Starting with Ingredients: Baking: Quintessential Recipes for the Way We Really Bake

There are things I like and things I don't about this cookbook. However, to sum up - I am glad I purchased this book and do turn to it occasionally. It contains a great many recipes for entertaining and impressing your guests and the tips and suggestions are detailed, informative, and not patronizing. She does some price checking and won't recommend that you buy an extremely expensive pan simply to make a single recipe and has some tips that help stretch the budget. She's also got some authentic Greek, Italian, and Jewish dishes that she includes with a brief history of their origin. The random bits of facts and trivia are also mostly interesting.Likes:Most of the basic ingredients in these recipes are commonly found and you'll already have most - if not all of them - in your kitchen. She doesn't often call for ingredients that you have to special order or pay out the nose to obtain. When she does use those ingredients she often includes a preface in the recipe that describes the uncommon ingredient and recommends substitutions.If you're not familiar with her other book, you'll find that each chapter is organized by "main" ingredient. This isn't necessarily the item used in the greatest quantity - this is the item that the menu is based around. For example, there is a section for Cherries that contains a variety of recipes - most sweet, some savory - that contain cherries. Same goes for nuts, greens, quince, etc.The author does NOT call for canned, preserved ingredients. This is a plus - I don't enjoy consuming a ton of sodium simply because the author wants to throw in a can of cream of mushroom soup because they underestimate the average person's ability to make a bechemel (white) sauce and add a handful of mushrooms.She does not call for lard in her recipes. Not even her pie dough recipes. This is fantastic! I do not use lard, will not buy lard, and do not trust lard. Her recipes call for butter and - even better - specify whether she means SALTED or UNSALTED.DislikesUnfortunately, the author is based in the East Coast. Many of the chapters are based around food items that are very difficult to find in California.Her recipes are entirely do-it-yourself-from-scratch. Most of the time this is fantastic and I prefer to bake this way. However, many of her recipes, when made as she suggests, will become an all-day affair.This is not a low-fat cookbook. Be prepared to either eat lettuce and water the rest of the day or spend a few hours on the treadmill. Many of her recipes contain a fair amount of butter and cream. In her defense, she also uses a lot of olive oil and never claims to be a low fat cookbook.This is not one of those cookbooks that will become the only thing you use. This is a cookbook you turn to when you have a room full of zucchini and you want to find 8 different unusual ways to use them. This, of course, is also a "like." This cookbook will not help you find a recipe for basic white cake, basic frosting, bread dough, or mashed potatoes.Finally, I'm willing to bet that the average person will not have such a wide range of tastes that they will make or like every recipe in here.

Purchased as gift. Product arrived on time as stated, and good quality.

Everything you need to know about pretty much every ingredient used in baking is here in this one "encyclopedia". For the beginner through professional, this is an invaluable aid. Written in alphabetical order, information is easy to find. Not only is there a description of each ingredient, but practical recipes are included in each chapter as well. Many tips and tricks of the trade are also included. This is a big book (923 pages), but a useful reference source. As a professional baker, I am thrilled to have this as an addition to my library.

I got this for my Mom for Christmas. I have lusted over the original for years, and have yet to get it. I bought this book for my mom well ahead of Christmas so I could read it. It was great one of the essential cookbooks.

I have to say I am a big Aliza Green fan. I hve her other Starting with Ingredients book, and the recipes come out amazing. This book is also great, and every recipe I have tried is delicious.

I love all my Aliza Green cookbooks and think she is one of the most informed, inspired AND sensible cookery writers out there. Her recipes are often simple, always spectacular. She has unusual, well-researched recipes that you don't find elsewhere and I always deem them "make again good." I also love how she uses the accurate weight measurements for the ingredients that are tricky to measure by cup, but then gives cup measurements for liquids etc. a common sense approach to the two schools of thought!