BakeWise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Baking with Over 200 Magnificent Recipes

The author of Bakewise, Shirley Corriher, is a food scientist probably best known to foodies for her previous book,  Cookwise: The Secrets of Cooking Revealed , and her guest appearances on the Food Network show Good Eats with Alton Brown. I have read in other sources that Cookwise is considered a standard text in culinary schools. Cookwise is a combination food science book and cookbook covering nearly the entire range of cooking, and baking was covered in one chapter of that book. Bakewise, however, expands the complex topic of baking into its own volume.The entire book is divided into but five chapters, though large chapters, on cakes, puff pastry, pie, cookies and breads. Each chapter discusses the science behind the product and introduces several recipes demonstrating the science and techniques discussed.As with Cookwise (which I also own and highly recommend), I got the book more for the science than the recipes, but the recipes are excellent, also. I feel bad that I've had the book for several weeks since receiving it through the Vine program and have not yet reviewed it, but I wanted to have a chance to read it through and try several recipes. So far, I've made the Chocolate Crinkle Cookies (Fabulous, but my wife thought the double coating of sugar made them too sweet), Roasted Pecan Chocolate Chip Cookies, Improved Tunnel of Fudge Cake (shared with the family, and everyone raved about it), All-Time Favorite E-Z, Dee-licious Sour Cream Cornbread (neither my wife nor I were that thrilled with it) and Lava Cookies (yummy!).I should mention that there is no avoidance of fat in these recipes! For those trying to reduce calorie intake, there are two-plus pages of discussion on artificial sweeteners, but only has one recipe for muffins making any use of them. In my opinion, Mrs. Corriher really likes nuts in her baking. Unfortunately, my wife does not.I have found very few technical issues with this first edition of the book. In one place, you are told to refer to a topic on page 000. Apparently, a reference that was not filled in before the book went to press.I did find myself, in several instances while reading through the book, asking, "Didn't I just read that?" Some topics are repeated in the same detail. Perhaps this is for the benefit of those looking up a particular topic rather than for those reading the book from cover to cover.I also wished for some figures again and again. The center of the book has several pages of large, glossy, color photos of the food. I'm not one who needs a lot of big photos of food in a cookbook, but I wish more, smaller, photos of the recipes were given. The author assumes that you know what a particular item is supposed to look at. Perhaps I am not educated enough to use this book - I would like to know what it's supposed to look like. I also feel that procedures and hardware (e.g, diagrams of types of cake pans) could be better illustrated with figures.Corriher writes in a conversational style, telling how she learned something or where she came across a recipe. The folksy discussions add a nice personal touch to the reading and make it more interesting. She is also very good about giving credit where credit is due for the techniques and recipes.I would most closely compare this book to Alton Brown's  I'm Just Here for More Food: Food x Mixing + Heat = Baking . I hate to say it, because I'm a big fan of Good Eats and Alton Brown, but I believe he is more gifted in the area of television production than writing books. There is no comparison - get Bakewise. Previously, I would have suggested Peter Reinhart's  The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread  for someone interested in baking bread. I may now recommend Bakewise instead; and you get chapters on cake, cookies and puff pastry, too. Corriher does reference Reinhart's more specialized books.I think the true indication of my opinion of this book is that I have already given it as a Christmas gift to my brother, who I had recently learned had taken up baking. I thought this book would get him off to a good start.I would give it 4-1/2 stars instead of five if I could, just because I think there is room for a little improvement to this first edition as I suggested, but in the end, I highly recommend this book. It is invaluable in implementing correct baking procedures, understanding why we're often instructed in recipes to do something in a certain way, knowing what went wrong and how to fix it next time, and modifying, or creating, recipes to achieve your desired goals.AFTER TWO YEARS AND A MOVE TO NEW MEXICO....My wife had a bunch of blueberries left from another recipe and asked if I could make blueberry muffins. I went straight for Bakewise. Over the following week, some additional criticisms developed.My wife expressed one of my thoughts when she looked at the book and asked, "Doesn't she have any simpler recipes?" I don't keep heavy whipping cream and buttermilk around the house, and hate to have to make a special trip to the store for these items. And then the leftovers go bad. Since Corriher provides different versions of some recipes, a simpler version would be nice. The procedures can be complex, but the whole point of the book is to improve your baking, and these procedures are there for a reason. I don't really mind the procedures so much as making a special trip to the store for perishable, little-used ingredients when I have a whim to bake something.Second, and this is related to the next problem, the science discussions are interspersed with the recipes, and do not clearly stand out. I don't know that it's the best approach, but I'd like to see all of the science in each chapter all grouped together in a single section followed by the recipes.But this is what really encouraged me to add to this review - the muffins fell flat. And this led to a two additional criticisms.In my time getting serious about baking, I've repeatedly heard that it's preferable for recipes to give weights of ingredients instead of volumes, especially when it comes to flour. I recall that Corriher discusses the variations of weight one can get measuring flour by volume depending on how you scoop it. I thought she'd then recommend measuring by weight, but fails to do so. However, the recipes contains the weights as well as volume, so I baked the Blueberries and Cream Muffins using the weights. These fell flat, and were so gooey, they would not come out of the pan in one piece. I measured the flour and sugar by the volumes, and weighed them. The flour was close on, but the weight given in the recipe for the sugar, of all things, was about 50% more than I had obtained.I still had some blueberries left, so tried again. This time, I used the volumes. Pretty much the same thing happened. Note that I had no problem with other recipes in the past, and I do not have much problem with commercial mixes.Blueberries and a carton of whipping cream wasted.I was very frustrated. My wife didn't get her blueberry muffins and brought home a commercial mix the next day which worked quite well. I did some research, rereading Bakewise and doing some searches on the internet. I suspect my problem is my altitude, which is 4430'. When I first wrote the review, I was on the coast of Florida. The results were consistent with altitude problems, despite commercial mixes working well without modification. I read elsewhere that commercial mixes are well-balanced to achieve this. So my last disappointment is how little the author addresses altitude issues in Bakewise. There is one half-page box on page 50. She recommends  Pie in the Sky Successful Baking at High Altitudes: 100 Cakes, Pies, Cookies, Breads, and Pastries Home-tested for Baking at Sea Level, 3,000, 5,000, 7,000, and 10,000 feet (and Anywhere in Between).  I get a baking book from one the most eminent names in food science, and altitude is hardly addressed, and it is suggested that I buy yet another book to learn about it. Disappointing.Today, I tried the Magnificent Moist Golden Cake. In case altitude was NOT the problem, I gave the recipe as-written a chance. It fell in the middle and was dry. I am going to try again, but with modifications for altitude from the New Mexico extension service and other references I found on the web. Of course, I do not know how many times I will have to remake the cake to get it right.I could be wrong, but I suspect that the author's quest for moist and sweet is pushing the recipes on the teetering edge of failing as soon as you get higher than Atlanta.

