and not just a "traditional" one someone habitually uses. Second, all of the recipes are solid, old-fashioned favorites (like: brownies, biscuits, doughnuts, banana bread, apple pandowdy, pecan pie, cornbread) that have been staples of the family table for decades; there are no trendy recipes here for weird baked goods that you will never make. On the down side, there are a couple of editing mistakes: p. 221 and 224 both refer to "page 000".If you can bake cakes from boxed mixes and make cookies from the recipe on the back of the package of chocolate chips, then you are ready for this book. Even experienced bakers will learn much from the collective intelligence in this book. If there is only one cookbook about baking on y

Excellent Resource for Serious Bakers

After reading KAFFEHAUS by Rick Rodgers and being impressed with it, I searched for other books by him and found this one. It's an excellent resource, offering tips and techniques not found in most cook books. After reading through this book, you could probably start developing your own recipes. The recipes in the book are very good -- being a combination of American- and European-style cookery -- and include explicit instructions, along with the "why" of the technique. I baked the best-ever angel food cake using the recipe in the book. It was flawless, and I'm tough to please when reviewing my own baked goods.The only downside is there are too few pictures of the finished goods. I would love to see a reprint with more 4-color photography. For one thing, seeing the final product allows you to see how well you did compared to the pros.Regardless, it's a great addition to your batterie de cuisine, if a book can be included in this category.

wonderful recipes, well-written and helpful advice

I am so pleased with this book. Even if you never baked a thing from the book, you would learn a lot about the hows and whys of baking just by reading it. The first recipe I tried, around Christmas, was for Lemon Stars, a beautiful-looking cookie with a wonderful lemon flavor. The Chocolate-Hazelnut Meringue Cookies were outstanding--my son and I wolfed them down shamelessly. Lemon-Poppy Seed Shortbread Cookies were excellent, and we are enjoying the Raisin-Bran Muffins. I have also made the Buttermilk Currant Scones (flawless) and the White Sandwich Bread (texture was perfect). In short, this is an outstanding collection packed with excellent advice.

A combined cookbook and textbook for bakers

Over ten years ago, a group of bakers in California gathered to share information and recipes. The group includes an excellent selection of cooks including Flo Baker, Marion Cunningham, Alice Medrich, and Carolyn Beth Weil but is now part of a group that's 400+ members. Besides including a fine selection of recipes, there are also sections which discuss ingredients in detail and specific techniques. For instance, the Fresh Ginger-Spice Cookies includes a reference that will tell you how professional chefs form the dough logs that don't contain air bubbles. Following the recipe for Lemon Meringue Pie there are two pages of information about meringue. I've made several of the recipes and they've all been excellent. Some cookbooks includes lots or pretty pictures and not a lot of content. This is not one of them. While there are some lovely pictures in this book (like the Chocolate Raspberry Cake), some of the pictures are to show you things that would be hard to explain in text (the different stages of beating egg whites). If the choice was between more pictures or more recipes/information, then I believe they made the right choice.This would be an excellent book for anyone who's really serious about baking -- either a new baker just starting or an experienced baker who wants to expand their knowledge.