Understanding Baking: The Art and Science of Baking download epub

Very informative; this dramatically improved my baking of yeast breads. Two big lessons were that gluten forms in the absence of agitation (but is also slowed down by a variety of different things); and that fermentation temperature affects flavor as well as speed (because of the yeast/bacteria balance). I was mostly interested in the chapters on wheat and bread, as opposed to salt, chocolate, etc, but they were somewhat interesting too. I would have liked a couple example recipes, but there was enough information in the book that I could look for recipes with certain characteristics to try out what I'd learned (for example, I've been adapting from theperfectloaf's "my best sourdough" recipe successfully).

I'd borrowed this book from the library years ago, and had always had it on my wish list to grab. Got a gift card and decided to make the purchase.

Why do your cookies spread rather than act puffy, what the difference is between all-purpose flour and bread flour and cake flour, and which fat / oil is best to use is certain cooking applications is all covered.

If you're a baker who really wants to know WHY your bread, cookies, and cakes do what they do, then I wholeheartedly recommend this book.

This is one of my favor too !! along with "How Baking Works: Exploring the Fundamentals of Baking Science"
This book gave you more details of how things work and why it works and what happen if its not working out the way you wanted it to be.
Lots and lots of information here, i just love this book so much !!
Everyone who in loves with baking should get one too !!

First, this is definitely NOT a cookbook! It contains no recipes for breads, cookies, or cakes.

What it does contain is clear, easily understood information about how recipe ingredients work together and interact with each other to create the great tasting bread, cookies and cakes that we all love to eat. Also explained is how each ingredient should be handled, stored (and for how long), and the optimum temperature it should be when it is added to the batter, etc.

Highly recommended for those who did not learn this in any course in school, but want to know and understand the topic now.

I am new to making breads. I've tried following some recipes and got mixed results(sometimes using the same recipe multiple times). I felt like I was going at it blindly and wanted to know about the science to find out about what was going on. This book did clarify some of the problems I made previously. I did learn a lot about what goes on on the chemical level, and that's why I gave this book 3 stars. It didn't give it 5 stars is for two reasons. 1) Although it provided a good foundation, I wish it would delve a bit deeper into troubleshooting and how to go about making and/or modifying recipes. 2) I wish it would give some basic recipes to get us started.

In the book it talks about professionals weighing ingredients (grams) rather than by volume (cups, tbsp) and it gave some common weights in the back. However it talks about the importance of exactness, but then doesn't help us read others' recipes. So, in one sense, I feel I am back on square one: I don't know how to make my own recipes, and I don't know how to read other's recipes since they use volume (and I should get in the habit of using weight) and then did they scoop the flour or shift it into a measuring cup or use a spoon to fill the measuring cup- all three methods result in different amounts of flour- which could shift the end result by a lot.

Bottom line: thanks to the book I know a lot more than I did before (and I didn't find it to be dry) but one of the things I learned was that I need to find a book that goes deeper

AMAZING BOOK WITH TONS OF INFORMATION!
I LOVE IT!!!

Joseph Amendola is a well-respected expert and writer, but I was shocked and dismayed by the haphazard way this book was hurled together, with omissions, unnecessary repetitions, and contradictions throughout. Was this 3rd edition published so that the secondary author Nicole Rees could claim a published book on her resume? Yikes!

Inconsistent expectations of the reader's knowledge abound: On page 14, for example, there are comments about thiol groups on protein molecules, and about the breaking of sulfur-to-sulfur bonds, without any further explanation. Great, so I'm supposed to have a degree in chemistry?

The organization of this book resembles the kind of term paper a sixth-grader would hurl together at the last minute, facing a deadline and the threat of a failing grade. For example, the pH scale appears twice, as Figure 2.1 on page 45 and identically as Figure 9.1 on page 133. Both figures lack labels for the units of scale.

In the chapter on heat, the measurement of BTUs is explained vaguely, and the production of steam is vastly oversimplified, omitting important (and hazardous) exceptions, for example, when water superheats above the boiling point--without actually boiling--in a microwave oven.

In the chapter on pies and tarts, the author states that "butter contains water" but completely ignores the well-established fact that different butters have significantly different water contents (compare, for example, European butters to American butters). Worse, nowhere in the dough preparation section does the author explain the **reason** why elaborate preparations are necessary to successfully make pastry dough: simply, the ingredients don't like one another, and therefore must be combined gradually in a certain order.

A table of flour types and their uses on page 154 seems to repeat an earlier table ("flour guide") on pages 22 and 23, which in turn seems to contradict the chart on page 12. The page 154 table, organized differently from its earlier version, omits several types of flour from the earlier version (graham, self-rising, all-purpose, instant, strong and weak), but without explanation.

Strangely, when the section on chemical leaveners (p. 43) refers to dough pH, it refers the reader to Chapter 17, when in fact, Chapter 9 contains the same information. What gives? Then, on page 44 the author claims that baking powder contains ingredients that react only with one another. Really? Even the simplest introduction to chemistry, including some grade-school classroom experiments, reveal that baking powder reacts with water, and heat.

The index is practically useless. Usually I donate unwanted books to charities or local library sales, but I don't want to inflict this book on anyone. Its pages will be shredded and placed in my garden as mulch.