Barron's the festive bread book

by Kathy Cutler

Hardcover with dust jacket. This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0812054539
• ISBN13: 9780812054538
• Release Date: January 1982
• Publisher: Barron's
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 2.05 lbs.
• Dimensions: 11.4" x 7.5"

Customer Reviews

Bread for the Holidays

The tradition of making specially flavored and spiced breads for specific holidays is mostly extinct in this country and, probably, in many portions of Europe. This book is a valuable collection of these mostly forgotten bread recipes, although it suffers the common fault of insufficient instructions of how to actually shape the various bread shapes.I am happy to have this collection of rare recipes that are on the verge of disappearing forever. It contains breads specific to the major holidays throughout the calendar year, although Easter and Christmas contain the vast majority of recipes. Most of them are variations of stollen or panettone. By my count, there are almost 150 recipes, not including icings and glazes. The table of contents has a handy list of the various holidays and the corresponding bread recipes.The most interesting part of this cookbook is also the most lacking. Many of the breads have unique shapes, but the author's instructions on how to form these loaves are often perfunctory, and you are left to guess how to do it. There are some helpful line drawings, but a picture of each finished, baked bread would have been very interesting. I had fun making some of the breads in this fascinating bread cookbook. I had no trouble with any of the recipes, since the mixing instructions on all the breads are virtually the same, and if you can do stollen, you can do the breads in this book. The author suggests all purpose flour, but I found that the loaves had more texture if I used bread flour. The author does not explicitly say so, but the listed weight of 4 1/2 oz. of flour per cup suggests that she uses the spoon and sweep method of measuring flour. The kneading instructions say "until smooth", without defining what this means. In my kitchen, it took longer than the listed rise times for the dough. I also found the baking time and temperatures to be off: my oven required a higher temperature, and the baking times were both longer and shorter than the ones listed in the recipes. The only test for doneness suggested by the author is by tapping the hot loaves and listening for a hollow sound, but a more suggestive method would have been more helpful, such as the correct crust color.