BAKED

This write-up could obviously go in our “what we’re reading” section, but cookbooks should

be used more than read. I used to think that baking was amateurish when compared to cooking,

sautéing, slow roasting, carefully picked herbs and thinly sliced vegetables. Somehow this all

seemed classier than flour, butter and sugar. I’m an amateur myself and that was part of my

problem. I awoke to the degree of my naïve bias when some friends introduced my wife and me

to Baked: New Frontiers in Baking by Matt Lewis and Renato Poliafito.

After working for several years in advertising, Lewis and Polifiato left their jobs in 2005 to open

their own bakery: Baked (of course), located in Red Hook, Brooklyn. Their goal of creating

the best of the classic American bakeries was an instant success and their book, published by

Stewart, Tabori & Chang in 2008, made many of their famous recipes available to a public

audience that was begging for them.

I’ve never been to the bakery in Red Hook, but these recipes have done all but take me there.

From fairly simple Chocolate Chip Cookies and Easy Homemade Granola, to Sour Lemon

Scones, Banana Pecan Piloncillo Ice Cream, Sweet and Salty cake, and a rich selection of tasty

drinks, the book offers a treat for every level of cook and every area of every palate. Their

famous Baked Brownie recipe (p. 117), sitting prominently and symbolically in the middle of

the book, was awarded “best brownie” by America’s Test Kitchen and the Today show. Martha

Stewart rightly endorses their results: “very, very good.”

Added to that, the exquisite photos by Tina Rupp and the delightful narrative style in the recipes

will slow you down to enjoy the food you bake and eat. And their wit and culinary creativity

will leave you deploring the preservative-laden, plastic-wrapped junk on the grocery store

shelves that masquerades as food (hats off to Michael Pollan who makes this point so well).

And that’s important for more that just nutritional reasons; as Leon Kass rightly observes in his

book The Hungry Soul: “Recovering the deeper meaning of eating could help cure our spiritual

anorexia.” If this is true even in a small way, then Baked is an excellent source for both physical

and spiritual nourishment in an increasingly fast-food world. Happy baking and eating.