Greenspan Dorie - Baking with Julia: based on the PBS series hosted by Julia Child

Copyright 2006 by Dorie Greenspan
Photographs copyright 2006 by Alan Richardson

All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Greenspan, Dorie.
Baking : from my home to yours / Dorie Greenspan ;
photographs by Alan Richardson.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN (print): 978-0-618-44336-9
ISBN (ebook): 978-0-547-34806-3
1. Baking. I. Title.
TX 765. G 8155 2006
641.8'15dc22 2006003101

Book design by Anne Chalmers
Food styling by Karen Tack
Prop styling by Deb Donahue

v1.0713

FOR JOSHUA,
my all-time favorite
cookie muncher

THIS IS MY NINTH COOKBOOK . It is different in almost every way from my previous books, with one grand exception: as with all my other books, I worked with great people.

From the start there was my agent, David Black. David is smart, funny, fiercely supportive and crazy about browniesa quality not to be underestimated. He is also spot-on about people, and it was David who brought me to Rux Martin, my editor.

I had known Rux and admired her work for years and was thrilled to be working with her. And I cant emphasize the word with strongly enoughin Rux I found a true partner, something wonderful and rare in any endeavor. Baking is a far better book for having passed under her keen eye.

I was also privileged to work with the remarkable team at Houghton Mifflin, including Michaela Sullivan, who created the cover; Anne Chalmers, who designed the interior; Shelley Berg, who saw the book through production; Jacinta Monniere, who skillfully deciphered editorial hieroglyphs; and Ruxs terrific assistant, another brownie lover, Mimi Assad.

That Baking is both beautiful and welcoming is thanks to the extraordinary talents of the dream team of food photography: photographer Alan Richardson and his assistant, Roy Galaday; food stylist Karen Tack and her assistant, Ellie Ritt; and prop stylist Deb Donahue. Working with any of them would have been an honor; working with all of them was a gift.

Once again, I was lucky enough to work with Judith Sutton, the best cookbook copy editor on the planet. Weve been together on every book Ive written, and I hope never to break this streak.

I have an equally long-running streak with Bon Apptit magazine and its exceptional editor in chief, Barbara Fairchild. Weve worked together happily, creatively and deliciously for fifteen years and I hope well be working together for many more years to come. At Bon Apptit, Ive been made to feel like a treasured member of the family, and Im incredibly grateful. Extra thanks to Kristine Kidd, who, as director of the test kitchen, encouraged me to develop several recipes that debuted in the magazine and now appear in Baking.

I was fortunate to have the unflappable Judith Marshall testing recipes with me in New York. Judith is a gifted baker and a wonderful kitchen companion. We worked as a duo when she was pregnant, and we finished as a trio, with Olivia, her adorable daughter, taking up residence at the end of the kitchen. Were not certain what Olivia will do when she grows up, but were sure shell love chocolate.

Special thanks to my pastry SOS team, Pierre Herm in Paris and Nick Malgieri in New York.

And, as always and for always, my deepest love and greatest thanks to the men who make my life so sweet, my husband, Michael, and our son, Joshua.

UNTIL I WAS A JUNIOR IN COLLEGE, my sole cooking experience consisted of burning down my parents kitchen when I was thirteen, after I tossed frozen French fries into boiling oil and covered the pot. For the next half-dozen years, I remained blissfully clueless about all things culinary. I didnt bake so much as a chocolate chip cookie. But as a nineteen-year-old newlywed, I developed an abundance of curiosity, enthusiasm and, most important, needour budget didnt allow for dinners out, and it certainly didnt cover store-bought desserts.

To my surprise, I found that I enjoyed cooking and loved baking. In fact, I loved it so much that, years later, when I was finishing a doctorate in gerontology and expecting to find a research job or a quiet spot in a university, I realized that baking was all I really wanted to do. With my husbands encouragement, I decided to trade in academe for an oven, even though most everyone else I knew thought I was nuts.

At my first job interview to become an apprentice pastry chef in New York City, the chef rattled away in French, without asking me if I spoke the language, punctuating his monologue repeatedly with the words Je cherche un garonIm looking for a boy. When I pointed out I was not a boy, he said, Yes, and that is why you will not work in my kitchen.

I did finally beg my way into a couple of great kitchensall owned by womenand began writing about baking. Eventually I was asked by Julia Child to write Baking with Julia and turn what the chefs did on camera during her PBS television series into workable recipes the rest of the world could make at home. One afternoon when we were playing hooky from a prep session, Julia put her arm around my shoulders and said, We make such a good team because were really just a pair of home bakers.

I hadnt thought about myself that way, but Julia was right: I was a home baker. In all the years Id spent writing, teaching and explaining the elaborate recipes of pastry chefs, I was still baking crisps, crumbles, kids cupcakes and the homey desserts of my heart in my own narrow kitchen.

I had become a professional, but I had never stopped enjoying the satisfactions of baking at home. I still love the fragrance of fresh, sweet butter and pure vanilla, the feel of dough, the sound a wooden spoon makes against a pottery mixing bowl, the smell of cookies when theyre almost ready to come out of the oven and the remarkable sense of accomplishment every time I make something with my own hands. And I still love simple sweets: chunky cookies that can be packed in lunch boxes, pies for the holiday table, loaf cakes dusted with powdered sugar, Bundt cakes that are good keepers and tall all-American layer cakes, swirled with creamy frosting and big enough to support a battalion of birthday candles.

Its been more than thirty years since I started baking at home, and rarely a day goes by that I dont bake. This book is a record of those years. In some ways, its a recipe scrapbook, filled just as I would fill a kitchen journal to pass along to our son when he gets ready to start his own home. Its a collection of my favorite recipes, the ones I love and the ones Ive shared with my family and friendsa compendium of all that Ive learned about home baking. At its heart are the treasured recipes that have proved to do one thing very wellmake people happy.

D ORIE G REENSPAN
New York City, 2006