lyagushka's Full Review: Dorie Greenspan and Julia Child - Baking With Juli...
What is it about Julia Child that inspires such fond protectiveness among foodies? Is it just me, or there always the feeling, when she comes up in conversation, that someone's about to make a crack at Julia's expense? And yet, no one ever does. It's not like Julia ever needed protection. She had a sense of humor, especially about herself. She was whip smart and never sold herself short. Like any good cook, she always felt there was more to learn. Now that she's gone, she holds a revered place as the patron saint of cooking in America. She's one of our own, a Promethean figure bringing us the light and warmth of food-loving traditions.
Dorie Greenspan, the author of Baking with Julia, is no slouch herself when it comes to French food and baking. She based this impressive cookbook on Julia's PBS series of the same name. Julia gathered to herself many of the most talented bakers in the US, each one expert in a sub-field of baking. She hosted them in her own home and placed herself under their tutelage. She managed to wheedle out of them recipes that could and did actually work in an ordinary (if well-equipped) home kitchen. The results were stupendously drool-worthy, as evidenced by the full-page color photographs showcasing many of the offerings in this cookbook. Martha Stewart made a wedding cake. Nancy Silverton contributed her brioche recipe. Marion Cunningham weighed in with her buttermilk scones.
I don't know how puzzle out where the credit is due for the high quality of this cookbook. No doubt Greenspan did a lot of legwork and editing. The guest bakers provided much of the "raw material." But Julia's touch is all over this book. Let's just say that an ensemble cast of bakers and writers did a great job.
Greenspan starts the book off right with an orientation on the tools and basic ingredients of the baking trade. Few of these tools are strictly essential. But it's a good place to start if you are a complete baking novice, or if your kitchen is stocked with little more than a butter knife and a coffee mug. There are some items in the book that require special equipment to prepare, and it's taken for granted that the home cook has a standing mixer. So it's especially useful to read through the rather lengthy recipes to make sure you have everything you need. My kitchen is well equipped by any standard, but even I needed to improvise a few times while preparing some recipes from this book.
I've been trying my best to learn how to bake bread this year, so I gravitated mostly to the bread recipes. The yeasted breads included here are impressive for both their beauty and their international breadth. Persian naan keeps company with bagels, Finnish pulla, focaccia, Eastern European rye, and pain de campagne. I tried out the creme fraîche brioche dough tart with with poached fruits, as well as the rustic potato loaves, and the savory pumpkin-cranberry-walnut loaf was another hit recipe. One thing that I like in particular about some of the bread recipes in this book is the ability to mix a dough and bake the bread during the same day. The rustic potato dough in particular is very easy to make on a whim. If you've never been a bread baker, this may not seem like much of an issue. Having accepted that long rises or retarding periods are part of a lot of bread recipes, these "quick" bread recipes seemed fun and downright impulsive to me.
But there are a great many recipes in this book which are not bread recipes. I got sucked in by Julia's irresistible "pizza rustica," which looks nothing like any pizza I've ever been served. Much closer to a quiche than anything else, it was both a challenge and a delight to make. And since it stored well in the fridge, I relied on it to feed me as I devoted all my culinary efforts toward the Feast in the days leading up to Thanksgiving.
If you are a serious bread baker, you may find fault with the format of the bread recipes in this book. All the measurements are volumetric, and the yeast most often called for is active dry. Many devoted bakers prefer to measure their dry ingredients by weight for better accuracy. And instant yeast is preferred by many serious bakers. (Of course, if you are a very serious baker, you'll also know the conversion ratio for substituting one type of yeast for another.)
For the most part, the recipes are very easy to understand. There is also a good deal of hand-holding in the recipes. They are written to describe the stages of mixing bread doughs very well, particularly if there is a stage where it looks like something has gone wrong. This is a great attribute in a cookbook, and very reassuring for only moderately experienced bakers. Every recipe I tried out turned out well, and I learned things in the process too.
Baking with Julia would be an excellent basic reference for anyone with an interest in all the classical doughs associated with French pastry work. There are detailed walk-throughs for choux paste, puff pastry, meringue, genoise, croissant dough, Danish pastry, pie crusts and dacquoise, among others. Many of these basic doughs are used for a variety of sweet and savory pastry recipes throughout the book. So if you are the sort of home cook who likes things quick and easy, this may not be the book for you.
If there's one area where I was disappointed in Baking with Julia, it was with the shaping instructions for certain breads. Giving bread dough the proper shape just prior to its last rise can be a very tricky step for a relatively inexperienced baker. The shaping stage by its nature is difficult to translate into words, and is best learned through hands-on practice. That's where a live demonstration or at least good pictures really come in handy. Unfortunately, the small, black-and-white pictures that offer instruction for the home baker take a backseat to the large glossy pictures that lead us all into temptation. My rustic potato loaves tasted fine, but they didn't quite look like the centerfold spread on pp. 64-65. And I was sufficiently confused by the elaborate shaping instructions for the brioche tart that I made a mistake which adversely affected the final product. Not to worry - no one else noticed the fault and it was all eaten happily.
Just like another baking book I reviewed recently, this book won both the James Beard Award and the IACP Cookbook Award. Both of these awards are substantial honors in the world of cooking and baking. I would recommend Baking with Julia very highly to anyone who is serious about learning to bake, but with the caveat that these are not simple recipes. They require a well equipped kitchen and a willingness to spend time in that kitchen. It's one of the best all around introductions to the art of baking I've come across.
I can also recommend these cookbooks:
• The Bread Baker's Apprentice - superlative, expert instruction for mastering yeasted breads
• Dim Sum - a thorough introduction to these tasty Chinese morsels
• Indian Cooking - excellent cookbook by Jaffrey for beginner cooks, includes many meat dishes
• Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone - encyclopedic, with a great dessert section
• Cooking with Pomiane - a deliciously nostalgic review of culinary history, narrated by a great wit
• The Boulevard Cookbook - sumptuous recipes from San Francisco's favorite restaurant
• America's Test Kitchen Family Cookbook - trustworthy guide to all home cooking fundamentals
• Tapas: A Taste of Spain in America - accessible, delicious recipes for nibbles or a hearty meal
• World Vegetarian - suitable for slightly more experienced cooks & essential for vegetarians
• The New Best Recipe - 1000 canonical recipes, perfected
• The Good Egg - fresh & tasty recipes based on the incredible, edible egg
• The Wellness Encyclopedia - an excellent reference guide to the nutritional facts on most anything you could put in your mouth
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