I have been baking for close to a year now, but I've been gleaning all my recipes from the INTERWEB. What are some of ya'lls favorite or most useful baking cookbooks, specifically for a beginner?

Also, if you could list only one, or order your list from best to least best, that would be useful. I can only foresee myself buying one at this poor point in my life.

Fereek gave the web address of an online Boston Cooking School Cook book with this table of weights and measures in it. I do remember my mother telling me that a sack of flour could be figured out into how many cups of flour in it, (for baking lots of stuff, you could figure the cups in your recipes and buy enough flour for all of them) by multiplying the pounds of flour in the sack by 2 hence a 10 pound sack of flour would have 20 cups, and make aproximately 5 lots of bread (4 loaves per recipe) and a 20 pound sack would be 40 cups of flour etc. Same for sugar.

This explains why some old recipes don't work when converting them to measuring cups of flour an 8 ounce dry measure is not the same as an 8 ounce weight measure, the dry measuring cups are actually fluid measures used for dry goods.

And I do know for a fact that pound cake is pound cake because you use a pound of flour, a pound of sugar and a pound of butter! Hence a pound cake!

So to sum up a cup of flour weighs half a pound! or 8 ounces weight, not 4.5 or 5 or 3.75 but a half a pound!

It has been an exciting few weeks since the Foodista Best Of Food Blogs Cookbook has been published. I have met many new friends via email from around the world who have won this contest. My entry was Cartellate Cookies from Puglia a family recipe made during Thanksgiving and Christmas. The recipe can be found in the book and in my blog.

http://turosdolci.wordpress.com/2010/10/25/foodista-best-of-food-blogs-cookbook-is-in-bookstores/

**** SOLD:  No longer available. ****

Used copy Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads for sale; paring down the kitchen bookshelf.

Price:  $18.00 + shipping (est. $3.99 for standard shipping).  You can pay by paypal for the fastest turnaround.

In excellent condition with the exception of two recipes, which have seen a bit of water on them so the pages have rippled a little.  The jacket is intact and looks like new.

If you are interested, please contact me by email (tania.hide@gmail.com).

Cheers,

MommaT

Seems like they're very few cookbooks out there for the home milling crowd, and ever fewer for the home miller who wants to bake exclusively with sourdough.  Any recommendations on a collection of recipes or a website for the sourdough whole grain home miller?

Hi,

Just picked up "The Bread Bible"  (or should I say the OTHER "Bread Bible") by Rose Levy Beranbaum.

I haven't been through thoroughly, but recently took it out of the library with an eye toward evaluating it for purchase.  It seems to cover an exceedingly broad spectrum of "breads" and the one hearth loaf I made from the book was very satisfying - fairly wet dough and pleasing flavor.  

I know I won't have the chance to evaluate it thoroughly, so am looking for your experiences.  Does anyone else use this book?  What are your thoughts on it?

Thanks!

MommaT

On August 7, 2009 the release of a new movie starting Julia Child (Meryl Streep) and Julie Powell (Amy Adams) opens in theaters nationwide. The movie was written and directed by Nora Ephron and is an adaptation of two bestselling memoirs: Powell's Julie & Julia and My Life in France, by Julia Child with Alex Prud'homme. You can learn the plot by visiting the trailer and I won't bore you with that information. Over twenty seven years ago I had the honor of serving in the United States Navy and being stationed in Okinawa, Japan. It was a bitter sweet experience for a culinary obsessive compulsive cook like myself. Locating ingredients was a task and as a relatively new bride I was eager to prepare meals that were not only delicious but divine.

I have never really written about how I became so astute in the kitchen. I can say that I would not be the cook I am today were it not for a cookbook edited by Charlotte Turgeon titled The Creative Cooking Course. You must understand that during that time, military bases offered very little to choose from as far as ingredients go, so my now ex purchased three cookbooks so I could flex my culinary muscle; venture out into local markets and with the assistance of the Creative Cooking Course, a Betty Crocker Cookbook and one other that obviously was completely unimportant since I can no longer remember the title create culinary magic.

I bring this book up because it is through this book that I learned about food, food from all over the world. I cooked my way through this cookbook and I can tell you every recipe that worked and those that did not. Somewhere out there a budding novice is wondering how can I too become a great cook or baker? All I can share is that you must literally cook and bake your way into greatness. I think Nike said it best..."Just do it!" Julia Child once said, "never apologize." She was absolutely correct. Cook, cook, cook, bake, bake, bake and don't apologize. If someone does not like what you have prepared, fine...and as Jae would say, "keep it movin."

I had a copy of The French Chef years ago and found it quite boring, but recently I asked my daughter for a copy for Christmas. Now, over a half century old I can appreciate what Julia Child was trying to do and why. I too must encourage cooks and bakers to not settle, but rise up, grasp a good cookbook and cook, bake, "Just do it!"