Review: Not Bad - Needs Work
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 02 9, 2012
What's That Mean? The Home Baker's Glossary of Terms, Ingredients and Measurements (In the Pantry Baking Standards)features an extensive, though by no means all-inclusive list of common baking terms.  Beginning cooks and bakers will find this reference guide worth a look, but do be aware that there are some problems and the book is not always accurate or authoritative.First, the Table of Contents, which is very close to the left edge, will take you to the part of the alphabet you want, but perhaps only after several tries.  I gave up and ended up paging through by hand.There are some misspellings that may perhaps confuse the new baker.  One that comes immediately to mind is Kipferi with an i instead of the correct spelling, Kipferl with an L.  Also missing are alternative spellings where appropriate.  One that stuck out to me was Gugelhupf as an alternative spelling for Kugelhupf.  This particular cake is made all over the Alsace region of France, all of Germany, Austria and parts of Switzerland, with the spelling changing from place to place.  They are both "correct".Standard abbreviations are either incorrect or missing.  While the author does include a variety of alternate abbreviations for tablespoon that once appeared in recipes, the standard abbreviation for many decades has been Tbsp rather than T.  A similar situation exists for teaspoon - correct standard abbreviation tsp. not t. The "M" section drove me mad.  There is virtually no explanation of the metric system, never mind conversions, and Joyce has entirely omitted the everywhere-but-in-the-US definition for "mince."Some of the terminology that most often needs definition in today's world of international recipe exchange revolves around sugar.  I was especially disappointed that Joyce did not include the terms Caster Sugar and Icing Sugar, probably the single most common cause of confusion around when it comes to using European or Australian baking recipes.Joyce's description of the book led me to believe that I would find appropriate substitutions.  Not so much.  If you want to know how to substitute cocoa for chocolate in a recipe, you are going to have to look elsewhere.  She defines the X as in 10X in relation to sugar as the number of holes per inch in the screen used to form the crystals.  That is news to me.  Every authoritative definition I have ever heard of the X's in relation to sugar state that X refers to the fineness of the grind.  The more Xs, the finer the sugar has been ground.There are no pictures.  If this were a cookbook I wouldn't complain, but sometimes one teeny picture is worth hundreds of words.  A few pictures wouldn't have gone amiss here.All in all, not bad but could be much better.PS - My mother taught English.  The "mother's daughter" in me is aghast at the title.  What's up with "What's that mean"?