Baking in America: Traditional and Contemporary Favorites from the Past 200 Years at Chef2Chef

The book's organization--chapters cover topics from savory yeast breads and sweet yeast breads and doughnuts to pound cakes, layer cakes, cheesecakes, fruit desserts, and more--gives some idea of the arc of American baking, which has changed as kitchen technology has advanced. (The arrival of yeast-displacing chemical leaveners, for example, made the layer cake possible.) But American bakers have always been avid experimenters, Patent maintains, and have produced singular delights like Jalapeño, Cornmeal, and Cheddar Bread; Golden Pumpkin Loaf; Persimmon Cream Cheese Cupcakes; and, of course, brownies, for which the book gives variations including White Chocolate Chunk. With amusing advice from old cookbooks and other historical asides, profiles of cooking teachers, and useful glossaries of ingredients and equipment, the photo-illustrated book makes the re-creation of our charmingly homey baking past practical for modern cooks. --Arthur Boehm

From Publishers Weekly
In this wonderful collection of baking recipes, Patent (A Is for Apple) takes classics from old American cookbooks and makes them work with modern-day ingredients, encompassing all aspects of baking from Savory Yeast Breads through Pound Cakes to Pies and Tarts. After explaining the ingredients and equipment, he moves on to the recipes, which include timeless treasures of America's baking tradition such as Parker House Rolls, Lindy's Cheesecake and Lady Baltimore Cake. Most recipes have a brief history or description along with full, simply stated instructions that make them suitable for all skill levels. Interspersed are extracts from historical books and pamphlets that add color and create windows into bygone ages. These panels also convey additional information, which, combined with step-by-step pointers at the start of each chapter, enable the cook to produce treats like the subtly flavored Spice Pound Cake or the moist but light Orange Sponge Cake. Some recipes are more modern e.g., Cashew and Golden Raisin Biscotti with White Chocolate Glaze but all have been popular at some point with the American public. By including recipes from so many areas of baking, Patent has produced a volume that will provide a full repertoire for any cook as well as providing superb insight to the traditions and influences that have made American baking so varied and rich.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Reader Reviews
This baking book was disappointing. It represents itself as a survey of 200 years of baking in American kitchens. In the end, the result is a rather ordinary collection of baking and pastry recipes. This collection is supposed to be a collage of 200 years of baking recipes. The book has numerous references to old, out of print recipe books. Then, the author takes these recipes and updates it for the modern kitchen and grocery store. In the bread chapter, for example, all of the dough make-up procedures are virtually identical. This is suspicious, as the sources, hydration percentages, and ingredients for the bread recipes go all over the place. I suspect that the author here has cheated a bit. Also, the procedures do not have very extensive descriptions of how to form the doughs into loaves. Some of the instructions for preparing the various fruits are either incomplete or wrong, as are procedures for cooking sugar into syrups, caramels, etc. I like the fact that the procedures (for the most part) are very detailed, and many of the little steps that are often overlooked are thorough described here. The recipes often have as many as a dozen steps. The beginning of each chapter has some baking tips and hints, although they are far from complete. At the head of each chapter is a list of recipes, which is very convenient when you are looking for something specific. The most valuable part of this book is the bibliography, which lists many historic cookbooks, many of which are still available in facsimile editions. Very valuable, and hard to find, are the dozen or so recipes for doughnuts; these alone are almost worth the price of admission. On the other hand, many chapters are collections of fairly standard recipes that you can find in almost any all purpose cookbook. The one about pies, for example, is very ordinary and commonplace, most of them currently popular ones, and not historic nor heritage in any sense of the word. It is a very decent collection of baking recipes that covers most of the major areas of baking, but it is not as advertised. Comment | Permalink | (Report this)