Sunday, December 28, 2008

Complete Baking Cookbook or Hungering for America

Complete Baking Cookbook: 350 Recipes from Cookies and Cakes to Muffins and Pies

Author: George Geary

The definitive book on baking for home cooks.

Nothing says comfort food like freshly baked cookies, a cake, muffins or homemade bread cooling in the kitchen. Creating those mouthwatering baked treats to share with family and friends is one of life's great pleasures.

The Complete Baking Cookbook provides the inspiration to explore the wonderful world of baking. And of course it includes the tested recipes to make it easy and tasty. Written by baker and pastry chef extraordinare George Geary, this collection of 350 easy-to-follow recipes offers a tantalizing variety of goodies from pies, tarts, cobblers and crisps, to cookies, cheesecakes and holiday pastries.

Here's just a small sampling:


• Blue ribbon double chocolate cookies; gingersnaps; maple sugar cookies
• Honey apple spice muffins; orange macadamia rolls; jumbo cinnamon rolls
• Sweet potato pie; apple cherry cobbler; Passover honey cheesecake
• Holiday English trifle; Christmas cherry cake; spring Easter Lemon torte.

What really sets this baking book apart from others is that there is a special section with comprehensive material for each category of baked good. For example, the cookies chapter includes instructions and line drawings on effective techniques (scooping, using a pastry bag), troubleshooting and tips, choosing the right pan, and comparison charts.

With hundreds of recipes and an abundance of luscious photographs, this book will be cherished by home bakers everywhere.



Table of Contents:
Acknowledgments

Introduction
• Electric Equipment
• Hand Tools
• Baking Pan
• Common Ingredients Cookies, Bars and Squares
• Introduction and Tips
• Cookies, 44 recipes
• Bar Cookies and Brownies, 26 recipes Pies, Tarts and Cobblers
• Introduction and Tips
• Pie Pastry Doughs and Crusts, 7 recipes
• Double-Crust Pies, 5 recipes
• Single-Crust Pies, 12 recipes
• Tarts, 6 recipes
• Cobbler, Crisps and Buckles, 5 recipes Cakes
• Introduction and Tips
• Cheesecakes, 12 recipes
• Two-Layer Cakes, 11 recipes
• One-Pan Cakes, 20 recipes
• Cupcakes and Jelly Rolls, 7 recipes Frostings, Glazes and More
• Introduction and Tips
• 29 recipes Confections
• Introduction and Tips
• Fudges, 8 recipes
• Confections, 18 recipes Grand Finales
• Puddings and Custards, 10 recipes
• Desserts, 26 recipes Breakfast Breads
• Introduction and Tips
• Breakfast Rolls, 8 recipes
• Muffins, 20 recipes
• Scones and Biscuits, 21 recipes Holiday Favorites
• Introduction
• Holiday Cakes, Pies and Pastry, 11 recipes
• Muffins, Quick Breads, Cookies and Candies, 13 recipes
• Holiday Cheesecakes, 9 recipes

Sources
Index

Interesting book: Arise Sir Jamie Oliver or Gelato Sorbet and Ice Cream

Hungering for America: Italian, Irish, and Jewish Foodways in the Age of Migration

Author: Hasia R Diner

Millions of immigrants were drawn to American shores, not by the mythic streets paved with gold, but rather by its tables heaped with food. How they experienced the realities of America's abundant food--its meat and white bread, its butter and cheese, fruits and vegetables, coffee and beer--reflected their earlier deprivations and shaped their ethnic practices in the new land.

Hungering for America tells the stories of three distinctive groups and their unique culinary dramas. Italian immigrants transformed the food of their upper classes and of sacred days into a generic "Italian" food that inspired community pride and cohesion. Irish immigrants, in contrast, loath to mimic the foodways of the Protestant British elite, diminished food as a marker of ethnicity. And, East European Jews, who venerated food as the vital center around which family and religious practice gathered, found that dietary restrictions jarred with America's boundless choices.

These tales, of immigrants in their old worlds and in the new, demonstrate the role of hunger in driving migration and the significance of food in cementing ethnic identity and community. Hasia Diner confirms the well-worn adage, "Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are."

Publishers Weekly

In this fascinating survey of the eating habits and influences of Jewish, Italian and Irish immigrants, Diner, a professor of American Jewish history at New York University, charts with wit and graceful prose the similarities and differences between these three distinct groups as they encountered mainstream American culture. Italian immigrants, fleeing poverty and a rigid, class-based economic system, found in America the ability to take "possession of elite food associated with the well-off" and to forge a new collective ethnic identity; in doing so they introduced Italian cuisine to America and created lucrative culinary business opportunities. The Irish, fleeing famine, did not possess a complex "national food culture" because they came from a place "where hunger... defined identity." But many Irish women became cooks and servants (and incidentally, were always called "Biddy"), and thereby entered domestic American life and became familiar with its bourgeois foods and customs. Eastern European Jews "lived in a world where food was sacred for all," as well as tightly controlled by religious law. Like Italians, Jews made their food a public statement of identity, and the availability of nonkosher foods in the U.S. exacerbated conflicts between traditional and assimilationist factions. Diner deftly juggles a huge amount of detail and analysis drawing upon memoirs, cookbooks, newspaper accounts, films and studies of consumer culture and provides both political and social insights in a highly accessible social history. (Jan.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.



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