Book description
For years, food editors and writers have kept
CookWise
right by their computers. Now that spot they've been holding for BakeWise
can be filled.
With her years of experience from big-pot cooking for 140 teenage
boys and her classic French culinary training to her work as a
research biochemist at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine,
Shirley Corriher manages to put two and two together in unique and
exciting ways. She describes useful techniques, such as brushing puff
pastry with ice water-not just brushing off the flour-making the puff
pastry easier to roll. The result? Higher, lighter, and flakier
pastry. And you won't find these recipes anywhere else, not even on
the Internet. She can help you make moist cakes; flaky pie crusts;
shrink-proof perfect meringues that won't leak but still cut like a
dream; big, crisp cream puffs; amazing French pastries; light génoise;
and crusty, incredibly flavorful, open-textured French breads, such as
baguettes and fougasses.
BakeWise does not have just a single source of knowledge;
Shirley loves reading the works of chefs and other good cooks and
shares their information with you, too. She applies not only her
expertise but that of the many artisans she admires, such as famous
French pastry chefs Gaston Lenôtre and Chef Roland Mesnier, the White
House executive pastry chef for twenty-five years; Bruce Healy, author
of Mastering the Art of French Pastry; and Bonnie Wagner, Shirley's
daughter-in-law's mother. Shirley also retrieves "lost arts"
from experts of the past such as Monroe Boston Strause, the pie master
of 1930s America. For one dish, she may give you techniques from three
or four different chefs plus her own touch of science-“better baking
through chemistry.” She adds facts about the right temperature, the
right mixing speed, and the right mixing time for the absolutely most
stable egg foam, so you can create a light-as-air génoise every time.
Shirley O. Corriher has a B. A. in chemistry from
Vanderbilt University, where she was also a biochemist at the medical
school. She has problem-solved for everyone from Julia Child to
Procter & Gamble and Pillsbury. She has taught and lectured
throughout the world. She has long been a writer-- authoring a regular
syndicated column in The Los Angeles Times Syndicate's Great Chefs
series as well as technical articles in the Journal of
Biological Chemistry. Her first book, Cookwise: The Hows and
Whys of Successful Cooking is a bestseller and won a James
Beard Award for excellence. Shirley has received many awards,
including the Best Cooking Teacher of the Year in Bon Appetit's
"Best of the Best" Annual Food and Entertaining Awards
in 2001. She lives in Atlanta with her husband, Arch.
