How to Bake: Complete Guide to Perfect Cakes, Cookies, Pies, Tarts, Breads, Pizzas, Muffins,

Here are the best recipes for breads, including such quick ones as Buttermilk Corn Bread, Irish Soda Bread, Classic Southern Biscuits, and Currant Tea Scones, as well as such delicious yeast-risen breads as Italian Bread Rings, Swiss Rye Bread, Challah, and EnglishMuffins. Malgieri also offers recipes for savory treats like Old-Fashioned Chicken Pie, Pepper and Onion Frittata Tart, Cheese Quiche, and Rosemary Focaccia; and for sweet pastries ranging from puff pastries--Apple Turnovers, Banana Feuilletés with Caramel Sauce, Brioches, Strawberry Savarin, and Croissants--to pies and tarts, cobblers, and cookies of every stripe--drop, bar, rolled, and filled; brownies, macaroons, and rugelach. Cakes, too, are here, from layered to rolled, from angel to devil's food.

The recipes in How to Bake are clear and methodical. Master recipes explain all the steps to making a classic dish. They are frequently followed by creative variations so that the baker's palate and skills will always be accommodated and challenged. Start out with a simple spice cake, for example, and transform it, under Malgieri's reassuring guidance, into a lavishly decorated celebration cake.

In addition to an exhaustive and tempting selection of recipes, Malgieri offers clear, detailed instructions, interweaving techniques and helpful sidebars: how to make a pastry bag out of parchment paper; what baking pans to buy; mastering pie and cake toppings; learning to decorate a cake so it looks as if it came from the bakery; and scores of other helpful tips. All this is punctuated with precise explanatory illustrations and thirty-two pages of luscious color photographs to inspire and guide the baker. How to Bake is a one-volume "bible" for bakers.

I must warn you, if you are going to buy this book to learn "How to Bake", then this book is really not for you. Nick Malgieri does not go into any type of specific detail about 'how to bake' in the meaning itself, but he does tell us how to bake many delicious treats.

This book is packed with recipes for assorted breads, scones, biscuits and muffins. Pizza and Focaccia, chicken and fruit pies. Many different fruit and creme tarts. Beautiful to look at and eat Cookies and Filled Cookies. He has included a wide assortment of Cakes (my family's favorite), with frosting. He even has plenty of recipes using certain types of dough, such as Pate a Choux, to make many different kinds of pastries. Some of the pastry doughs are a little time consuming, as are some of the bread recipes, but they are pretty uncomplicated, and very much worth the time and effort.

I have tried out several different kinds of breads and pastries, which of course, were all superb. Every recipe is clear in its description, and there are illustrations for many of them. There are two sections of beautiful color pictures that are pleasing to the eye as well as the pallette.

This book is a welcome addition to any cooks library. I love the variety of different recipes all packed into one book. If you want to impress your family and friends with your culinary skills, then I suggest giving this book a try.


If you can own only one book on baking, this is it!   June 19, 1999
32 out of 33 found this review helpful

We own a long shelf of baking books, both for bread and pastry, but there is no book in these areas that we rely on more than this one. The recipes are marvelously clear and precise without being pretentious (as in, say, Nancy Silverton's book that could scare anyone out of the kitchen.) When I scout all of my cookbooks for a certain pastry recipe, it is ultimately Malgieri that serves as the bottom line, the one I compare the others to. This would be one of my half dozen basic cookbooks.


A Must Have for the Avid Baker!   February 11, 2002
Claudia (Los Angeles, CA)
25 out of 25 found this review helpful

I am a big baking fan, and this book has become my bible. I have tried about 2/3 of all the recipes, and all came out perfect.

First of all, this is one of the few American baking books that uses an appropriate amount of sugar for sweet cakes......most books use a ratio of 3 parts flour, 2 parts sugar, which is too sweet for me. In this book, the author uses the classical 2 parts flour, 1 part sugar.

One of the biggest successes is his recipe for the genoise. Unlike other recipes, he uses extra yolks instead of butter, which makes them super, super soft and moist. The pizza dough is to die for, a pizzeria can't make it any better.

The book has a good balance between easily understandable recipes, variations to all recipes, guides, notes and general explanations as to how to get great results. Each chapter starts with a general comment on the kind of cake/pizza/pastry that is to be baked, where the recipe originated, possible variations of the recipe, and a perfect description of the consistency and taste of the finished product.

The bread section gives a wonderful explanation about the different starters, the effect of the different risings in bread, and it has great quick breads as well as some wonderful artesian breads with a crackly-crunchy crust.

If you don't want to invest in a lot of specialized baking books, this is the ideal book: it covers everything from pizza to bread to cookies to croissants to cakes. And if you already have a great collection of cooking and baking books, this one is an absolute necessity!


Easy to follow, impeccably perfect recipes   December 31, 1998
18 out of 18 found this review helpful

After seeing Mr. Malgieri on the Food Network, I waited quite some time to obtain this book...and I wish I hadn't. The recipes are perfectly detailed and easy to follow. Many of them tell you how to mix the ingredients three different ways: by hand, with a heavy-duty mixer or with a food processor. As a baker for many years, I found myself not only baking with this book, but reading it, too. It is finely detailed and contains many hints and recipe variations that you won't want to miss. Can't wait to receive my recently ordered Malgieri book, "Great Italian Dessert."


A great book for beginner and expert alike.   July 25, 2005
dlvaughn (Spokane Wa)
14 out of 14 found this review helpful

I like Malgieri's practical, no nonsense instruction. This book is a great teacher as well as a good cookbook. It is equally good for beginner and expert. His recipes are achievable and delicious. He explains and teaches so that one is not left in the dark as to any of the "how tos."

Last Christmas, I gave countless loaves of panettone...all met with great appreciation and raves. I fear it is now an expected tradition for me. His challah is one of my favorites and was my first attempt at this beautiful braided bread. I am hooked. It is interesting as each time I make it, I think "this isn't going to rise" but each time it rises beautifully.

My only critique is that I wish he'd included comments on oven spring. Some rise like crazy in the oven, some do not. All in all, it's a good book to have.