The Soup & Bread Cookbook - excellent 5 stars

The Soup & Bread Cookbook: More Than 100 Seasonal Pairings for Simple, Satisfying Meals by Beatrice Ojakangas
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I am one of those nerds who like to read cookbooks. For me, the thing that constitutes a cookbook that is fun to read is a bit of history, a bit of narrative, some instruction, and great recipes. This cookbook fell a little short on those counts and wasn't a great read, but the recipes turned out really fabulously.

Ojakangas built this book with soup and an accompanying bread to go with it, so the net result was that there were an equal number of soup and bread recipes. I made a few recipes from the book, but I'll discuss just two of them here.

By now, those who read my reviews know that I love to make bread... not the super easy way. I've been experimenting with some fairly complicated artisan breads. So what ended up being outstanding bread from this book? A simple Amish White Bread recipe and Old Fashioned Cream Scones. The bread came out with a fine moist crumb and the cream scones were beautiful and went fast. Both recipes were family favorites and didn't last long.

Overall, this was an excellent cookbook with recipes that were as tasty as they looked in the book.

Old-Fashioned Cream Scones - I used my food processor to make these and followed the instructions to a T and these came out with a subtle sweetness. Perfect with morning coffee, or tea.

Amish White Bread - this was supposed to make just one loaf, but as you can see, the one loaf rose to the size of two loaves (I used my bread machine for the dough, which may be the reason). Next time I'll split it between two loaf pans. What did I do with the giant loaf? I cut the top section off and ended up with two loaves of bread that was so good that not a single crumb was wasted.

I would post the recipes, but I'm pretty sure there would be some copyright infringement issue. You'll have to buy the book or get it from your library.



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Excellent recipes and beautifully illustrated

Taste of Home: Cooking School Cookbook: 400 + Simple to Spectacular Recipes by Taste of Home
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Calling this a cooking school cookbook may be a bit of a misnomer, but it is entertaining to look at and the recipes I tried were fabulous.

Yes, I'm one of those people who really enjoys reading cookbooks (and craft books). This giant volume has food from every category. Some come with very well illustrated instructions - that may be the cooking school part of the book, but it doesn't illustrate quite enough for beginners to follow. Since I've been baking a lot of bread these days (you can see some in my twitter pics), I gravitated to the bread section. There were only a few bread options, but one was a challah bread that looked so easy to make. Of course braiding wasn't quite as easy as it looked, so my bread looked more like a giant pretzel. Still, the texture was delicate and my family enjoyed the bread so much they keep asking me to make more. Sunday is usually my baking day, so this Sunday I'll make the bread again and, this time, I might just get the braiding down right. I'll follow the braiding instructions in the book a little more closely this time.

The beauty of this book is that these seem to be kitchen tested - there isn't a bad one in the bunch - and the recipes I did make (one example above) came out really well and very tasty. Reading this cookbook has me more interested in trying other Taste of Home titles. Excellent.



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