Product Description

If you are a beginning baker, this book offers an accessible introduction to essential baking ingredients, equipment, and techniques as well as detailed, step-by-step recipes that make it easy to prepare even the trickiest baked goods. If you are already an accomplished baker, it offers many sophisticated and unusual recipes that will help you refine your knowledge and skills.

The book features a distinctive organization based on six key baking ingredients, from fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, and chocolate to dairy products, spices and herbs, and coffee, tea, and liqueurs. Select an ingredient or flavor you love, and you'll find many delicious ways to incorporate it into your baking.

Bloom's recipes encompass every type of baking. You'll find spectacular versions of familiar favorites - Cherry Pie, Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting, and Double Peanut Butter Cookies - as well as intriguing variations and extravagant indulgences, including Coconut Biscotti, Lemon Verbena and Walnut Tea Cake, and Dark Chocolate Creme Brulee. Her meticulous recipes specify essential gear, offer tips on streamlining the recipe and storing the finished dish, and provide advice on varying ingredients and adding panache.

With in-depth guidance on techniques and ingredients, 225 standout recipes, variations and embellishments for almost every dish, and 32 pages of striking full-color photographs, The Essential Baker is truly the only baking book you'll ever need.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #149774 in Books
• Published on: 2007-03-19
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 645 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Bloom, the author of eight cookbooks whose work has appeared in Bon Appetit, Gourmet and Food + Wine, adopts an unusual approach in this exhaustive and tantalizing look at baking. Instead of categorizing recipes by food type, she organizes them by primary ingredient—a useful approach for the baker with a craving or surplus of one ingredient. Sections include fruits and vegetables; nuts and seeds; chocolate; dairy products; spices and herbs; and coffee, tea, liqueurs and spirits. The recipes themselves are uniquely formatted in a table layout that lists the ingredients across from their steps to help with organization. Bloom includes a list of equipment needed for the dish along with instructions on storage, streamlining, altering the recipe and recovering from mishaps. The collection covers the gamut with 225 recipes, including such delectable gems as Pear and Walnut Layer Cake with Maple–Cream Cheese Icing; Coconut Biscotti; and Cranberry Nut Tea Loaf. Other highlights range from Chocolate Chip Cookies and Macadamia Nut Blondies to Malted Milk Chocolate Cheesecake and Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting. Bloom also provides valuable instruction in sections on essential ingredients, equipment and supplies, and techniques. 32 full-color photos. (Apr.)
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Review
Food writer and cooking teacher Bloom is the author of seven other cookbooks, including All About Chocolate and Cookies For Dummies. Her big new book, obviously a labor of love, presents more than 250 recipes, along with a thorough introduction to baking techniques, equipment, and ingredients. Organized by main ingredient (e.g., fruits, chocolate, liqueurs, and spirits), the recipes offer a wide array of treats, with carefully written and thorough instructions. Although the recipe head notes are somewhat repetitious, and it would have been helpful to have a listing of the desserts by category (e.g., pies, cakes), this is an essential purchase for baking collections. (Library Journal, March 15, 2007)

Bloom, the author of eight cookbooks whose work has appeared in Bon Appetit, Gourmet and Food + Wine, adopts an unusual approach in this exhaustive and tantalizing look at baking. Instead of categorizing recipes by food type, she organizes them by primary ingredient—a useful approach for the baker with a craving or surplus of one ingredient. Sections include fruits and vegetables; nuts and seeds; chocolate; dairy products; spices and herbs; and coffee, tea, liqueurs and spirits. The recipes themselves are uniquely formatted in a table layout that lists the ingredients across from their steps to help with organization. Bloom includes a list of equipment needed for the dish along with instructions on storage, streamlining, altering the recipe and recovering from mishaps. The collection covers the gamut with 225 recipes, including such delectable gems as Pear and Walnut Layer Cake with Maple–Cream Cheese Icing; Coconut Biscotti; and Cranberry Nut Tea Loaf. Other highlights range from Chocolate Chip Cookies and Macadamia Nut Blondies to Malted Milk Chocolate Cheesecake and Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting. Bloom also provides valuable instruction in sections on essential ingredients, equipment and supplies, and techniques. 32 full-color photos. (Apr.) (Publishers Weekly, January 8, 2007)

From the Inside Flap
"Carole Bloom's quintessential handbook of indispensable baking fundamentals will make you the best baker you can be."
—Flo Braker author of The Simple Art of Perfect Baking and Sweet Miniatures

Carole Bloom fell in love with baking as a child and has devoted her professional life to perfecting her baking skills. This cookbook is the culmination of all she has learned as a pastry chef in Europe and the United States—a bountiful collection of her favorite recipes along with comprehensive guidance on home baking.

