The Williams-Sonoma Baking Book: Essential Recipes for Today's Home Baker

Nothing evokes the comforts of home better than freshly baked treats straight from the oven. But too many home cooks believe they don't have the time to bake except for the occasional special dessert. If you are one of them, this comprehensive baking collection, with nearly 400 recipes for everything from homespun favorites and bake-shop sweets to popular restaurant-style desserts, is guaranteed to change your mind. In this inspired book, you will find recipes that both fit into your busy schedule and suit nearly every occasion, from quick dessert for weeknight suppers to fancy cakes for holiday tables.

Whether you are dreaming of buttery shortbread for an afternoon snack, a luscious berry pie for a midsummer get-together, a buche de Noel for a Christmas Day buffet, or a batch of rolls for Sunday supper, you will discover how to make it in these pages. The recipes are organized into eight comprehensive chapters: Cookies and Bars; Muffins and Quick Breads; Coffee Cakes, Scones, and Biscuits; Cakes and Tortes; Pies and Tarts; Yeasted Breads; Fruit Desserts; and Custards and Egg Dishes. Each chapter provides an array of flavor options to match the seasons and to accommodate a variety of tastes. Every recipe includes a photograph of the finished dish, so you can see how it will look, as well as photographs illustrating key baking task, ingredients, and/or equipment.

Classics enjoyed by adults and kids alike are here, such as lemon bars, chocolate-studded cookies, blueberry muffins with brown-sugar topping, buttermilk biscuits, birthday cake with fudge frosting, pumpkin pie, and country-style cinnamon rolls. Detailed directions for baking chocolate cupcakes, bagels, and madeleines make these typical bakery specialties easy to prepare at home. A large selection of recipes for special occasions, such as almond-flecked chocolate cake with caramel sauce, pear torte with fresh ginger, and cherry cheesecake with a biscotti crust, provides plenty of ideas for holiday and dinner-party tables. Rounding out the book are dozens of recipes for savory baked items, from Roquefort-laced popovers and goat cheese muffins to olive bread and mushroom quiche.

An extensive reference section at the end of the book includes basic recipes, such as pie and tart doughs, dessert sauces and glazes, and cake frostings and fillings. Also included is a tips-and-techniques primer, with photographed step-by-step instructions on everything from rolling out pie dough, making decorative crusts, and frosting a cake to kneading bread dough in a stand mixer. Cooking and ingredient charts and a comprehensive glossary complete the section.

With The Williams-Sonoma Baking Book on your kitchen shelf, you will find yourself baking more often, with results that are always both delicious and rewarding.

Cooking with Chocolate: Essential Recipes and Techniques (Book & DVD)

This comprehensive, illustrated reference offers the essential building blocks and recipes for working with chocolate in the home kitchen. This cooking school in book form opens with 100 step-by-step techniques: chocolate basics (tempering, ganaches, pralines), candy fillings, decorations, doughs, creams and mousses, ice cream and sorbet, sauces, and baker’s secrets. Each method is explained in text and photographs; fourteen are further clarified on the ninety-minute DVD.
Organized into nine sections, 100 recipes are simplified for the home cook: classics (Sachertorte, pro fiteroles, molten chocolate cake), tarts (chocolate-pear, nut-caramel), snacks (macaroons, waffles, brownies, choco-ginger churros), frozen desserts, special occasions (dark chocolate fondue, hazelnut-praline Yule log), and candy (truffles, lollipops, coconut bars).
Each recipe is graded with a three-star rating so the home chef can gauge its complexity. Cross references to techniques, DVD footage, glossary terms, and complementary recipes make navigation easy. The volume includes practical resources: visual dictionaries of kitchen equipment and common ingredients; tips for conserving chocolate; a guide to dark, milk, and white chocolate and the importance of cocoa content; and a detailed index.    
     

Essential Eating Sprouted Baking: With Whole Grain Flours That Digest as Vegetables

Featuring appetizing baked goods ranging from sunrise pancakes to maple banana muffins and cinnamon animal crackers to brownie pie, this cookbook is full of tasty treats made from sprouted flour. An alternative to traditional flours, the sprouted variety is assimilated into the body as a vegetable rather than a starch and is more easily digested. These easy-to-use recipes using sprouted flour open up an entirely new avenue of cuisine for both those suffering with wheat and other grain sensitivities and those who simply want to eat better.

Bake!: Essential Techniques for Perfect Baking

After 30 years of teaching and 8 cookbooks, Nick Malgieri is finally writing the book he's meant to--a collection of 20 essential techniques, with 3 to 5 variations thereof-outlining the easiest way to learn the essentials of baking. The 20 chapters cover all the main techniques of fine baking, starting with simple pastry dough and moving through puff pastry and Danish pastry, all sorts of breads, quick breads, cakes, and cookies.

The Essential Baker: The Comprehensive Guide to Baking with Chocolate, Fruit, Nuts, Spices, and Other Ingredients

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.