The Weekend Baker: Irresistible Recipes, Simple Techniques, and Stress Free Strategies for Busy People

Rating:
Summary: I love baking again!
Review: After taking a long haitus from baking because of a busy work schedule, I suddenly found myself with a long-term houseguest who has a decided sweet-tooth, and this book has been a godsend! I have been baking cookies and brownies and cakes galore, to rave reviews: my husband and our guest have declared me a bloody genius! Everything I've tried has come out exactly as promised. Abigail Dodge's reassuring, conversational style is so refreshing, and she made me realize that I don't need huge blocks of time and a bunch of gadgets to get great results. I actually like to bake again. Thank you, Abigail!

Rating:
Summary: Easy to follow recipes
Review: I love to bake but I prefer recipes that aren't very complicated (a little challenge is fine) and that contain common ingredients so I'm not running around the grocery store trying to find this one item no one has ever heard of. This cookbook has met my requirements!

She has it divided into three sections: the first being quick desserts to whip up for unexpected parties, guests, etc., the second being recipes that you can prepare parts of ahead of time (which she also shows you how to do that with other recipes in other chapters), and the last section are recipes that require a little more time.

At the beginning of the book she lists common cooking tools and ingredients that you might want to stock your cabinets with.

I have made the mini elephant ears which were eaten quickly and this week I am trying the chocolate chip cookies. I love how she explains the baking process in the recipes and I couldn't be happier with this book!

Rating:
Summary: Weekend and Week-long Success with Baking
Review: The author's vast experience with baking comes through in this family-friendly treasure chest of recipes. She provides very useful guidelines for home baking in her chapter introductions and encouraging anecdotes and advice in her head notes. Each recipe starts with do-ahead steps, which are great for those of us whose schedules require that we bake in time installments. Let your dough rise in the fridge overnight! It will be perky and ready to shape into bread in the morning! We made the Buttery Pull-Apart Dinner Rolls for Thanksgiving, and everyone raved. The dough for the rolls was some of the easiest I've ever worked with. It was fun for the kids to see how successful dough is supposed to look and feel at each step. (Note: If you make the rolls plain rather than using one of the suggested herb or cheese flavorings, add an extra pinch of salt.) We also made the Velvety Pumpkin Tart. It's richness is balanced by the (easy!) gingersnap crust. We made it in stages starting 2 days ahead of Thanksgiving, following the do-ahead steps. Very convenient! We have a list of six more recipes we're dying to try, including Brandy Snaps, Three-Bite Whoopie Pies, and Pumpkin Half-Moon Pie Pockets. Large type makes the book easy to read, and wide margins left me room to write notes for the next time. Thanks, Abby!

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Baking Tutorial for Busy People. Read it all!
Review: `the weekend baker' by baking teacher and `Fine Cooking' editor Abigail Johnson Dodge' has succeeded in the very difficult task of giving us baking recipes which can be insinuated into the busy schedules of people who still find the need to bake. Ms. Dodge has taken up the challenge and has succeeded in showing us how to bake some really very respectable desserts in a relatively short time without compromising quality. In the process, Miss Abigail has reinforced one of Rachael Ray's cardinal lessons. You simply cannot cook or bake successfully without knowing what you are doing and without some planning. In fact, to bake quickly or `intermittently' (more on this later), you actually need better planning than if you pick up a recipe from a conventional baking book and go to it.

Ms. Dodge has really accomplished a major feat with this book in that she has simplified several major types of baking without compromising on the quality of her presentation and without leaving any pitfalls unmarked for the unsuspecting newbie. For those of you who know baking books, do not expect the kind of details on ingredients, variations, equipment, and techniques which you may find in a book by baking heavyweights such as Flo Brakker, Rose Levy Beranbaum, Nick Malgieri, Alice Medrich, or Gayle Ortiz. The author's entire focus is on presenting recipes that work under certain time constraints. The odd result of very successfully achieving this objective is that many of the recipes are even longer than their analogues that are not written to conserve time. This reinforces my statement that to cook or bake when time is of the essence, you need more knowledge and more planning than with conventional recipes.

Thus, while almost every presentation of general advice on cooking has you read the recipe though before beginning, Ms. Dodge insists that you read through the recipe at least three times. For scatterbrain know-it-alls like me who think they know better than the recipe writer, I would up that count to at least five times. Whenever you cook or bake at home, you want to minimize time pressure, especially when you are working through a recipe for the first time.

Like almost every cookbook with a theme I have reviewed recently, Ms. Dodge does not stick limit herself to the scenario suggested by her title; however, she has done such a good job of realizing the task set in her subtitle, `irresistible recipes, simple techniques, and stress-free strategies for busy people' that I will not carp on her straying from the weekend paradigm. But, in order for you to get the very best benefit from Ms. Dodge's book, you really must read all the introductory material and the general material that opens the recipe section from which you plan to bake a recipe. For starters, there are Ms. Dodge's guidelines on how to use the book on page 16 of the introduction, just before she describes her three types of recipes. Also, one really needs to read the notes on equipment and ingredients. These sections succeed at attaining that fine balance between what you really need to know and what may be useful to know, but won't hurt if you don't.

The three recipe classes Ms. Dodge has worked up for time sensitive situations follow.

First, there are `baker's express' recipes which can be prepared in a hurry. These are all recipes which can actually be done in about an hour, the time you may have between arriving home after work and the time the desserts may be needed after dinner. This chapter opens with ten tips on what makes a fast baking recipe. All these tips are concise and common sensible, but they cannot be used without some knowledge and experience. You cannot bake in shallow pans unless you have acquired these pans in advance. You cannot substitute baking on the stovetop unless your recipe has been tweaked to work in this situation. You cannot use the microwave unless you know all the dangers associated with running it too long with sensitive ingredients such as butter or chocolate. These tips may go a long way toward enabling you to convert a conventional recipe into an express recipe, but not without the leisure to think things through and write out the steps when you are not under time pressure.

Second, there is `baking in stages' where the total time required to complete a baking job may be several hours or even a day or more, but the time you actually need to attend to the baking is a small fraction of this time. The paradigm of this type of baking is yeast-leavened goods. Yeast doughs just naturally have long rest periods where they rise. And, refrigerating the rising dough for part or all of this time can slow these rising times. Ms. Dodge's book is not the place for dealing with thorough discussion of bread baking, but it is ironic that slowing the dough's rise is commonly considered one of the best ways to improve the flavor of the bread.

Third, there are `productions', where time ceases to be an issue and the primary object is to impress your audience. As these products involve more elaborate techniques, the author introduces some new equipment, but retains a lot of her focus on achieving big results with simple techniques. My favorite example is her three-layer carrot cake that requires but one baking pan, with layers created by partitioning the sheet into three parts.

This book will not replace your favorite Maida Heatter recipes, but it will go a long way toward making you a more nimble baker when you want to impress on short notice.

This book is highly recommended for people who really want to bake, but feel they do not have the time. Baking still requires time, knowledge, and equipment, but Ms. Dodge shows you how to get the most out of a short supply of time. Highly recommended.