Ready, Set, Dough! By Melanie Barnard (Broadway Books, $17.95 paper)
There are two kinds of cooks: bakers, and everybody else. Bakers don’t mind having to be excruciatingly precise in their measurements and cooking times. In fact, they rather look down on cooks who prefer the looser disciplines of boiling, frying, and braising. And, of course, they scorn the use of store-bought dough. And that’s their tough luck, because bakers are just as pressed for time as everybody else these days, and the fact is that, properly stored, handled, and tweaked, freezer-department doughs can be very nearly as good as what Granny used to make, and often better. Melanie Barnard’s book offers hundreds of tips and recipes for using frozen commercial phyllo, puff pastry, wonton wrappers, pizza dough, cookie dough and pie crust, along with tips that cut effort and prep time to the bone, helping to put hot, fresh- baked breadstuffs and pastries back on the everyday table.
