Cooking Cheap

This is a small book from 1991 written by Peter Reinhart when he was unknown as an author and unknown as a baker if lived far from from his bakery.

I’ve read his other two books, “Bread Bakers Apprentice”, and “Crust and Crumb”, written in that order. There has been a progression in him as a baker and as an author.

A cookbook review could rip on the words, the recipes and techniques, or the pictures and graphics. With fame, comes a publisher that will take pictures and give them some page space in the later works. I’m shallow so I like the later books with the pictures and illustrations. This book is light, a paltry 0%, on pictures.

I’m too full of myself to follow or judge his techniques or recipes. I’d twist them my way, by commission or omission, for better or for worse. Even if I wanted to, I just can’t duplicate his recipes. I’ll bake my way. Until I find a better way. That’s why we keep looking.

There’s a point when the touch and the feel and simple words are enough for me to understand. I think I’m there and yet I know I’m going to be fail on some cosmic measuring spoon.

Most of the book is not about recipes. It’s a “Zen And The Art Of Motorcycle Maintenance” for bread bakers. He connects his spirituality to bread making. He’s not wrong. It is a mystic thing and not everyone can command the ingredients into the “perfect loaf”. You can’t get there by not trying. You can’t get there with a measuring cup either.

I knew that. Reinhart’s later books have changed the recipes and techniques subtlety and greatly decreased the “we touch God when we bake”. I don’t know if thats a good thing. The passion doesn’t come across once the editors work with you. That’s OK. Baking is a duality held in balance by an external force. Might be me, might be you, it might be Martha Stewart. You’ll know when you try to break out of the paradigm.

You are officially authorized to beat the verbal crap out of me for using the “paradigm” word. Just don’t use the meme’s on me.