The Cook's Illustrated Baking Book : : Baking Demystified : With 450 Recipes From America's Most Trusted Food Magazine

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Secondary subtitle on jacket: With 450 foolproof recipes from America's most trusted food magazine.
Includes index.
Quick breads, muffins, biscuits, and scones -- Sweet rolls, doughnuts, and coffee cakes -- Griddle cakes, waffles, and granola -- Yeasted rolls and loaves -- Pizza and focaccia -- Cookies -- Brownies and bars -- Snack cakes and fruit cakes -- Chiffon cakes, angel food cakes, pound cakes, and bundt cakes -- Layer cakes -- Fruit desserts and crêpes -- Pies and tarts -- Savory tarts and quiches -- Pastry -- Baked custards, puddings, and soufflés.

REVIEWS & SUMMARIES

Publishers Weekly Review
Summary / Annotation
Author Notes

COMMUNITY REVIEWS

Exhaustive/exhausting submitted by willow on July 4, 2014, 10:36am There are basically two kinds of people in the world: ones who find Cook's Illustrated/America's Test Kitchen/Christopher Kimball/Cook's Country to be delightfully precise, and those who find them to be pedantic stuffed shirts with far too many opinions.

Their recipes tell you "the" way to make things, with little to no wiggle room for your taste. This may mean that you finally solve the problem of over-spreading chocolate chip cookies or weeping lemon meringue pie, or it may mean that you find you don't share their preferences. They tend towards the strongly flavored, particularly in all things chocolate, for example.

Really, it eliminates many of the problems that new cooks/bakers have that experienced cooks/bakers don't -- the things that are often a bit tricky or learned by feel. When you have a 500+ page book that weighs as much as a small child, you'd better believe it's got a lot in it, in small print, no less, and that it's not likely you could ever become an expert at that many items.

Few of the recipes are really imaginary; they are mostly old standards done "the right way" for reliable results. The recipes are generously full of butter, sugar, and white flour, so don't count on ultra healthy baked goods.

They also have the strange habit of constantly announcing something is the right way to make something, but they change the method. For example, this book says the secret is lots of fresh lemon juice plus some milk, with flour to thicken. Their magazine says don’t use whole eggs, and don’t overdo the lemon juice — instead use cream of tartar. It is hard to know what to make of the same company putting out so many supposedly ultimate/best recipes.

I say: it's a good thing the library owns a copy, so you can check it out and see it for yourself!

***This book has been reissued with a new cover. See https://aadl.org/catalog/record/10389153