King Arthur Has Updated The Baking Companion

[BakerAunt]

A King Arthur Flour Company announced today the updating of The Baker's Companion

https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/blog/2021/03/02/update-classic-cookbook-bakers-companion-second-edition?go=EC210325_S1&trk_msg=L9HU00KDH7VKB9A9RA5AC7KVVS&trk_contact=76QMPS4J1FELGVOK858GLJTEC8&trk_sid=NU4GA111RH30D2D6KLG1H7CPMC&utm_source=ltk_master&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Why+We+Updated+Our+Cookbook&utm_campaign=EC-210325&utm_content=content-bts-revised-bakers-companion

KABC did not provide specific details about what has been changed. One person's "outdated" may be another person's "cherished memory."

I'm unlikely to buy it, since I mostly use their Whole Grains Baking book.

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[Mike Nolan]

Aside from having a number of editions of The Joy of Cooking (IMHO the best ones were the ones in the 40's), I seldom have much interest in a new edition of a cookbook.

I am willing to make an exception for the upcoming 3rd edition of Hamelman's bread book, though.

[chocomouse]

Mike, what are looking forward to new and different in his new book? It's being released soon!

[Mike Nolan]

Jeffrey says he's revised a number of recipes, added a few new ones and made quite a few changes in the front matter. He retired from King Arthur a couple of years ago and has been getting reacquainted with home baking.

[RiversideLen]

The Baker's Companion is one book I rarely use. Because of this post I pulled it off the shelf and thumbed through it, I found an oatmeal cookie recipe that I might try, Chewy Oatmeal Raisin Cookies. I won't be buying the new edition. With the internet and youtube, recipe books are a tough sell to me.

[BakerAunt]

With so many baking books relying heavily on butter as an ingredient, I want to look at a baking book before I decide to buy it to see if there are enough recipes that I would actually bake.

There is a wholegrains baking book, Mother Grains, that is coming out in April. I've read about one recipe and seen another, and both rely on butter. I would want to page through this one in a bookstore to determine if it were worth buying.

In the meantime, I will focus on exploring the cookbooks already on my shelf.

[kimbob]

I take a lot of cookbooks out of the library. You can order them from other libraries to be sent to your hometown library. I've also picked up a lot of them cheaply from library book sales. I love reading cookbooks. The ones I don't want to keep I donate back to the library book nook so they can sell them again. Unfortunately, there were no sales last year due to covid. Thriftbooks also has some deals on the internet.

[chocomouse]

I can spend hours paging through cookbooks, adding sticky notes, making lists of ingredients I would need to buy special, and more. But I rarely actually make anything I've marked. I do have a running list of recipes to try, and I've even written down which cookbook I found it in, or in recent years, which website.

[BakerAunt]

Our library no longer has book sales: they kicked the Friends of the Library and their used books out of their space. (The pretext was a very real mold issue that developed in the lower level, but I note that the Friends were not given any of the cleaned and renovated space.) A couple of years earlier, they kicked the historical society and its exhibits out of a different space. The idea seems to be to have meeting rooms, etc., but some of those activities would be better at a community center.

I am going to make a renewed effort to cook and bake from more of my cookbooks this year.

[skeptic7]

My favorite King Arthur cookbook is still the 200 Anniversary Cookbook. I have the others and have looked through them but they aren't as useful or as used. I think I liked the Cookie Companions the next best especially the way the chapters highlight different types of cookies.

[Mike Nolan]

Here in Lincoln the retired teachers and school administrators organization used to hold an annual used book sale, but it was discontinued a few years ago, because there weren't enough people willing to do the behind-the-scenes work of collecting, sorting and grading all the books during the year. I think they also had a problem with their storage space.

I think the library system still does a used book sale, but I don't know when it is.

I've got a rather extensive cookbook collection these days and I'm not sure what I want done with it after I'm gone. I know better than to offer it to either the city or university library system.

[skeptic7]

The University of Kentucky Special Collections used to have a cookbook section. I don't know if they still do or their collection criteria but you could ask. Ages ago they tried to keep any book by a Kentucky author or about Kentucky so I had donated some Science Fiction by a Kentucky author to them. I think I gave them some cookbooks as a joke when I was an undergrad and they took them.

[Mike Nolan]

Historically, libraries would accept donations, sort through them and keep only the ones they wanted, the rest they would either sell off or just throw in the trash. (Selling them off requires storage space, publicizing and holding the sale, etc.)

Libraries have started becoming something other than repositories of dead trees (paper books), so I've heard they're less receptive to donations.

A curated collection is something else, but that generally requires a cash donation to support the curation process. The John G. White collection in the Cleveland Public Library has several hundred thousand books on two subjects, magic and chess, but it also has an endowment that supports several staff members.

[cwcdesign]

The two libraries (one in Massachusetts and one here) I've been involved with accept donations only for their book sales. They don't bother going through them to see if they could use any. They also have auxiliary groups that manage the donations and the sales.

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