love this book & "Cookwise"

Great info but no photos!!!

All I needed was to learn the formula for baking powder/soda to flour and when to use them, and yet I learned SO MUCH MORE!!!!

Shirley O Corriher is one of the best known food scientists in the world. She's a frequent guest on "Good Eats," and is often consulted by professional chefs. Her first book,  Cookwise: The Secrets of Cooking Revealed  is one of my favorite cookbooks. Alton Brown said about this book "Finally, Moses has come down the mountain with another five commandments." With this history and pedigree, I expected great things from this book (and ordered it months ago). It would be difficult, if not impossible, for anyone to live up to these expectations. Sadly, this book does not.There are many things to like about this book. It is a very detailed book, and provides a lot of background about each recipe. It's well organized, with chapters devoted to Cakes, Puff Pastry, Pies, Cookies, and Breads. And it provides a lot of good information about baking: how to tell if a recipe will work, what purpose different ingredients serve, useful and novel techniques. However, this is not a very good book of recipes.After getting this book, I plunged right in, making her recipe for "Blueberry and Cream Muffins." The recipe promised moist, delicious muffins. They were really delicious, but the texture was oily and gummy. I tried the recipe a second time, carefully measuring every item, checking my oven temperature with a thermometer, and made a second batch. The second batch was slightly better, but was still greasy and gummy. I was surprised; how could the queen of food science provide recipes that don't work? I sat down and started reading the book from the beginning. At last, I realized what was wrong.This book reads more like a set of magazine articles, or a good blog, than a cookbook. You can't just pick a recipe out of the middle of this book and expect it to work. The recipes in this book are examples of different techniques (like the muffin recipe), not well-tested, authoritative recipes (like in  The New Best Recipe: All-New Edition ). Shirley gives you the formulas that make recipes successful (ratios of flour, eggs, fat, sugars, and liquids), then often pushes the boundaries of this formulas to show what happens. A good example of this are the pound cake recipes. On page 15 "So that you can see that changes that I made, I have included the original recipe for The Great American Pound Cake; but do not bake it." The problem with this warning is that you'd never see it if you just flipped to the recipe for "The Great American Pound Cake," and would end up with a sunken, soggy cake. If you buy this book, make sure to read the whole thing before you bake anything.The problem with this approach is that she has produced a book of temperamental, difficult recipes. The recipes are very sensitive to ingredients, techniques, and equipment. (For example, I use organic grade AA pastured eggs, which contain much more fat and protein and lower moisture than the grade A supermarket eggs that she recommends.) The results can be interesting, but they may not produce something that you want to eat. An additional problem with this book is that it reflects Shirley's own taste in flavors and textures. As noted above, she likes the texture of oily baked goods (I do not).One final problem with this book is that she appears to have developed the recipes based on volume measurements for flour, but later converted these to weights. There are multiple recipes that specify weird weights of flour (like 3.2 ounces), leading me to believe that the recipes were developed with volume measurements and later converted to weights. As many experienced bakers know, the same mass of flour can take up very different amounts of space depending on how much it is aerated. I believe that many recipes in this book do not actually contain the correct amounts of flour.I would recommend this cookbook to the serious baker or food science buff, but not the beginning cook. A better food-science related cookbook for the beginner would be Alton Brown's baking book  I'm Just Here for More Food: Food x Mixing + Heat = Baking .

