BakeWise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Baking with Over 200 Magnificent Recipes

Shirley O. Corriher

Scribner, Oct 28, 2008 - Cooking - 544 pages

For years, food editors and writers have kept CookWise right by their computers. Now that spot they've been holding for BakeWise can be filled.

With her years of experience from big-pot cooking for 140 teenage boys and her classic French culinary training to her work as a research biochemist at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Shirley Corriher manages to put two and two together in unique and exciting ways. She describes useful techniques, such as brushing puff pastry with ice waternot just brushing off the flourmaking the puff pastry easier to roll. The result? Higher, lighter, and flakier pastry. And you won't find these recipes anywhere else, not even on the Internet. She can help you make moist cakes; flaky pie crusts; shrink-proof perfect meringues that won't leak but still cut like a dream; big, crisp cream puffs; amazing French pastries; light gnoise; and crusty, incredibly flavorful, open-textured French breads, such as baguettes and fougasses.

BakeWise does not have just a single source of knowledge; Shirley loves reading the works of chefs and other good cooks and shares their information with you, too. She applies not only her expertise but that of the many artisans she admires, such as famous French pastry chefs Gaston Lentre and Chef Roland Mesnier, the White House executive pastry chef for twenty-five years; Bruce Healy, author of Mastering the Art of French Pastry; and Bonnie Wagner, Shirley's daughter-in-law's mother. Shirley also retrieves "lost arts" from experts of the past such as Monroe Boston Strause, the pie master of 1930s America. For one dish, she may give you techniques from three or four different chefs plus her own touch of sciencebetter baking through chemistry. She adds facts about the right temperature, the right mixing speed, and the right mixing time for the absolutely most stable egg foam, so you can create a light-as-air gnoise every time.

What people are saying

Review: BakeWise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Baking with Over 200 Magnificent Recipes

User Review  - Paula Quinene - Goodreads

This is one of my two go-to baking science books. A great component here is that the author interviewed a good handful of chefs to get their "secrets." For instance, I love the section on making ...

Review: BakeWise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Baking with Over 200 Magnificent Recipes

User Review  - Kim - Goodreads

If you want to read a baking text book, then read this. I am all for knowing the science behind my baking but this was really dry and not nearly enough pictures for me.

About the author

Shirley O. Corriher has a B.A. in chemistry from Vanderbilt University, where she was also a biochemist at the medical school. She has problem-solved for everyone from Julia Child to Procter & Gamble and Pillsbury. She has taught and lectured throughout the world. She has long been a writer-- authoring a regular syndicated column in The Los Angeles Times Syndicate's Great Chefs series as well as technical articles in the Journal of Biological Chemistry. Her first book, Cookwise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Cooking is a bestseller and  won a James Beard Award for excellence. Shirley has received many awards, including the Best Cooking Teacher of the Year in Bon Appetit's "Best of the Best" Annual Food and Entertaining Awards in 2001. She lives in Atlanta with her husband, Arch.

Bibliographic information

• Title: BakeWise: The Hows and Whys of Successful Baking with Over 200 Magnificent Recipes
• Author: Shirley O. Corriher
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Scribner, 2008
• ISBN: 1416560831, 9781416560838
• Length: 544 pages
• Subjects: Cooking / Courses & Dishes / Cakes; Cooking / General; Cooking / Methods / Baking