COOKBOOK REVIEW – The Everyday Baker: Recipes and Techniques for Foolproof Baking

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The Everyday Baker: Recipes and Techniques for Foolproof Baking

• Author: Abigail Johnson Dodge
• Hardcover: 624 pages
• Publisher: Taunton Press (December 1, 2015)
• ISBN-10: 1621138100
• ISBN-13: 978-1621138105
• Cover price $40.00

The Everyday Baker is the ultimate resource for anyone who likes, loves, or lives to bake. This definitive collection serves as a delicious roadmap through a baker’s sweet and savory kitchen and includes over 176 foolproof, innovative recipes all featuring must-know tips and techniques, comprehensive instructions, 80 stunning photographs of the finished dishes, and almost 1,000 step-by-step photographs designed to revolutionize the home baking experience to help bakers of all skill levels bake with confidence and authority. So go ahead and roll up your sleeves, pull out the flour, heat up the oven, and get ready to wow your family, friends, or even customers with the best dessserts and baked goods of your life. Because when it comes to this particular brand of sweet success, it’s all in the techniques, it’s all in the flavors, it’s all in the passion…and it’s all in The Everyday Baker!

Abigail Johnson Dodge is a widely respected baking expert, popular food writer, and instructor, and longtime contributing editor to Fine Cooking magazine. Abby studied in Paris at La Varenne and worked in pastry under superstar chefs Michel Guérard and Guy Savoy. Dodge is the author of nine cookbooks, including The Weekend Baker—an IACP Cookbook Award Finalist. She is a regular guest on TV and radio.

Chapters include

• Everyday Baking Basics
• Morning Food
• Quick To Make
• Cookies
• Cakes
• Pies And Tarts
• Puddings And Custards
• Yeast Breads
• Pastry
• Flatbread
• Fruit Desserts

Each chapter has a listing of the recipes it contains. I always find this helpful, but was especially appreciative this cookbook had it as some recipes weren’t where I thought they would be (donuts are under mornings and not cakes where I would have expected them). This book is substantial. I don’t mean only in size, which it is, but I also mean in content. This recipes in this book are extremely detailed. There are tutorials, many with multiple photos, detailing each step you will need to carry out for the technique being used. The cookbook contains beautiful, color photos of many of the recipes, which are contained in numerous collages that are placed throughout the book. As someone who considers baking to be their weakest area of cooking, I appreciate the many helpful tips and suggestions for prep, making ahead, alternate ingredients, substitutions and more that are included everywhere in the book. Cooking time is completely buried, so you have to read through the entire recipe and any tutorials it includes before you can have an idea of how long that recipe will take to make. As cooking time is a determining factor in selecting recipes that I want to try making for the first time, I would have greatly preferred to see this info listed right at the top of the recipe. This cookbook would be appropriate for anyone with an interest in baking.