A Bakers Tour: Nick Malgieris
Favorite Baking Recipes from Around
the World by Nick Malgieri
Very Pleased With This Purchase.
Nick Malgieri, James Beard Award-winning author of How to Bake, is first
and foremost a teacher. He directs the baking program at New York Citys
Institute of Culinary Education, so he knows the questions before they are
asked--a neat trick when you sit down to write a cookbook for a general
audience. With A Bakers Tour Malgieri presents over 100 recipes for
breads, cookies, cakes, pies and tarts, puff, savory, and fried pastry, even
dim sum from around the world. What might normally be an alarming
proposition, baking the unfamiliar in an American kitchen, becomes a
journey of discovery in Malgieris capable hands. He answers the questions
before they are asked. A Bakers Tour is divided into chapters based
on the kind of baking, not the country of origin. After brief words on
ingredients and equipment that will come in handy, Malgieri opens with
Breads followed by Yeast-Risen Cakes, Cookies, Cakes, Pies and Tarts,

Savory Pastries, Puff Pastry, Strudel and Filo Dough, and finally Fried
Pastries. Youll find Ligurian Focaccia you can bake in your oven, not a
wood-fired brick behomoth, or Naan for the oven or grill for those who dont
have a tandoori oven at home. Prune-Filled Buns, kolache, from eastern
Europe and Honey Cakes from western Europe shouldnt be overlooked.
Norways Princess Cream Cake demands an exercise regimen all its own.
Egypts Spicy Meat Pie in a Filo Crust with Yogurt Sauce is as captivating
as Chinas Barbecue Pork Buns (cha shao bao). Theres a world of
baking between the covers of A Bakers Tour. Your tastebud-driven
curiosity is your passport. Let Nick Malgieri be your guide. --Schuyler Ingle
Personal Review: A Bakers Tour: Nick Malgieris Favorite Baking
Recipes from Around the World by Nick Malgieri
`A Baker's Tour' by noted baking author and teacher, Nick Malgieri is the
answer to the question `What does a baking writer write when they have
already written major books on cookies, chocolate, pastry, and `how to
bake'. I suppose that like Rose Levy Beranbaum, you could write a book
on bread baking, but bread doesn't seem to be Nick's main thing, so he
writes a book on his favorite recipes from around the world.
Malgieri is one of the very best writers from which to learn basic
techniques, especially from his book, `Nick Malgieri's Perfect Pastry', but if
that is your primary objective, this book may not be the volume to buy.
That is not to say that this is not an extremely well written book. Only that it
is designed to present very good recipes for `favorite recipes', where the
favorites are not only Nick's favorites, but I suspect that most of these
could count among favorites of many people who bake.
One sign that this book is not written for pedagogical effect is the fact that
recipes are not organized by similar technique, but by style and use of the
final product. For example, recipes for yeasted doughs are spread across
the first two chapters instead of being presented together as a basic
technique.
This book is comparable to `The best short stories of 20xx' or `The Oxford
Book of yyyyy'. It is a collection of recipes into which you will dip when you
want something special for entertaining. It is also a great read for people
who love to bake. And, it is certainly not without substantial teaching value,
except that it should not be your first book on baking.
Malgieri's most important lesson in the book is that baking is an activity in
which you really want to take your time, especially if you are an amateur
who may be making a recipe for the first time. The next best instructional
value to the book is the fact that there is a great variety of different
variations on a few basic techniques. While pastry dough is pretty basic,
and Malgieri does much to coach you into believing that working with
pastry is not a major challenge (Note that I really believe it is a major
challenge for those of us who may make a pastry crust once or twice a
month.) he also shows us many different variations on the basic French

pate brisee. Another major contribution to our baking praxis is his
insistence on using the specified size of baking pan. Everyone stresses
careful measuring, but too few baking writers stress using exactly the right
baking equipment. While none of this is new to me, I did find one genuinely
new piece of information on using baking powder in pastry doughs to save
the work of prebaking crusts. I have seen baking soda added to pastry, but
I have never until now heard the reason why. Note that many recipes
include vinegar in pastry doughs and I will offer the opinion that vinegar
and baking powder will cancel one another out and potentially make a
mess of your dough, so don't mix the two in the same recipe.
The extensive bibliography at the back of the book makes it seem that our
Nick culled these recipes from his library, but his headnotes clear this up
and offer ample evidence that Malgieri literally collected these recipes, or
at least the inspirations for these recipes from actual travels around the
world.
A glance at the list of recipes by country amply confirms the fact that
mainland Western Europe, specifically France, Switzerland, Austria, and
Italy are the world's `baking central' as almost half of all recipes come from
these four (4) countries.
Incidental tips and pep talks are not enough to convince me to buy this
kind of book. I will take the tip about baking powder in crusts to my grave,
as it easily fits into all I know about pastry, so it will not be forgotten, and I
don't need a copy of the book to remind me of that. On the other hand, the
book has an excellent chapter on savory baking recipes and this is why I
would buy this book. I would even buy the book for the single Chinese
recipe for `Cha Shao Bao' (Barbecued Pork Buns). These little bundles of
goodness are absolutely the most outstandingly yummy finger food I can
imagine. But they require quite a bit of time and expertise to make. So,
having a recipe by an expert baker for this appetizer is a real plus.
Accompanying this are savory recipes for both Mexican and Argentinean
empanadas, Australian sausage rolls, Japanese salty and sweet rice
crackers, Italian ham and cheese filled brioche, Italian salty ring biscuits,
Russian cabbage pie, Spanish fish pies, Egyptian spicy meat pies, Italian
zucchini pies, Italian ham and cheese pie, French onion tart, South African
curried beef tart, and Swiss cheese tart. There is even a recipe from the
very difficult to find cookbook of Alice B. Toklas of hashish brownie fame.
One reason an inexperienced cook may want to put this book on the back
burner is the fact that I detected a few minor lapses in the cooking
instructions. Fortunately, they were in the preparation of savory ingredients
rather than in the baking. There was a time when I would literally gig a
book an entire star for such a lapse, but I have seen it so often in
otherwise excellent books that I simply warn readers to keep their mind
thoroughly engaged when following cooking instructions. I have always
had success with Malgieri recipes and I go to his books first when looking
for a recipe for a new preparation.

Highly recommended as reading and recipe source for the baker with
some experience.
For More 5 Star Customer Reviews and Lowest Price:
A Bakers Tour: Nick Malgieris Favorite Baking Recipes from Around the World by Nick
Malgieri 5 Star Customer Reviews and Lowest Price!