Food Sciences Books

The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread

Peter Reinhart

Amazon Price: $23.10 List Price: $35.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Ten Speed Press Amazon Marketplace: 46 new & used starting at $17.79

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Baking -> Bread
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Baking -> General
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Baking -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 185 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

"A bread baker, like any true artisan or craftsman, must have the power to control outcomes," says Peter Reinhart, author of The Bread Baker's Apprentice. "Mastery comes with practice." As in many arts, you must know and understand the rules before you can break them. Reinhart encourages you to learn the science of bread making, but to never forget that vision and experimentation, not formulas, make transcendent loaves. The Bread Baker's Apprentice is broken into three sections. The first is an amusing tale of Reinhart's visit to France and his discovery of pain à l'ancienne, a cold-fermented baguette. The second section comprises a tutorial of bread-making basics and Reinhart's "Twelve Stages of Bread." And finally, the recipes: Ciabatta, Pane Siciliano, Potato Rosemary Bread, New York Deli Rye, Kaiser Rolls, and Brioche, to name a few. All recipes include bread profiles and ingredient percentages. Reimagined for modern bakers, these mouthwatering classic recipes are bound to inspire. --Dana Van Nest

The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals

Michael Pollan

Amazon Price: $17.79 List Price: $26.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Penguin Press HC, The Amazon Marketplace: 137 new & used starting at $7.35

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Gastronomy -> History
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Nutrition -> General
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> Nutrition -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 466 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

The bestselling author of The Botany of Desire explores the ecology of eating to unveil why we consume what we consume in the twenty-first century

"What should we have for dinner?" To one degree or another this simple question assails any creature faced with a wide choice of things to eat. Anthropologists call it the omnivore's dilemma. Choosing from among the countless potential foods nature offers, humans have had to learn what is safe, and what isn't-which mushrooms should be avoided, for example, and which berries we can enjoy. Today, as America confronts what can only be described as a national eating disorder, the omnivore's dilemma has returned with an atavistic vengeance. The cornucopia of the modern American supermarket and fast-food outlet has thrown us back on a bewildering landscape where we once again have to worry about which of those tasty-looking morsels might kill us. At the same time we're realizing that our food choices also have profound implications for the health of our environment. The Omnivore's Dilemma is bestselling author Michael Pollan's brilliant and eye-opening exploration of these little-known but vitally important dimensions of eating in America.

Pollan has divided The Omnivore's Dilemma into three parts, one for each of the food chains that sustain us: industrialized food, alternative or "organic" food, and food people obtain by dint of their own hunting, gathering, or gardening. Pollan follows each food chain literally from the ground up to the table, emphasizing our dynamic coevolutionary relationship with the species we depend on. He concludes each section by sitting down to a meal--at McDonald's, at home with his family sharing a dinner from Whole Foods, and in a revolutionary "beyond organic" farm in Virginia. For each meal he traces the provenance of everything consumed, revealing the hidden components we unwittingly ingest and explaining how our taste for particular foods reflects our environmental and biological inheritance.

We are indeed what we eat-and what we eat remakes the world. A society of voracious and increasingly confused omnivores, we are just beginning to recognize the profound consequences of the simplest everyday food choices, both for ourselves and for the natural world. The Omnivore's Dilemma is a long-overdue book and one that will become known for bringing a completely fresh perspective to a question as ordinary and yet momentous as What shall we have for dinner?

Basic Butchering of Livestock & Game

John J. Mettler

Amazon Price: $11.53 List Price: $16.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Storey Publishing, LLC Amazon Marketplace: 50 new & used starting at $5.95

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Industries & Professions -> Hospitality, Travel & Tourism
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> General
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 17 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

This is the book for anyone who hunts, farms, or buys large quantities of meat. The author takes the mystery out of slaughtering and butchering everything from beef and veal, to venison, pork, and lamb. The text is clear and easy-to-follow. Combined with 130 detailed illustrations by Elayne Sears, the reader is provided with complete, step-by-step instructions. Here is everything you need to know: ; At what age to butcher an animal ; How to kill, skin, slaughter, and butcher How to dress out game in a field ; Salting, smoking, and preserving ; Tools, equipment, the setup ; More than thirty recipes using all kinds of meat An Outdoor Life Book Club Selection "Provides clear, concise, and step-by-step information for people who want to slaughter their own meat." (Mother Earth News) Author Biography: John J. Mettler, Jr., D.V.M., is a retired large-animal veterinarian in upstate New York and has written several books on animals, including Basic Butchering of Livestock and Game and Horse Sen