I purchased this book last month based on comments from a chef who taught a class I took at Viking Cooking School. It is just what I needed. I love to bake but don't know why things work (or more often, why they don't work). This book explains a lot.It definitely addressed why my recipe for pound cake bakes up nice and pretty in a tube pan but is a little sunken in a mini loaf pan - still tastes good, but looks funny.If you're the kind of person who goes straight to the index for recipes, that probably won't work because Ms. Corriher shares recipes with a problem and then a recipe with a solution to the problem. I made her recipe for carrot cake and it was delicious.Some of the reviewers compared Bakewise to Ms Corriher's previous book - Cookwise and were disappointed. I did not purchase Bakewise based on her previous books, so I had no predetermined expectations.My only complaints are: 1) no information on cupcakes and 2) a very limited number of photos. Overall though, a very helpful book.Update: I changed my rating from 5 to 4 stars. My original review was made shortly after I purchased the book. However, I have since tried some additional recipes that are supposed to be her "improved" version. They are improved if you realized what part of the direction has been left out. I am a seasoned home baker, primarily cakes. I spotted the problem before I finished the recipe and was able to correct it before baking.Bakewise is a good book but it should offer a partial refund for the mistakes in the book.

Purchased this book after tirelessly looking for the hows and whys for each of my baking trials. This book is informative easy to read and full of some great receipes. It goes through various coooking methods in detail and explains the benefits of each method. Could not find this in the UK so had to buy from a US seller which meant the delivery time was little longer than ususal but definately worth it. Already have her other book cookwise on my wishlist

Fabulous tips. A must have.

This book is an absolute MUST for any baker! Packed with valuable information to make your recipes better and more moist! It takes a good science angle and analyzes recipes and potential failings as well as explain the rationale of certain ingredients.I’ve already incorporated some of the learnings into my baking and it has made a considerable difference in taste! Highly highly recommended.P.S. Do not expect a typical cookbook- it reads more like a textbook but is so crucial to the chemistry behind baking perfect cakes, cookies, icing etc. There are recipes in it too.

I made one of the recipes as per the instructions but unfortunately it was really sad. The measure of the pan given for the recipe was way too small. I had to use 3pans to bake the moist banana pecan bread.I really felt the bread was overly sweet and didn’t like it. I m completely doubting the recipes in the book now. Also the way it’s written is very confusing. Thr is no explanation of shortening which I find quite wierd because it talks so much abt it.

The book has recipes, I have not tried any of them and most likely will never try them. So please keep that in mind when reading this review.This is a excellent book, but not for everyone and not for beginners. I use this book to help solve problems with some recipes that I'm developing. I want to create some breads and cookies. In the various sections in the book, after each recipe there is a breakdown on how each ingredient impacts the recipe. Which is exactly what I'm looking for. It also has some hints on how to manipulate the a recipe with the ingredients so to get the right characteristics. So If you trying to understand a ingredients impact and get a better understanding on the science behind baking then I think this book is well worth it.