xtal's Full Review: Betty Crocker's Bread Machine Cookbook Books
I spent a long time in the bookstore searching out the perfect cookbook for my new bread machine, and I think I might have found it. I was looking for four basic features: quality, quantity, flexibility, and pictures. Here’s a little explanation of how Betty Crocker’s Best Bread Machine Cookbook satisfies my requirements.
Quality “Quality” refers to both the quality of the recipes and the quality of the book. The hardcover book is nice and sturdy, bound in the classic Betty Crocker style, with nice glossy pages, so it’s pleasant to hold. It’s organized nicely, too. The first 15 pages or so cover the basics, from the Five Steps to Great Bread, to discussions on bread machine cycles and ingredients (with a two-page spread on all the kinds of flour and their uses), to a great troubleshooting section complete with pictures of loaves gone bad. This section also offers tips on slicing and preserving and three pages of pretty useful Q&As. Each recipe comes with one or more success tip, as well as occasional serving suggestions and even bread trivia. The layout is great—ingredients are down the middle, with measurements for 1 ½- and 2-pound recipes down either side. A few lines of instructions follow below, and tips and suggestions are neatly tucked into sidebars. Recipes are divided into categories such as Good and Savory, Wholesome Grain, Fruit and Veggie, Rustic Loaves and Flatbreads, Rolls and Breadsticks, and Sweet Breads and Coffee Cakes. In the back there’s information on how the recipes were tested and calculated, nutrition information, and a metric conversion guide.
Of course, the quality of the recipes is the most important factor. After having made many loaves (classic white, cheese-onion, gingery bread (great for French toast!), cinnamon raisin, chocolate, double-garlic potato, garlic basil, pizza dough, bagels, and raspberry rolls) with success, I can say that the quality of the recipes (and their accompanying tips) is excellent, at least for my machine (Breadman TR444). The only disaster I’ve had so far was the result of using a recipe I found on the Web. I can’t wait to try more of the recipes—both for regular loaves and for cinnamon rolls, breadsticks, coffee cakes, and braided breads.
Quantity As you might have guessed by now, there are lots of recipes in this book. There are over 130 recipes, from the most basic to the more creative (but never bizarre), and almost every one sounds great.
Flexibility As I mentioned, almost all the recipes include measurements for both 1 ½- and 2-pound loaves, which is a necessity with all the different bread machines on the market. I found that with my machine the 1 ½-pound recipes work best, even though the machine can make 2-pound loaves. The suggestions and tips also allow some flexibility, often offering alternative ingredients.
Pictures This is what really sold me on the this book. Ok, so you don’t need pictures for bread machine recipes—the machine controls how the loaf comes out looking. But if you’re like me, you need pictures just to get inspired to bake, even if it’s just putting ingredients into a pan and pushing Start. The pictures in this book are so inspiring that I’ve made many more loaves than I can eat. No, they’re not just pictures of plain old loaves of bread—they’re pictures of sliced bread with jam, butter, or delicious-looking spreads; mouth-watering sandwiches; French toast; focaccia; pizza; beautiful rolls and coffee cakes; and gooey sticky buns. The colorful, full-page pictures appear on every 4th or 5th page, more pictures than I found in any other cookbook. Plus, the recipes in the sections on rolls, breadsticks, sweetbreads, and coffeecakes are accompanied by great illustrations for just how to twist a parmesan twist, snip a raspberry roll, or fold your coffeecake.
This book has everything I need. If you’re looking for a bread machine cookbook, stick with Betty—it might be the only bread machine cookbook you’ll ever buy.
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