Dessert Course: Lessons in the Whys and Hows of Baking

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Can a math teacher make you a better baker? He can if you’re curious about how baking works and want to learn from someone with a lifelong curiosity about baking as well as a probl em-solving mind. Baltimore-born (apparently there’s something to be proud of called a Smith Island cake?) and Los Angles-based, Benjamin Delwiche slips simple lessons between recipes. From measuring and scaling recipes to determining when fruit pies are done to preparing a sponge cake pan, his pointers are easy to understand and transferable to other baking you might do. The book’s page design is friendly, so much so that you might mistake this as nothing but a beginner’s book. While this is indeed a strong book for novice bakers, its real target is the curious souls who wonder what the effect would be of increasing the fat percentage in a brioche or changing the proportions of baking powder and baking soda in a chocolate chip cookie. Delwiche’s recipes lean strongly toward sweet things, and he uses primarily mainstream treats to demonstrate his points. The book’s focus is on strong fundamentals rather than innovative flavors, but if you have a firm grip on the former, the latter should come more easily. Hardcover. Color photographs throughout. Show more