A captivating story and recipes from around the globe. A winner on two fronts.
I liked this book before I’d even picked it up. Correction, I was smitten with the premise: one woman’s dream to run a social enterprise bakery in New York, providing work and training for migrant women from across the globe and featuring the unique and oft-rare indigenous breads from their various homelands. As a liberal female bread-lover and millennial to boot, The Hot Bread Kitchen Cookbook had my name all over it.
Hot Bread Kitchen founder and CEO Jessamyn Waldman Rodriguez is also the author behind the book and has crafted a story and collection of recipes that transcends any reader of any age or demographic’s soft spot for her social cause.
The writing is smart, aided in part by co-author Julia Turshen, a seasoned food writer, but you get the sense the confidence, heart and wit is all Rodriguez, who worked for the likes of United Nations before trading it in for culinary school and time at the acclaimed New York restaurant Daniel to learn the craft of bread making to launch her long-awaited project.
She weaves in this narrative, along with additional business tips for budding social entrepreneurs but, largely, she focuses on her beloved female bakers and the culinary back-stories of the global breads they bake together in their facility in East Harlem. Portraits of these commanding women accompany many of the native breads, lending another layer of texture and soul.
Heart aside, The Hot Bread Kitchen Cookbook is a must-have manual for keen breadmakers. Sure, newcomers can keep up, and there are some easy options, but recipes are designed foremost for authenticity.
Tortillas, for example, are made with nixtamal masa (lime-soaked ground corn meal) instead of common instant masa harina (processed corn flour) and leavened breads are made with a pâte fermentée (pre-fermented dough), or if you have access to one, as Rodriguez urges, a real dough starter.
There’s also the breadth of baked goods; a number of international names feature, including paratha, pita, foccacia and batard, but predominantly under-the-radar breads are on show, from Moroccan unleavened flat bread m’smen and Persian nan-e barbari (the cover recipe) to Dominican Republic pastellitos and sweet Mexican concha buns.
I would have preferred to see even more of these appealing, hard-to-find bread recipes (they produce around 70 different types daily), but Rodriguez’s decision to include some of the ethnic dishes commonly paired with these breads extends the scope of the book from baking fiends to all hearty food lovers.
Think Ethiopian doro wat braised chicken with teff inerja pancakes, as well as New York twists on favourite breads, such as bialy ‘al bario’ with egg and hot sauce. There are also chapters for filled doughs (like Albanian cheese triangles), quick breads (such as granola waffles) and leftovers (like Mexican chilaquiles – fried tortillas simmered in salsa verde).
We tested the Irish soda bread — admittedly one of the quicker and easier loaves, leavened with bicarbonate of soda instead of yeast — and it was a savoury sensation: crusty on the outside with a light, giving interior, textured from the oats and flavour-packed with a heavy dose of salty cheddar and kalamata olives, and sweet onions. The instructions where clear and detailed, too.
As a US title, it’s a little more exxy than Australian books of comparable size, but The Hot Bread Kitchen Cookbook delivers in its technical attributes. It’s also more than a sum of its parts: a preserver of history and culture, an advocate for best practice, and something a little different. For my mind, heart and stomach, that’s worth a few extra pennies.
Cook the book
Source: Jennifer May
Source: Jennifer May
Source: Jennifer May
Source: Jennifer May
