Warm Bread and Honey Cake

Description

A comprehensive and unparalleled collection of breads, cakes and pastries from around the world, this beautiful sourcebook of recipes is also a well-researched exploration of home baking techniques and global ethnic history. The combination of recipes, anecdotal and historical text and pictures give this book a unique appeal and make it perfect for today's discerning 'foodies'. The recipes are drawn from all over the world (including Europe, the Middle East, the Far East, the Caribbean and Latin America), are easy-to follow and beautifully photographed. Any unusual techniques are illustrated step-by-step for ease. Try your hand at Azorean honey cake or Jamaican hard dough bread. Let your family's tastebuds thrill to Azerbaijani cream cheese baklava or Dutch brown sugar coils. Chapters cover breads, cakes, pastries, savouries and biscuits. The combination of delicious recipes and a fascinating background text make this book a fantastic read and a must for any home cook looking to truly broaden their repertoire or with an interest in the culture of food.

Gaitri Pagrach-Chandra has a multi-cultural background - in her own words "a convent-attending Guyanese Hindu of Indian ancestry, who was educated in North America and Europe and subsequently married into a European Jewish family". A food historian and freelance translator, she has already authored a book on Dutch baking - 'Windmills in my Oven' (Prospect Books, 2002). In 2000, she received the Sophie Coe award for food history, presented by the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery. She lives in the Netherlands.

One passionate baklava-lover is Gaitri Pagrach-Chandra, who has just published a wonderful and unusual baking book, Warm Bread and Honey Cake (Pavilion, GBP25). This is the book to hunker down with at the kitchen table on a winter's day, only to emerge hours later smelling of nutmeg and honey. Sunday Telegraph Here's a marvel: a baking book without a single cupcake recipe. This grown-up, informative and enticing collection of recipes takes you on a world tour, from the coconut cakes of the Caribbean to sachertorte in Vienna. You can practically smell the nutmeg and brown sugar as you turn the pages. Bee Wilson, the Sunday Times A diverse and beautiful collection of sweet and savory, with lovely stories. Bonnie Benwick, The Washington Post Novices will appreciate that Pagrach-Chandra explains not just the hows of dishes like Paratha, a flaky Indian flatbread, but the whys (all the better to ensure home that cooks' finished product resembles its photo counterpart). - the book promises plenty of culinary trips to awaken tired palates and inspire bored bakers of any nation. Publishers Weekly The variety of recipes make this book a safe choice even for the home baker who already has lots of books. But what makes it really special is that Pagrach-Chandra writes as informatively and reliably about the history of her recipes as she does about how to prepare them. Quite simply her book is lovely to both peruse and to bake from. Unlike many baking books, Pagrach-Chandra's includes many savory recipes [ - ]. Amherst Bulletin "Pagrach-Chandra, winner of the 2000 Sophie Coe Award for Food History, has written a distinctive book that is part culinary history, part international cookbook. Chocolate lovers are sure to enjoy the minihistory of cocoa as well as the delicious recipes. Baking skill levels vary with the recipes, and the difficulty is noted for each. While this cookbook may be best suited for experienced cooks, the global inspiration (which includes Europe, the Middle East, Asia, the Caribbean, Latin America, and North America) makes this a one-of-a-kind resource for more adventurous and experienced bakers. Highly recommended." Library Journal I have to admit that cupcakes aren't my thing so instead I would prefer to spend an afternoon of comfort baking with Gaitri Pagrach-Chandra's Warm Bread and Honey Cake - delicious recipes illustrating the author's rich multicultural background. The best food books of 2009 (Guardian 18.12.09) [Warm Bread and Honey Cake] is a wonderfully chosen collection of recipes - all of them so appealing and so well explained, you want to cook them all - a real pleasure to read. Claudia Roden An attractive addition to the family of home baking books, with especial emphasis on Mediterranean sweet homebaking and on the essential ingredient for all home baking: being relaxed in the kitchen. Naomi Duguid, co-author of HomeBaking; Flatbreads and Flavors; Beyond the Great Wall, and others. Among the latest crop of new baking books, the hands-down winner is undoubtedly "Warm Bread and Honey Cake, Home Baking from Around the World," by Gaitri Pagrach-Chandra. Painstakingly researched and lovingly written, "Warm Bread" deserves a place on the bookshelf of everyone who loves to bake. Exposed to multi-cultural influences at an early age in her native Guyana, Pagrach-Chandra developed both a love of baking and a fascination with investigating the cultural background of the recipes she collected. And though she is a winner of the prestigious Sophie Coe Prize (the Oscars of the food history world) for outstanding research, there is no high-handed academic prose here. She has written in a friendly and informative tone -- like a favorite cousin giving you the background of a family recipe and then accurately describing the steps to a perfect result. The dizzying assortment of recipes covers everything from Indian breads through Dutch cookies to Chilean cakes. Savory pastries occupy an important place along with traditional sweets, and there is an entire chapter devoted to leaf and thread pastries, including real Turkish baklava, strudel and shredded wheat-style kadayif. Appetizing photos of many of the recipes are styled to look homey rather than slick and are interspersed with some location shots of baked goods in their native environment. "Warm Bread and Honey Cake" provides not only a fascinating read but also a collection of recipes that you -- or the baker on your holiday gift list -- will return to for years to come. Nick Malgieri, award-winning author of "Perfect Cakes," HarperCollins, 2002; "A Baker's Tour," HarperCollins, 2005; and "Perfect Light Desserts" Morrow, 2006. An intelligent and beautiful book that rewards both reading and eating. Time Out, March 2010.