Book Review: Books for Cooks 2010

Bake!: Essential Techniques for Perfect Baking

by Nick Malgieri
Kyle Books, 224 pp., $29.95

After 10 cookbooks, it's fair to say Nick Malgieri knows his way around a kitchen. Bake! is evidence of just that. The sturdy, full-color tome is a well-organized guide to a score of so-called "essential techniques" ranging from puff pastry to meringue buttercream and everything in between. At the beginning of each chapter, Malgieri focuses on a specific technique, and then the subsequent pages offer various iterations of that skill for practice – e.g., an 11-page section on Danish pastry also includes recipes for apple strudels and apricot pinwheels.

In a class he taught at Central Market's Cooking School in October, Malgieri brought several of this book's recipes to life, including a sesame flat bread, a spinach tart, and lemon-ginger bars. As he jumped seamlessly between three or four recipes, he interjected anecdotes and his wry sense of humor, as well as related trivia on everything from geography to geometry. But while it's interesting to know the physics of water and chocolate, the truly indispensable lessons came in watching him work with the different doughs and batters. To bring that same helpfulness to his readers' kitchens, Malgieri took what might otherwise be considered a text-heavy book and broke it up not only with pictures of flawless finished products, but also with close-ups of hands kneading dough and mixer bowls with doughs at different stages of completion so the textures are evident. Being able to see how brioche dough changes after five minutes of mixing is invaluable; there's nothing more frustrating than staring into a KitchenAid bowl and hoping what's there is even halfway right.

Novice bakers and professionals alike can learn a tremendous amount from this pastry master, but a holiday host might want to get an early start with one of the many offerings, sweet and savory, that could find its way to the table.