Coffee Table Book of: Baking (Paperback)

Description

Coffee Table Book of: Baking is a large-format coffee table book about baking, printed edge to edge in colour, one picture to a page and the widest carried across two. Most are still lifes of breads, pastries, pies and cakes; a few go out to the wheat field and the wood-fired oven.

It opens with grain and flour: sheaves of wheat standing in a stook on the cut stubble, a white windmill above a field of ripe wheat, and a soft heap of white flour. Then the living dough: a sourdough starter risen high in a plain glass jar, and long loaves of baguette dough resting in the pleats of a floured linen cloth.

Then the loaf: a round sourdough loaf with a long curved cut opened into a crisp ridge, another cut in half to show an open crumb, and crusty baguettes standing in a tall wicker basket.

Then laminated pastry and sweet buns: croissants rolled in rising tiers, a croissant cut in half to show a honeycomb of thin layers, a kouign-amann caramelised a glassy deep amber, cinnamon rolls swirled with dark cinnamon sugar, and hot cross buns marked with pale piped crosses.

Then pies and tarts: a cherry pie under a woven lattice of golden pastry strips, a crumble-topped pie on the sill of a window open onto a green garden, a lemon meringue pie piled high with toasted peaks, and a fruit tart laid with rings of glazed berries. Then scones and muffins: tall golden scones with clotted cream and jam, and blueberry muffins crusted with sugar.

Then cakes: a tall layer cake in smooth white buttercream with a slice cut away, a dark chocolate cake dripping with glossy ganache, a sponge cake sandwiched with jam and whipped cream, and a ring-shaped angel food cake with a snow-white crumb.

Then holiday baking: a gingerbread house with icing snow and icicles along its eaves, a stollen cut to show its marzipan core, a tall domed panettone, mince pies under star-shaped pastry lids, and a chocolate yule log topped with meringue mushrooms.

Short notes run through the book; none is a recipe. They are about baking rather than about the pictures: why a loaf is slashed before it bakes, when stollen is first recorded, how the vanilla orchid came to be pollinated by hand, and which old words for bread lie behind lady and lord.

Printed in full colour on heavy 150gsm coated paper at 216 x 279 mm (8.5 x 11 inches), as a paperback.