How Baking Works by Paula Figoni
Exploring the Fundamentals of Baking Science
Learn what goes wrong with your baking adventures, and become a more confident baker with this kitchen textbook.
How Baking Works will take the guesswork out of your baking sessions. Paula Figoni's book provides the knowledge necessary for a new baker to develop confidence in the kitchen.
An Exact Science
Baking is an exact science, unlike many other types of cooking. When baking bread, making a pie or even rolling out cookie dough, adding an extra pinch of one ingredient is enough to throw off the entire chemistry and create a cooking disaster. This is the unfortunate reason many cooks give up on baking, which can otherwise be a very rewarding process. A thorough understanding of how ingredients work together will allow you to experiment with recipes while baking; something most new bakers are fearful of trying.
Introduction to Baking
While accuracy in measurements is important in baking, here you'll learn why it's equally important to control the temperature of the ingredients. A precise oven temperature is also key.
Wheat Flour & Grains
The types and functions of wheat flours are explained, as well as cereal and cereal-free grains. Finally, you can confidently choose from a baffling array of supermarket choices.
Gluten & Sugars
Gluten is something a novice cook will overlook and then be perplexed as to why the dough is unmanageable. Taking a few minutes to read and understand how gluten develops can save disappointment in the future.
Ingredients of a Good Dough
The function and handling of many important ingredients are explained, including fats, milk, eggs leavening agents and flavorings. You will also learn the best technique for selecting, storing and using fruit, common nuts and how to toast them, and the use of cocoa and chocolate products.
Apply What You've Learned
This is not a recipe book, but a lesson in baking. As such, there are hands-on exercises and review questions at the end of each chapter to practice what you've learned.
Become an Expert Pastry Chef
The lessons in this book will give you the confidence of a professional pastry chef even if you're just baking for fun. While many types of cooking can be learned as you go, successful baking requires a deeper understanding. These class-like chapters can be tackled leisurely, at your own pace. Once completed, the knowledge gained from this book will save you hours of frustration.
How Baking Works is used as a reference in culinary arts classes, and functions as a textbook, but it useful to a home cook. Learning how things work, and deciphering what goes wrong when they don't, will put you in command of your baking, and that means you're likely to enjoy it much more.
Paperback: 416 pages, $40.50
Publisher: Wiley; 2 edition (October 5, 2007)
Language: English
ISBN-13: 978-0471747239
