Zingerman's Bakehouse

Awesome book! Received their pound cake as gift. When we went to order a second one, gaffes at the cost. Was thrilled to find they sell a book with the recipe. Made it, and it was every bit as good as the delivered one. Such fun recipes that I bought a second as a gift for a friend who loves to bake.

I bought this book a few months ago and it sat by my couch. I would thumb through it, reading the stories, glancing at the recipes. Well, lo and behold, last week I found myself with a NEED to make a cake for a birthday and no car. I picked up the book and found a recipe that appeared easy enough and away I baked!Well, I should say that I THOUGHT it was easy, but there were parts of making a buttercream from scratch that had me floundering in my kitchen. I had to get my egg yolk/sugar mixture up to 180 degrees in a double boiler and, for some reason, that took a VERY long time! I persisted...and followed the directions to a T. I baked a masterpiece. Yummy and not overly sweet. This was the encouragement I needed.Two days later I ran out of bread and was in the middle of making my son breakfast. I decided to try the drop biscuits. To be honest, I had attempted to make other biscuits in the past, but they were pretty...solid and not too edible. Well, I made the biscuits and they were AMAZING!With those initial recipes down, I decided to try the cheddar ale soup. Zingerman's Cheddar Ale Soup is one of my favorites at the bakehouse. I am vegetarian and many soups from restaurants contain a beef or chicken base. As this is one of the few ones that does not, I was able to try it and fell in love. Cripes! It's BEER and CHEESE! What is NOT to love. I made the soup, the biscuits, and the ginger-up cookies for dinner last night. The soup was just as amazing as it was at the bakehouse! The biscuits were perfect, again. The cookies were also amazing - with little pockets of crystallized ginger that take them over the top.With so many recipes online, it is rare for me to find a book that I am so fond of. This is a keeper for me and I am committed to baking my way through it.

I lived in Ann Arbor for 6 years (up until 2011), so I spent quite a bit of time at the various Zingerman spots. There are a lot of desserts I've loved from Zingerman's, but the Hot Cocoa Cake is definitely my favorite. I've been dying to find out whether the recipe for Zingerman's Bakehouse's amazing Hot Cocoa Cake would be included in this cookbook and it is! More importantly, the recipe is easy to follow and produces a cake that tastes just like I remember. Warm and chocolatey, with fantastic chocolate chunks (use chunks, don't use chips) interspersed throughout the tender cake, it makes for a great treat with coffee, an easy crowd-pleasing chocolate cake (and it travels well), and also makes for the best breakfast slice ever.Likewise, the included recipe for challah and the very precise instructions for shaping it is worth the cost of this cookbook. The Bakehouse makes some of the best challah I've ever had, and I was able to reproduce it at home. Their recipe calls for a lot more egg (yolks) than most other challah recipes do, which along with the touch of oil helps make it so tender and golden in color.Since Amazon hasn't included the Table of Contents or Index in their preview, I'm attaching them to this review. It's true that the cookbook doesn't have that many recipes overall, but the expertise of the bakers and uniqueness of some of the recipes (like the Hungarian savory fried dough and the Transylvanian cinnamon swirl bread) more than makes up for it. Happily, this cookbook includes plenty of color photos (which the previous Zingerman's cookbook did not), while still managing to pack in a ton of information about the Bakehouse itself, how each recipe came into being, and ways you can tweak the recipe it make it your own.If you really enjoying baking desserts or breads, if you like learning more about the history of a place or a company, if you like hunting down recipes for unusual items, or if you are interested in what striving for perfection while running a thriving bakery looks like - Zingerman's Bakehouse is definitely a cookbook you should add to your library. If you aren't so interested in any of those things, but you're willing to buy a cookbook that will have the best recipe, one that's easy to follow and certain to succeed, for a few items you do want to make - Zingerman's Bakehouse is also worth adding to your cookbook library.

Love it. Interesting read and fab recipies

interesting book

Enjoyable

I own and use many baking books. I originally purchased this as a kindle edition and have baked many of the recipes successfully, but truthfully the physical book is beautiful and so nice to flip through and makes the recipes way more accessible. I am so glad to own it now and add it to my collection. Their pie crust and technique are my favourite of many recipes i've tried. Other favourites so far are their pecan pie, their challah, the sour cream walnut cake, and their chocolate coconut macaroons. I have bookmarked many other recipes to try and will do so this summer.

I didn’t like this item at all. I’m an experienced home baker of all types of baked goods. Some of these recipes (Stollen as best example) were not great. I tried to like this book given reports I had heard of it but gave up. There are other so much better books available