Product Description

Hands on baking with recipes and techniques that teach you how to make great breads, pies, cobblers, cookies, cakes, and pasties, both sweet and savory. A world-class course in baking for new and practiced bakers alike.

Baking with Julia is not only a book full of glorious recipes but also one that continues Julia's teaching tradition. Basic techniques come alive and are easily comprehensible in recipes that demonstrate the myriad ways of raising dough, glazing cakes, and decorating crusts. This is the resource you'll turn to again and again for all your baking needs.

Baking with Julia presents an extraordinary assemblage of talent, knowledge, and artistry from the new generation of bakers whose vision is so much a part of this book. The list of contributors reads like a Who's Who of today's master bakers: Flo Braker, Steve Sullivan, Marcel Desaulniers, Nick Malgieri, Alice Medrich, Nancy Silverton, Martha Stewart, and a host of bright new talents such as Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid.

With nearly 200 recipes, and half as many pages of full-color photographs, this incomparable kitchen companion goes far beyond what most cookbooks offer. More than 50 pages of illustrated reference sections define terms and techniques, and explain the hows and whys of batters and doughs. If you've never made flaky pie crust, your first no-fail experience is at hand.

From chocolate to cheesecake, from miniature gems to multitiered masterpieces-this cookbook is a total immersion experience in the wonder of home baking.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #27741 in Books
• Published on: 1996-11-04
• Released on: 1996-11-04
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 512 pages

Amazon.com Review
Television cooking shows are occasionally moderately entertaining to watch, but as sources for usable recipes and good cooking ideas, they are hit or miss at best. Cookbooks based on cooking shows are even less likely to be useful in the kitchen. One shining exception is Julia Child's "Master Chef" series. One of the best cooking shows ever produced, it also yielded some wonderful cookbooks, including Cooking With Master Chefs. The latest is Baking With Julia, which features the creations of 26 top bakers. All are artists with flour, eggs, butter, and the other ingredients of their craft. Writer Dorie Greenspan is a master at her craft as well. The paste for eclairs, she writes, is transformed from "ordinary-looking batter" into "a puffed pastry that appears to be threatening flight." It's all definitely good enough to eat.

From Publishers Weekly
Julia Child's newest TV series is a 39-part "full course in the art of baking." Here Greenspan (Waffles from Morning to Midnight) delivers the textbook for the course. The syllabus is comprehensive, covering breads, morning pastries, cakes, cookies, pies and savory pastries. The French classics?baguette, croissant, genoise, savarin, madeleines?are all present, but so are focaccia, pita, cobbler, rugelach and biscotti. This variety owes much to 27 "baker-professors" called on to instruct in their specialties. Steve Sullivan creates artisanal baguettes and couronnes; Beatrice Ojakangas prepares Danish Pastry and Swedish Limpa; Alice Medrich presents a Chocolate Ruffle Cake; Jeffrey Alfond and Naomi Duguid bake Persian Nan and other flatbreads; Lauren Groveman makes bagels and bialys; and Martha Stewart crafts a wedding cake decorated with marzipan fruit. Greenspan presents the nearly 200 recipes in classic Julia style; each recipe is clear, complete and comes with preparation and storage information. But the student-baker will need equipment and patience to match their efforts: many recipes rely on a heavy duty mixer, and some techniques will take repeated effort to master. For the ambitious, the adventurous and the simply appreciative, Baking with Julia is a course worth taking and a cookbook worth owning. BOMC/Good Cook selection; author (Ms. Child) tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Based on a new PBS series hosted by Julia Child, this work is destined to be a classic. The book begins by covering basics such as equipment, terms, and techniques before proceeding to building blocks such as flaky pie dough and genoise and then advancing to such sweet delights as chocolate truffle tarts and French strawberry cake. Everything from the way to knead bread dough to pointers for puffs is covered. Greenspan (Waffles: From Morning to Midnight, Morrow, 1993) has collected over 200 sweet and savory recipes from 27 baking professionals, including Lora Brody, Flo Braker, and Nancy Silverton. Interspersed among the recipes are plenty of mouthwatering photographs of the tempting treats. Sure to be popular with patrons and appropriate for all libraries, this book is highly recommended.
-?John Charles, Scottsdale P. L.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Baking With Julia
This cookbook was everything I wanted. It's detailed, explained and illustrated beautifully. It's a companion book to the PBS series of the same name and it's perfect. The recipes are varied and run a wide range of baked goods. I consider it a must for any serious bread and pastry baker.

Baking with Style
This book is a real gem for the at home baker, beautifully laid out. It is not just a complilation of recipes but more than that it is both a history book and an encyclopedia of the varied pieces that end up a baked product. It is by far my favorite tome on the subject.

Baking Bliss
This lavish book is a companion to the PBS program of the same name. As Julia writes in her introduction, there was such a public interest in the baking segments of her show that she decided to make the information available in book form as well. Dorie Greenspan--who had already written cookbooks of her own--authored the book in consultation with over twenty bakers.
Baking with Julia is a compendium of recipes and techniques, from simple cakes to an incredibly extravagant wedding cake. (I almost want to get married now just to have an excuse to attempt making that beauty...) You'll find savory breads, breakfast treats, and desserts elegant enough to make Paris' finest patissier applaud. (Almost every recipe in the book is presented in stunning full-page color.) I especially appreciated the glossary of terms at the beginning of the book--they cover everything from techniques to tools. A pastry scraper really is handy!