Better From Scratch (Williams-Sonoma): Delicious DIY Foods to Start Making at Home

by Ivy Manning

This go-to guide features 60 delectable recipes inspired by everyday food products we tend to buy. From homemade granola and jams to condiments and kimchi, this cookbook is full of easy recipes, helpful tips and clever ideas for making these favorite items at home. Armed with this collection of do-it-yourself recipes—easy to personalize and customize with the seasons—stock your kitchen with flavor and make delicious gifts for friends and family. You’ll start to rethink what goes into your grocery cart when you realize the endless possibilities, and health benefits, of making these favorite foods from scratch.

Whether whipping up your favorite sandwich condiments, fermenting your own sauerkraut, or making beef jerky from scratch, so many kitchen staples are simply better and more nutritious homemade. This collection of do-it-yourself recipes will inspire you to stock your kitchen with made-from- scratch favorites without the added preservatives, sugar, and unpronounceable ingredients found in similar store-bought products.

Organized by savory and sweet items, the recipes span classic to innovative and provide solutions for everyday items, inspiration for new creations, and ways to satisfy salty and sugary cravings. You’ll also find expert advice on storing foods, easy and seasonal variations on recipes, and how- to’s for DIY food gifts, trendy sodas and cocktails, and entirely homemade snack platters. These modern DIYs, like homemade chocolate-hazelnut spread, nut milks and butters, infused syrups, and vodka-brined olives, will provide just the arsenal you need to create an endlessly inspiring and tasty kitchen.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Nonfiction, Food

160 pages, Hardcover

First published July 8, 2014

About the author

Ivy Manning is a Portland, Oregon-based freelance food and travel writer, food stylist, and author of The Farm to Table Cookbook. Her work has been featured in Cooking Light, Sunset magazine, Fine Cooking, ediblePortland, Food & Wine magazine and on Culinate.com. Additionally, Manning is a regular contributor to the Oregonian FOODday section with her Vegetarian Flavors column.

Her most recent book, The Adaptable Feast: Satisfying Meals for the Vegetarians, Vegans, and Omnivores at Your Table (Sasquatch Books, 2009) guides readers through the uncharted territory of cooking for mixed-diet families. Mannings book shows busy home cooks how to make delicious meals that feed everyone in the family, from meat eaters to vegetarians or vegans, without dirtying every dish in the kitchen.

Manning attended the Western Culinary Institute in Portland, Oregon, followed by an externship at the award-winning Paleys Place restaurant. Ever since, Manning has been cooking, writing, and teaching culinary classes.

Mannings interest in writing and cooking has led her to travel the globe studying the cuisines of every country she visits, including cooking trips to Thailand, Italy, France, Mexico, and the South Pacific.

When her bags arent packed, she is writing; blogging (ivysfeast.blogspot.com); cooking for her vegetarian husband, Gregor (the photographer for her books); and petting her retired greyhound, Mini."

Reviews

[Nichole ~Bookaholic~ · Rating 4 out of 5]

I want to make most of the recipes in this book.....just not sure where to start first. Some really good recipes and most look so easy I can't beleive I have not thought about makeing them from scratch in the past.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pictures of recipes? Yes.
Commentary on recipes? Yes.
Nutrition facts? No.
Recipe Style? Mostly condiments and such.
Any keepers? I could be tempted to try the ricotta, but nothing else was really inspiring.

[Lisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book with some practical and easy recipes!

[Missy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Laid out beautifully. Great book for those of us who like to keep things homemade and made more simply.

[Megan · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a recipe collection without any context unless you count foodies as an ethnic group or specific cooking style. For example, one recipe is for preserved lemons but other than a brief note that you can cook them with chicken, there are no recipes that use them. For that you need a Moroccan cookbook, which one good one that I read has far more detailed instructions. Each recipe is individual, there is no instruction given outside of the recipes so while you can gather some techniques, it's a bit hit or miss.

Recipes have weight as well as cups and spoons so they should be easy to replicate and a there are a few interesting ones but to make anything other than snacks, you would need another cookbook.

[Reading · Rating 2 out of 5]

The recipes look good. IF you can read them

The recipes do look good, but the font is small and cannot be, changed. Not even enlarged. It excludes people with vision issues and there is no dyslexia friendly font option either. Aesthetics 1, accessibility 0.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Even though I didn't get any recipes from it, it was a beautiful cookbook!

[Michelle Farley · Rating 4 out of 5]

Definitely be buying this one! Lots of great recipes!

[Rhonda · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots of simple but delicious recipes. I’ve made the pickled veggies and preserved lemons many times. They look as nice as they taste.

[Jone · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good book to start with, to learn to cook those important and basic foundations, the ones which lesser your budget and increase your cooking competency.