Canning & Preserving for Dummies

Karen Ward

Amazon Price: $11.55 List Price: $16.99 Usually ships in 24 hours By: For Dummies Amazon Marketplace: 65 new & used starting at $7.51

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Canning & Preserving
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> General
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Thought about canning and preserving your own food? Maybe you haven’t given it a try because you believed it would be too involved. The truth is, today’s methods and procedures for home-canning, freezing, and drying food are simpler and easier than ever. And now, with this easy-to-follow book, you’ll get the information you need to can and preserve food safely.

Canning and Preserving For Dummies makes putting up fruits and vegetables in your home as easy as pie. Featuring up-to-date safety guidelines and simple, fun techniques, this practical, friendly guide is for anyone who wants to enjoy delicious, do-it-yourself treats year-round—or even give them as gifts! You get all the juicy details on:

• Water-bath canning
• Pressure canning
• Freezing
• Drying
• Finding the right supplies and equipment

Canning and Preserving For Dummies also features yummy, eas y-to-do recipes that include preparation times, cooking times, processing times, and the yield you should expect from your efforts. You’ll see how to make everything from apple butter, pear-raspberry jam, and bread and butter pickles to chicken stock, tomatillo salsa, and white chili. You’ll also discover how to:

• Know the acidity level of your food
• Pick and prepare fresh fruit
• Line your jars with liquid
• Create jams, jellies, and marmalades
• Preserve chutneys, relishes, and sauces
• Pickle vegetables
• Combine foods for convenience
• Select food for freezing
• Protect the life of your dried food

Providing troubleshooting tips for home-canned creations, sources for locating equipment suppliers, a metric conversion guide, and definitions of preserving terms, Canning and Preserving For Dummies has just what you need to fill your pantry with savory homemade fare.

Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook: Strategies, Recipes, and Techniques of Classic Bistro Cooking

Anthony Bourdain

Amazon Price: $24.75 List Price: $37.50 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Bloomsbury USA Amazon Marketplace: 61 new & used starting at $16.90

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Regional & International -> European -> French
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> General
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 73 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

In this long-awaited cookbook, Anthony Bourdain reveals the hearty, delicious recipes of Les Halles and the provocative tricks of the trade that have made him a celebrated name across the globe. Before stunning the world with his bestselling Kitchen Confidential and A Cook's Tour, Anthony Bourdain spent years serving some of the best French brasserie food in New York. With its no-nonsense, down-to-earth atmosphere, Les Halles matches Bourdain's style perfectly: a restaurant where you can dress down, talk loudly, drink a little too much wine, and have a good time with friends. Now, Bourdain gives us his Les Halles Cookbook, a cookbook like no other: candid, funny, audacious, full of his signature charm and bravado. So bring a sharp knife, a big appetite, and a willingness to learn, as Bourdain teaches you everything you need to know to prepare classic French bistro fare. While you're being guided, in simple steps, through recipes like roasted veal short ribs and steak frites, escargots aux noix, and foie gras aux pruneaux, you'll feel like he's in the kitchen beside you-reeling off a few insults when you've scorched the sauce, and then patting you on the back for finally getting the steak tartare right. As practical as it is entertaining, Anthony Bourdain's Les Halles Cookbook is a can't-miss treat for cookbook lovers, aspiring chefs, and Bourdain fans everywhere.

