This archive post may reference an old giveaway since closed.
Welcome back to this week’s Maison Cupcake Bumper Books Christmas Gift Guide served in SIX digestible parts.
No fluffy cupcakes today, today it’s proper serious bread and pastry in the spotlight.
Most of these titles below came out, or where re-issued during 2011, some I own, some I’ve gazed at in bookstores, all would make an ideal gift for someone.
Today I’m featuring rustic baking and also giving you a chance to win a copy of Pieminister.
Clockwise from top left:
For the dedicated baker
Dan Lepard’s new epic volume has a contradictory title, Short and Sweet being what I imagined was a reference to how he likes his pastry rather than the length of the book. In fact, the book was not originally intended to be this length, a pocket size reference book in the vein of Schott’s Miscellany was planned but things took another turn. Four years in the making, 500+ whopping pages and a surprising number of pictures (that Dan also took himself – he was previously a photographer), this really is a telephone directory of baking advice.
With prose in similar style to Nigel Slater, I was initially overwhelmed by the sheer enormity of this book, Dan gives detailed advice peppered with historical information and stuff like where the word “streusel” comes from. The sheer scale of what is in here makes it hard to say which recipes tempt me the most; on my to-do list are tapenade dinner rolls, cheese and black pepper buttons and Creme Fraiche Treacle Caramels. There are also some fun items like Weetabix muffins and Rocky Road Rock Cakes. Possibly if you study this book and do a “Julie and Julia” with it, there would be very little about baking you would not have learned. This book fulfils two criteria I like to find in my favourite cookery books; do I want to sit in bed reading it night after night and do I expect to use it in the kitchen for year after year? (yes and yes). Short and Sweet is published by Fourth Estate in hardback RRP £25.
For beyond the bread machine
Paul Hollywood’s 100 Great Breads has slipped onto our shelves quietly beneath the white noise created by The Great British Bake Off book and The Boy Who Bakes. Given Mr Hollywood’s high profile and ahem, appeal to ladies of a certain age, it’s astonishing the publisher put shock horror a loaf of bread on the cover rather than the silver fox himself (whom we see a bit, but not enough and often in black and white). I have made some wholesome and healthy apricot rye bread from the book which went down a treat with some Wensleydale cheese. 100 Great Breads is published by Cassel Illustrated in hardback RRP £12.99.
Steak and Kidney is my favourite!
Cheese and onion (although fish pie is my favourite – but being a mash-topped pie that might not count)
Sweet apple pie!