Flour, Too: Indispensable Recipes for the Cafe's Most Loved Sweets & Savories

I was attracted to this book because many of its recipes were unique. The book has several sections titled breakfast, lunch (soups and sandwiches), dinner (salads and mains), party time (snacks and desserts), drinks and basics. The photos in the book are brightly colored, well lighted and appealing. The book fits nicely in my aluminum book holder and stays in place. There are separately listed ingredients for each recipe and the steps to make the items are numbered and are accurate.

I have tried 6 recipes. Of the 6 that I have tried, 4 are ones I will make again and of those, 2 are ones that will become part of my regular offerings in my home “ they are that good. The chipotle chicken and black bean soup was delicious and easy to prepare. My other favorite was a curried tuna with apple and golden raisins sandwich. I substituted a garam masala for the curry, which follows the theme of the undefined "curry powder” in the recipes ingredients.

Two recipes that I really enjoyed were the Asian celery, fennel and edamame salad and a turkey burger. The salad’s dressing was a mixture of candied lemons (that I made the night before), soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil, sugar etc. The dressing called for Siracha sauce, which is spicy hot, but I omitted it because I served it with the chipotle-flavored turkey burger, which already had some heat. The turkey burger was okay. My wife, who doesn’t eat beef, really enjoyed it. The ground turkey I bought for the burger was very lean, but adding an egg, bread crumbs, chipotle pepper and some feta cheese made it more like a meat loaf. The final product was moist and tasty but it didn’t match the flavor of a beef burger, at least for my palate.

The 5th recipe that I tried was a peanut butter squash soup. My son, who is college aged, said he would eat some more of it if he was really hungry. I didn’t enjoy it much the first day; the flavor grew on me the second and third day for lunch. It helped that the temperature outdoors was near zero degrees F. A nice hardy soup hit the spot.

The 6th recipe was a tomato soup that called for a smoked salt. I bought some hickory-smoked salt and made the soup using 2, 28 ounce cans of plum tomatoes. The rest of the ingredients are fairly standard for a tomato soup recipe: onions, garlic, carrots, etc. The recipe called for a few cups of vegetable stock or water. I didn’t have any vegetable stock on hand so I used water. The finished product lacked flavor. I should have substituted chicken stock. I would have been better off opening a can of Progresso. That said, if I had used the vegetable stock or substituted chicken stock it might have been a much better recipe.

In summary, I am very pleased that I have added two recipes to my list of more than 100 of my favorites and two more that were very good. I highly recommend this book. The author is well known for her pastries and baked goods but her book “ Flour, Too “ is a big hit with this cook of savory foods.