I am a big fan of Elinor Klivans, whose books are usually rich, filled with easy and creative ideas. This book was no different and did not let me down.
The proposal of Fast Breads is to provide recipes that can be prepared fast. Notice that "fast" refers to the time you take preparing the bread dough, which excludes rising time, and measuring/gathering the ingredients. The breads in this book all take from 5 to 15 minutes to mix, apart from a handful of recipes, that will take 20 minutes to mix, and the Babka, which takes 30 minutes (including dough, filling, and crumbs for 2 Babkas).
The book is comprised of 6 chapters:
1. Superfast breads
The fastest breads in the book, most of which can be prepared by hand.
Recipes:
- Butter Drop Biscuits, Very Big Popovers, Savory Lemon-leek Loaf, Bottoms-up Cinnamon-Caramel Pinwheels, Toasted Pecan & Chocolate Chunk Scones, Cherry & Almond, Whole-wheat Scones, Pumpkin-Chocolate Chip Pancakes, and Christmas Morning Belgian waffles
2. Corn Breads
Recipes:
- Bacon & Cheddar Corn Bread, Buttermilk Corn Bread, Southern Corn Sticks, Apricot Corn Muffins, Hush Puppies, and Spoon Bread
3. Refrigerator Breads
This chapter contains breads that are refrigerated after mixing. Most of those doughs can be in the refrigerator up to 2 days before going to the oven, and they must be refrigerated for at least a minimum time (say, for example, overnight). This gives you the freedom of preparing the dough at one moment and bake it at a different time. You can even bake only part of the dough one day, and bake the rest of it in the next day. Most of these recipes require non-instant active dry yeast, differently from the other chapters, most of which require instant dry yeast or baking powder or baking soda.
Recipes:
- Crusty Artisanal Bread, Multigrain Crusty Bread (back cover picture), Brioche, Dark Rye Bread, Parker House Rolls, Anytime Butter Twists, Cinnamon Twists, Chocolate-hazelnut Babka (table of contents picture), Cinnamon Babka, Extra-sticky Caramel-pecan Buns, Cinnamon Buns with Cream Cheese Glaze, Auntie Bell's Bubble Bread
4. Buns, rolls & small breads
Recipes:
- Cheddar Cracker Bread, Crumpets, Butter Crescents, Buttery Rowies, Sunday Lunch Dinner Rolls, Gruyere & Black Pepper Gougeres, Gingerbread Doughnuts with Lemon Glaze, Cinnamon Beignets
5. Loaves & rounds
Recipes:
- Borrowdale Raisin Tea Loaf, Buttermilk Sandwich Loaf (cover picture), Carrot, Cranberry & Walnut Loaf, Dark Irish Soda Bread, Toasted Walnut & Date Whole-wheat Round, An Everyday Crusty Round or Two, Lots of Cheese Bread (back cover picture), Tomato, Basil & Onion Focaccia, Fig & Gorgonzola Focaccia
6. Bread dishes & bread toppings
- Ham & Swiss on Rye Strata, Baked Almond Brioche Toast (back cover picture), Sausage, Onion, Mushroom & Biscuit Hash (table of contents picture), Ribollita (an Italian soup), BLT Corn Bread Salad, Winter Panzanella Salad, Salami, Prosciutto, Provolone & Sweet Red Pepper Stromboli, Sliders, Muffaleta, Panini, Chocolate-ginger Bread Pudding, and butters/sauces/spreads (Thyme Butter, Thyme-Garlic Butter, Maple Butter, Honey Butter, Lemon Butter, Orange Butter, Cinnamon Butter, Spice Butter, Rum Butter, Brandy Butter, Grand Marnier Butter, Cranberry Compote, Blueberry Sauce, Lemon Curd, Vanilla Whipped Cream, Maple Whipped Cream)
The book contains 24 pictures, but one picture per recipe would be ideal. One con that I found is that the Auntie Bell's Bubble Bread is not actually a fast bread, in my opinion. Although the dough can be prepared quickly, the bread must be formed in about 46 balls before going to the oven, which is a lot of work! Still, I don't think that's enough to take away 1 star from the review.
As pros, I can say that the book is suitable for both newbies and experienced bakers (the author describes how to form the bread, provides a general guidelines chapter, every step in the recipe is detailed, etc). Most of the recipes require common pans (such as baking sheets, and a 9x5x3 loaf pan or similar, with 8 cups capacity), apart from the Corn Stick, and the Waffle, that require a special pan/equipment. Several recipes in the book provide more than one method for mixing: by mixer, by hand, or by processor. Elinor also describes, for each recipe, how to store the bread and warm it the next day. Also, the final chapter is a great plus, as it complements the contents of the book by giving recipes that use the breads prepared in previous chapters.
If you are interested in buying this book, I highly recommend searching the web for "Elinior Klivans cornbread video". It is easy to find a website that features a handful of videos where Elinor teaches recipes from this book, among which are the Cornbread Salad. To see the other videos at the same website, just type "Elinor Klivans" in the search field of the website and click on Search. (sorry, I cannot provide the address of the website because it is against policies).
So far, I have tested only the Big Popover recipe, that is made in a Texas muffin pan. That came out excellent! I will update this review as I prepare more recipes from this book.
Update (Apr 2016): I have prepared so many of the breads in the book, including almost the entire chapter on corn breads and several refrigerator breads. I had one failure with the Babka (if we can call it a failure, it came out of the oven just like the picture, but too much sugar IMO), overall the recipes work like a charm, it is one of my favorite books on bread.
The dinner roll became a staple at home, btw, I prepare it once per month.
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Top reviews from other countries
M.J. D.
may not be worth buying depending on onesinterests
Reviewed in Canada on February 7, 2020