Baking

I love this book! I have made at least 10 recipes from it, and all were very successful. My favorite thing about this book is the very thorough explanation of technique together with excellent pictures. I love the apple pie recipe, my wife asks me to bake it all the time. The pie crust recipe in this book is the one i always reach for, even when cooking pies from recipes in other books. I am puzzled by the negative reviews i have seen. The only explanation I can think of for them is that either the reviewers did not read the material describing technique and jumped straight into the recipes, or that their ovens are not heating up to the correct temperature (be sure to check your oven temperature with an over thermometer, many ovens are off by 50 degrees Farenheit or more, which can make a big difference for some recipes.

Get all his cookbooks. Well explained and the author is a chemist...what's to add? Many, many pictures! Plus, I bought all of them at discount prices!

I took this book out of the library for 3 weeks before purchasing it. I wanted to test a few recipes and see if I would find it useful. After a week, I ordered it. The book covers a wide range of recipes and pictures to go with them. At this point, it's the only baking book I need. It covers breads, desserts, cakes, pastries and more. I am not an expert or experienced baker, but I found it to be very easy to follow and everything I have tried actually works, which I could never say of many other recipe (baking) books.

Baking is a good resource to have, but I find it is best used as a way to generate ideas, rather than as a go-to baking book. Some of the recipes I've tried, most notably the crumb topping for the coffee cake, have serious typos. In addition, I was puzzled that a baking book wouldn't have weight measurements alongside the volume measurements, given that baking presents an opportunity for precision. On the plus side, Baking presents several recipes followed by relatively-simple variations that can produce different tastes, and it helps categorize the various methods of baking to provoke experimentation quite nicely. I wouldn't start with this book, however. If you're looking for cakes, try something by Rose Levy Beranbaum; for breads look at Peter Reinhart. Baking serves as a nice supplement and helpful reading once you've already got the basics down.

I purchased James Peterson's brand new humongous tome on BAKING a few days ago. It is wonderfully illustrated and clear in its instructions. It's got me thinking I can do far more baking-wise than I've ever attempted before because the processes are so clearly broken down in steps. (Which reminds me of something often attributed to Julia Child: There are no such things as difficult recipes. Some just have more steps.) The one complaint I have about the book - and to me it's a substantial one - none of the measurements for the recipes are by weight. I believe this is a big mistake when so many recent baking books (including this one) talk about the precision of baking. There can be a meaningful lack of accuracy when doing measurements solely by volume. To finish on the positive, I am eager to start working my way through all Peterson's recipes and increasing my baking vocabulary and technique. There's a huge amount to learn here and it all looks delicious!

If you are an industry professional or home cook this is definitely a book that you want for your collection. James Peterson broke down baking in this book to the essentials that will make your projects a success. He describes the technique behind producing successful baking products, and that is what cooking is all about technique is what leads to success. He covers more pastry than bread baking but, in the bread baking section does going to decent detail. If you're looking for a good bread baking book I recommend starting with “the bread Baker's apprentice “written by Michael Reinhardt

I must say that this book is gorgeous. I received the item as a gift and sat looking through the pictures the whole first night I ordered it. It wasn't until the following day that I had the opportunity to read through the recipes. The recipes can be intimidating on the read through, some being very complicated. Yet the author seems confident that all of them can be attempted by the home chef and ending in success. I found this book to be informative as well as beautiful. If you are a baker, you won't go wrong purchasing this book.

When I first bought this book I was slightly intimidated by it, but soon dove headfirst into it and it is now my go-to cook book. It has great pictures and descriptions as well as good variations to recipes. You can kind of pick and choose to create cakes, ie, pick this cake, this filling, this frosting, or you can use total cake recipes that the author has put in. Very useful and a great book to have in your kitchen!

I bought this book while I was getting myself more professional material to play with. I must say I am very pleased with it. While it does shows you the steps of a recipe independently, the book is build around "one recipe, one technique" and the teachings you get while doing one recipe will apply to many more in the future. Which also means, you can easily combine your favorite cake with your preferred glaze, without fuss. It's well organized and can easily be navigated through. I don't get the people complaining about the lack of "troubleshooting" in this book. It is literally FILLED with all kinds of little notes and tool tips memos with all sorts of guidance. Plus, there are many pictures to show you all those tricky steps. Surely, those people must have quickly flicked the pages of this book. Also, it is important to realize as well, this book was not written for beginners, or even good home bakers. It's written for people aspiring to expert / professional level baking. How do I know ? The bad comments are what I used to complain about when my mother-in-law (a chef) would dictate a recipe to me; add enough of this ingredient, cook 'till texture is right, don't beat too much, etc. So, yes, not everything is illustrated, and yes, they are expecting a high level in their readers. But that is how professionals roll. I have used this book for now a few years and successfully whipped out many recipes, like the crème d'or, the chocolate sponge cake, the rolled pistachio buttercream cake, and they all came out perfectly. My favorite features are all the pictures explaining more complicated techniques, all the inspiration provided, and it also helped me lots with pastries, which requires more doigté and finesse than cakes. It's an impressive book, covering a wide range of subjects, but I believe it stands strong to it's name, and provides one hell of a baking education.

very good book...the recipes are very easy to follow and gave me the exactly results I was looking for

The condition of this book was disgusting!