The End of Food

Paul Roberts

Amazon Price: $17.16 List Price: $26.00 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Houghton Mifflin Amazon Marketplace: 61 new & used starting at $12.45

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Economics -> Agricultural
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Economics -> Commercial Policy
Subjects -> Business & Investing -> Economics -> Natural Resources

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Paul Roberts, the best-selling author of The End of Oil, turns his attention to the modern food economy and finds that the system entrusted to meet our most basic need is failing.
In this carefully researched, vivid narrative, Roberts lays out the stark economic realities behind modern food and shows how our system of making, marketing, and moving what we eat is growing less and less compatible with the billions of consumers that system was built to serve.
At the heart of The End of Food is a grim paradox: the rise of large-scale food production, though it generates more food more cheaply than at any time in history, has reached a point of dangerously diminishing returns. Our high-volume factory systems are creating new risks for food-borne illness, from E. coli to avian flu. Our high-yield crops and livestock generate grain, vegetables, and meat of declining nutritional quality. While nearly one billion people worldwide are overweight or obese, the same number of people—one in every seven of us—can't get enough to eat. In some of the hardest-hit regions, such as sub-Saharan Africa, the lack of a single nutrient, vitamin A, has left more than five million children permanently blind.
Meanwhile, the shift to heavily mechanized, chemically intensive farming has so compromised soil and water that it's unclear how long such output can be maintained. And just as we've begun to understand the limits of our abundance, the burgeoning economies of Asia, with their rising middle classes, are adopting Western-style, meat-heavy diets, putting new demands on global food supplies.
Comprehensive in scope and full of fresh insights, The End of Food presents a lucid, stark vision of the future. It is a call for us to make crucial decisions to help us survive the demise of food production as we know it.

Paul Roberts is the author of The End of Oil, which was a finalist for the New York Public Library's Helen Bernstein Book Award in 2005. He has written about resource economics and politics for numerous publications, including the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, Harper's Magazine, and Rolling Stone, and lectures frequently on business and environmental issues.

Weber's Big Book of Grilling

Jamie Purviance, Sandra S. McRae

Amazon Price: $16.47 List Price: $24.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: WEBER - Model: 62542 Amazon Marketplace: 87 new & used starting at $4.08

Buy at Amazon.com

Features:

• Weber #62542 Big Book of Grilling By Jamie Purviance & Sandra S. McRae
• WEBER

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Outdoor Cooking -> Barbecuing & Grilling
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Outdoor Cooking -> General
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Outdoor Cooking -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 113 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

We're not Worthy! 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

I have to bow down to this book as the best grilling book EVER. We've tried many of the recipes and never been disappointed. Plus, it's entertaining to read with great pictures. Can't ask for much more than that.

Weber's Big Book Of Grilling 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

This is a great guide to a first time owner of a Weber Grill.The recipes are easy to make and the tips and anecdotle information are great!!!

Editorial Review:

The grilling experts at Weber share their time honored secrets of cooking wisdom in this ultimate barbecue handbook. Destined to become a sauce stained classic, its packed with more than 365 of the tastiest recipes ever to hit the grill, mouthwatering full color photos, and all the tips and techniques you need to become a certified Backyard Hero. Want to know the secret of perfect ribs or how to grill a 20 pound turkey without letting them see you sweat? Whether youre the neighborhood grilling guru or youve never done much more than flip a burger, youll find tricks of the trade, great advice, and infinite ways to grill up fabulous food thats as red hot as the coals!

416 pages

By Jamie Purviance & Sandra S. McRae

Soft Cover

Designing Great Beers: The Ultimate Guide to Brewing Classic Beer Styles

Ray Daniels

Amazon Price: $16.47 List Price: $24.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Brewers Publications Amazon Marketplace: 40 new & used starting at $15.52

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Drinks & Beverages -> Beer
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Drinks & Beverages -> General
Subjects -> Cooking, Food & Wine -> Drinks & Beverages -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 63 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Part 1 of Designing Great Beers is a complete book in itself, focused solely on home-brewing ingredients and techniques (including three superb chapters on hops alone). Ray Daniels proves himself the "techie" type, infusing his introductory chapters with as much brewing math as brewing lore. Yet, Daniels never hops off the deep end of beer geekdom. Instead, he complements this emphasis on data with the creative use of graphics; where one could get bogged down in the stats, there is usually a clear visual depiction to instantly summarize their meaning.