If you are a beginning baker, this book offers an accessible introduction to essential baking ingredients, equipment, and techniques as well as detailed, step-by-step recipes that make it easy to prepare even the trickiest baked goods. If you are already an accomplished baker, it offers many sophisticated and unusual recipes that will help you refine your knowledge and skills.

The book features a distinctive organization based on six key baking ingredients, from fruits and vegetables, nuts and seeds, and chocolate to dairy products, spices and herbs, and coffee, tea, and liqueurs. Select an ingredient or flavor you love, and you'll find many delicious ways to incorporate it into your baking.

Bloom's recipes encompass every type of baking. You'll find spectacular versions of familiar favorites—Cherry Pie, Carrot Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting, and Double Peanut Butter Cookies—as well as intriguing variations and extravagant indulgences, including Coconut Biscotti, Lemon Verbena and Walnut Tea Cake, and Dark Chocolate Crème Brûlée. Her meticulous recipes specify essential gear, offer tips on streamlining the recipe and storing the finished dish, and provide advice on varying ingredients and adding panache.

With in-depth guidance on techniques and ingredients, 225 standout recipes, variations and embellishments for almost every dish, and 32 pages of striking full-color photographs, The Essential Baker is truly the only baking book you'll ever need.

Customer Reviews

FABULOUS DESSERT BOOK--VERY EASY TO USE
I have a lot of cookbooks, mostly on desserts. When I saw this book I thought it was just another dessert cookbook with the same old recipes and pictures. Was I wrong. This is quickly becoming my favorite dessert cookbook mainly because it is so easy to use and it has such a wide variety of recipes. It's arranged in such a logical way with recipes divided up by their primary ingredient. For example, I like tropical fruits so I just go to the tropical and exotic fruit section and all the recipes with tropical fruits are there. My favorite here is the Coconut Biscotti but that Pineapple Tarte Tatin is so, so yummy also. I like anything with chocolate and there is a big section with many recipes. The White Chocolate and Lemon Tart is to die for. Another thing so neat about this book is the way the recipes are laid out in a kind of table format which makes them so easy to follow. I am really happy with this book. I am thinking it may be the only dessert cookbook I will every need. I intend to make all of the over 250 recipes (and some of the variations too). I highly recommended this to all dessert bakers. It is really easy to use and there is something for everyone.

So helpful and reliable
The directions, including shopping and other pre-preparation details, are very clear. The results of those recipes attempted so far have been excellent - and TASTY!

Disappointed
The first three reviews all gave "The Essential Baker" top 5-star ratings and, frankly, I was impressed and ordered the book. However, my elation quickly turned to disappointment once I scanned the pages. The first 50 pages on baking essentials had brown text on a light brown background and the remainder of the book, the text remained brown on white rather than black on white. Moreover, the font style and small size in addition to the brown text made reading difficult for a senior citizen as myself. This difficulty was more pronounced since the ingredients listed on the left margin were in bold type whereas the instruction were not, thus I personally would find difficulty in using the book while trying to cook.

One thing the author mentions up front is that all her recipes use Extra-Large eggs and every recipe for making pie dough uses a food processor. Just be aware to adjust your thinking. The book is hefty with 220 pages devoted to fruits, 21 to vegetables, 48 to nuts and seeds, and 125 to chocolate, 29 to dairy, 45 to spices and herbs, and 50 to coffee, tea, and spirits. The way the recipes are formatted, as discussed in prevous comments, are unique and at times it takes three to four pages for a recipe such as Pumpkin Pie or Lemon Meringue Pie.

In comparing the recipe for Anise and Almond Biscotti (Carole Bloom vs Martha Stewart), for example, Bloom calls for 3 extra-large eggs and 3 extra large egg yolks, but no butter and Stewart calls for 4 large eggs and 4 tablespoons of butter (both use 2-1/4 and 2-1/2 cups of flour respectively. I would have to bake each recipe to determine which I preferred, but someone like Alton Brown (author of, "I'm Here Just for the Food") could tell you the pros and cons of eggs vs butter.

If I had to choose an all round baking book, my choice would be, "The Dessert Bible" by Chrisopher Kimball who is also Publisher and Editor of Cooks Illustrated. His recipes include a feature that explains "what could go wrong" explaining things that could go awry whch I found helpful.

Bloom incorporates some innovative features in laying out her baking techniques and no doubt has many excellent recipes, but I downgraded the book primarily on "mechanical" features rather than content and the fact that I personally find the book difficult to use.