Baking in America: Traditional and Contemporary Favorites from the Past 200 Years by Greg Patent

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`Baking in America' by professional Zoologist and b more

`Baking in America' by professional Zoologist and baker, Greg Patent is different from the rich selection of books we have on American desserts from the likes of Nancy Baggett, Wayne Harley Brachman, and Judith Fertig in at least two ways. First, the scope of the book is broader, with close to 40% of the recipes being dedicated to non-dessert baking such as breads and breakfast items. Second, a substantial portion of the text is dedicated to the history of baking in the United States and how it is different from its antecedents in Europe. While this is a book with a scholarly bent, it should not be dismissed as a book of history or essays. Rather than being dry material, the historical perspective is more like a leavening that lightens up the book much as yeast lightens and flavors bread. I suggest you treat the author's historical point of view more as a unifying theme to his subject introductions and headnotes rather than a textbook on culinary history. In addition to giving a very good historical perspective on `Baking in America', the author gives us a very good text on baking elements. His fundamentals may not be as deep as Peter Reinhart's lessons on bread baking or Nick Malgieri's tutorials on pastry or Maida Heatter's tips on cake baking, but they are good enough for the amateur baker who does not wish to invest in a whole library of baking books. His details on American wheat are just right. There is not quite as much detail as you may find in Rose Levy Beranbaum's `Bibles', but its good advice. It will guide you to the best brands and types of wheat to use for breads and biscuits and pastry and cakes without your having to mount a long search of the Internet. One of the more interesting historical perspectives gleaned from this book is the fact that in 1900, over 70% of American flour was bought for home use, compared to about 10% today. This, in spite of the fact that home baking was enormously more difficult a century ago than it is today, in that one had to heat up a coal or wood oven, thoroughly clean it of ashes, and knead dough with no mechanical aids (actually, there was a very primitive version of the bread machine early in the 20th century, but I suspect it took almost as much muscle as hand kneading.). In the very tricky realm of pie crust pastry, the author is firmly in the camp which prefers butter AND as many additives as possible (vinegar and egg yolk) to retard gluten formation which may result from the moisture (about 20%) in water. Parent's recipe for his `flaky piecrust' is virtually identical to the one I typically use, acquired from Susan Purdy's `As Easy as Pie'. Patent is also quite comfortable using the food processor to mix butter, dry ingredients, and wet ingredients. My inclination on this issue actually lies in the direction of the `Martha Stewart Baking Handbook' that keeps things simple with only the simplest list of ingredients of flour, butter, water, and salt. I'm certain Martha did not originate this schema, but her authors' endorsing it, as probably more similar to the classic French recipe, suggests that the add-ins are really not necessary if you are careful with using cold ingredients, cold equipment, and a light touch. As someone with warm hands, I even think it is time for me to go to the food processor to mix dough. The chemist in me tells me that even if it is no easier than hand mixing, it is more reproducible, so you are likely to get more consistent results with it. But getting back to this book, it seems that Americans didn't invent any major baking techniques. That was pretty much taken care of by the French, Austrians, and Italians by the time Americans had enough cheap wheat flour to make use of it often. Rather, their primary inventions seem to be in new fillings and some interesting things done with corn, which was more plentiful up until the end of the 19th century. Another theme running through much of this book is the evolution of leaveners, both chemical and microbial. Both seemed to come into their own with the perfection of baking powder after the Civil War and the packaging of yeast near the same time. While baking powder was touted as an easier replacement for yeast, it is not. It simply cannot achieve most of the flavor effects of long yeast rising. There is one major and one minor oversight worth noting. The major oversight is the absence of any reference to sourdough. While San Franciscans didn't invent bread baking with artisinal yeast sponges (the French and Italians have been doing that for centuries), there is a very special yeast named after San Francisco which is responsible for our American sourdough. This is so well known that I'm surprised Parent makes no mention of it. I can only assume he had no interest in getting into the technique of natural yeast baking. The other lesser omission is that there is no mention of Shoofly pie (molasses cake), that very Pennsylvania Dutch speciality. This is especially odd since he enlists advice from Pennsylvania Dutch food expert William Woys Weaver for material on the Moravian sugar cake. I miss this recipe since it doesn't seem to make the cut for any of the latest American dessert cookbooks except for Judith Fertig's `All American Desserts'. An excellent source of American baking specialities.
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