This focus on facts continues into part 2 of Daniels's guide, where it backs an admirably pragmatic take on beer styles and their importance in home-brewing. Daniels devotes a chapter to each of 14 major style categories, detailing historical origins and modern brewing techniques. He lays a contemporary groundwork by compiling and analyzing the recipes of the National Homebrew Competition's most successful beers. The assumption is that beers deemed representative of particular beer styles in modern competitions serve as ideal models for recipe creation. Among the information provided for each style is a chart showing the percentage of brewers using each type of grain and in what proportions the grains were added. Similar data are supplied for hop varieties, yeast strains, and water treatment. This reverse engineering of award-winning beers naturally benefits experienced brewers seeking to wow judges at the next competition. Yet, even brewers taking their first shy steps into creating their own recipes have much to gain from this kind of practical analysis. Daniels provides the basic tools a brewer of any level can use to formulate recipes with confidence and creativity. --Todd Gehman

Hungry Planet: What the World Eats

Peter Menzel

Amazon Price: $16.47 List Price: $24.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: Ten Speed Press Amazon Marketplace: 52 new & used starting at $15.65

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Arts & Photography -> Photography -> Photo Essays
Subjects -> Arts & Photography -> Photography -> Travel -> General
Subjects -> Arts & Photography -> Photography -> Travel -> General AAS

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 43 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

It's an inspired idea--to better understand the human diet, explore what culturally diverse families eat for a week. That's what photographer Peter Menzel and author-journalist Faith D'Alusio, authors of the equally ambitious Material World, do in Hungry Planet: What the World Eats, a comparative photo-chronicle of their visits to 30 families in 24 countries for 600 meals in all. Their personal-is-political portraits feature pictures of each family with a week's worth of food purchases; weekly food-intake lists with costs noted; typical family recipes; and illuminating essays, such as "Diabesity," on the growing threat of obesity and diabetes. Among the families, we meet the Mellanders, a German household of five who enjoy cinnamon rolls, chocolate croissants, and beef roulades, and whose weekly food expenses amount to $500. We also encounter the Natomos of Mali, a family of one husband, his two wives, and their nine children, whose corn and millet-based diet costs $26.39 weekly.

We soon learn that diet is determined by largely uncontrollable forces like poverty, conflict and globalization, which can bring change with startling speed. Thus cultures can move--sometimes in a single jump--from traditional diets to the vexed plenty of global-food production. People have more to eat and, too often, eat more of nutritionally questionable food. Their health suffers.

Because the book makes many of its points through the eye, we see--and feel--more than we might otherwise. Issues that influence how the families are nourished (or not) are made more immediate. Quietly, the book reveals the intersection of nutrition and politics, of the particular and universal. It's a wonderful and worthy feat. --Arthur Boehm

Vinegar: Over 400 Various, Versatile, and Very Good Uses You've Probably Never Thought Of

Vicki Lansky

Amazon Price: $8.95 List Price: $8.95 Usually ships in 24 hours By: The Book Peddlers Amazon Marketplace: 41 new & used starting at $4.53

Buy at Amazon.com

Browse similar items by category:
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> General
Subjects -> Health, Mind & Body -> General AAS
Subjects -> Home & Garden -> How-to & Home Improvements -> Cleaning, Caretaking & Relocating

Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 12 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Love it! 5 out of 5 stars.
4 of 4 people found this review helpful.

I just love this book. So easy to read and find stuff your looking for. I had no idea vinegar was so awesome. After reading this I became a vinegar addict and use it for all sorts of stuff. Well worth the money, especially if you are interested in cleaning without using harsh chemicals.

Nice review of folk wisdom, well presented 5 out of 5 stars.
3 of 27 people found this review helpful.

To heck with "going green" - Manmade Global Warming is utter nonsense (or explain why the icecaps on Mars are melting, too...) I use the shower-head cleaning technique to make sure I am getting the maximum force out of my environmentally hostile pulsating showers. This is a fun book, and you will be amazed at how versatile the product is. We're fans of apple cider vinegar, by the way.

Editorial Review:

Vinegar is a health remedy, a neutralizer, a cleaner, a condiment, and a preservative. It can kill bacteria, mold, and germs, yet it is environmentally safe. This comprehensive guide covers all types and uses of vinegar, including how to make flavored varieties and using it as the basis for kids’ science projects. A full index and whimsical illustrations make the book informative and fun.