Leiths Baking Bible

by Susan Spaull

Produced by the acclaimed Leiths School of Food and Wine, Leiths Baking Bible is authoritative, thorough, and comprehensive, covering every aspect of baking from bread, patisserie, and pastry to cakes, scones, buns, and biscuits. You will find all the classic recipes here€”Profiteroles, Quiche Lorraine, Swiss Roll, and Brioche€”and innumerable tempting alternatives€”Artichoke and Green Olive Tart, Walnut Bread, and Almond Shortbread. As with all the cookbooks in the Leiths series, there is an emphasis on technique, especially invaluable for a book on this subject. Useful, inspiring, and utterly reliable, this is the only book you'll need for home baking.

Genres: Cookbooks, Food, Nonfiction, Reference

671 pages, Hardcover

First published September 18, 2006

Reviews

[Hilary · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a very concise reference book for someone who loves to bake. There are hundreds of recipes in here, sadly like an old fashioned cook book there's the odd photo but located nowhere near the recipe. I expect any bake from a bake-off technical is in here. The recipes are well explained and all the ones we have tried have worked well and often been the best example of that recipe, if we have tried the same bake from several different books. I must have tried at least 50 recipes from this collection and feel I have only scratched the surface. Ideally I would like to see this reprinted in sections with a photo for every bake.

I have recently been trying recipes from the bread section of this book. Interestingly, like the Paul Hollywood sourdough recipe for sourdough bread, this uses twice the amount of starter as other recipes. Like all the recipes I have tried for sourdough, they all seem to have very different methods and time schedules. I'm trying this one next and continually tweaking what I use to try to find the perfect sourdough loaf.

Although this has few photos and is a giant tome to plough through, it's a very useful reference and one I wouldn't want to be without.

[Moira Clifton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Haven't had this long. The two recipes I have tried have not been amazing, but the book is very informative and easy to follow. I'm looking forward to trying some of the savoury pies.