The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion: The All-Purpose Baking Cookbook - Softcover

King Arthur Baking Company

Softcover

ISBN 10: 158157178X ISBN 13: 9781581571783

Publisher: Countryman Press, 2012

Synopsis

The trusted companion of scores of home bakers is finally available in paperback!

Originally Published ten years ago - and shortly thereafter honored as the James Beard Foundation's Cookbook of the Year (2003) - this cookbook is today every bit as relevant as it was then. And now the modern classic is in easy to use Flexibound Paperback, with its hundreds of easy and foolproof recipes, from yeast breads and sourdoughs to trendy flatbreads and crackers to family favorites such as pancakes and waffles. Leading you through the steps of leavening, mixing, proofing, and kneading through shaping and baking, the experts at King Arthur Flour also include their best fried doughs, quick breads, batter breads, biscuits, quiches, cobblers and crisps, cookies, cakes, brownies, pies, tarts, and pastries.

For more than 200 years King Arthur Flour has been in the business of making the highest quality key ingredient in all of baking: flour. They've done decades of experimentation and research in their famous test kitchens on how the various ingredients in baked goods behave and why. The Baker's Companion, a kind of culmination of generations of loving work, brings you more than 350 recipes that teach you which ingredients work together as well as which don't and why. It is this knowledge that will allow you to unleash your own creativity and to experiment in the kitchen.

You'll get a complete overview of ingredients in chapters on flours, sweeteners, leaveners, fats, and more. You'll find information on substitutions and variations, as well as troubleshooting advice from pros at King Arthur Four.

Two 8 Page Color Inserts. Illustrations throughout

About this title

Review:

The King Arthur company has produced flour and other baking ingredients of high reputation for over two centuries. Similarly trustworthy, and reflecting their years of kitchen experience, The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion offers over 400 recipes for all kinds of basic and up-to-the-minute specialties--from pancakes and waffles to muffins and quickbreads; from coffee cakes, pizzas and crackers, to hearthbreads, cakes and cookies, including two complete chocolate chip recipes, for soft and crispy kinds. This is one of those books that no baking kitchen should lack--not only for its comprehensive repertoire and recipe dependability, but for the intimate ease with which it fulfills its promise. What this means, partly, is that technical information is perfectly pitched to ensure relaxed understanding, offering neither too much nor too little detail. It's the range and quality of these baking "backstories," including, for example, how to control cookie-dough spreading while baking, plus numerous hints and shortcuts, that help make the book so valuable.

Beginning, sensibly, with a concise section on measuring--the authors "first plea" is that readers buy and use a scale--the book then treats breakfast specialties, such as Gingerbread Pancakes and Pumpkin Praline Waffles; pursues quickbreads like Maple Cornbread; cobblers including those made under both cake and pie crusts; Sesame Crisps among other crackers; and yeast breads, such as bagels, a basic White Bread 101, and an exemplary Italian Bread, among others. An entire chapter is devoted to sourdough with instructions for creating your own starter. Readers will also want to try Strawberry-Lemon Chess Pies, Chocolate Lava Cake, and Pumpkin Cheesecake. A concluding everything-you've-always-wanted-to know ingredients glossary includes explorations on flour milling; of "faux fats" and sweeteners; the use of eggs in a dough or batter, in yeast breads and custards; information on the latest in European-style cultured butters, among much else. Color photos and numerous step-by-step technical drawings provide further guidance. With an illustrated section on tools, too, both high-tech and homey, such as the flour wand, the book has it all, for new and seasoned bakers alike. --Arthur Boehm

About the Author:

King Arthur Flour is the largest single educator of bakers in the world. Employee owned since 1996, the company conducts a yearly national baking class tour that has provided free baking classes to many thousands of bakers across the U.S. The company also publishes The Baking Sheet, a newsletter of recipes and baking information. The Baker's Catalogue, a wholly owned subsidiary, sponsors an online baking forum, The Baking Circle, on its parent company's Web site. The company's 2003 release, The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion, was selected as one of the best cookbooks of the year by Food & Wine, People, and many other national publications. Other books by King Arthur Flour include The Original King Arthur Flour Cookbook, The King Arthur Flour Cookie Companion, and King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking. All the bakers at King Arthur Flour work from their 12-sided post-and-beam headquarters in Norwich , Vermont.

About this edition

• Publisher: Countryman Press
• Publication date: 2012
• ISBN 10: 158157178X
• ISBN 13: 9781581571783
• Binding: Flexibound
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 656