99 Recipes for Breads, Brioches and Pastries.
It’s been a good couple of years for baking. The outside world has gone mad, but we have discovered we have a haven of tranquillity and delicious nostalgia in our own kitchens. New European Baking: 99 Recipes for Breads, Brioches and Pastries offers a taste of gentler times.
There are, as you might have guessed, almost one hundred recipes in this volume. Laurel Kratochvila, an American-born boulangerie-trained baker, has her own Jewish bakery and bagel shop in Berlin; here she shares the know-how so essential for producing good baked goods.
New European Baking: 99 Recipes for Breads, Brioches and Pastries shows us the classic approach to making perfect breads and pastries. It’s a mini baking course in hard-back form. This would be perfect for any keen home-baker or anybody looking to take their culinary study to another level. It’s a must-have book for those who want to bake their own sourdough: the instructions are detailed, as they are throughout the book.
Laurel marries narrative, history and flour. She takes a pan-European perspective, creating a travelogue of breads and sweet treats. There are basic bread recipes as well as more advanced offerings. There are so many items here which are new to me. Yes, the doughs are classic but the fillings for the pastries present inspiration. Once one has mastered the techniques then the baking world is one’s oyster.
New European Baking: 99 Recipes for Breads, Brioches and Pastries is keeping me occupied, first with reading and then with baking my way through the whole book. A wonderful gift for any enthusiastic baker and a thoughtful and charming introduction to one’s oven.
New European Baking: 99 Recipes for Breads, Brioches and Pastries
Author: Laurel Kratochvila
Published by: Prestel
Price: £26.00
ISBN-13: 978-3791388397