The Homemade Pantry: 101 Foods You Can Stop Buying and Start Making [Paperback]

UPDATED 12 JUNE 2012
When I first bought this book, I was absolutely giddy about trying everything.
Now that I've worked my way through, I'm slightly concerned.
On the one hand, the book covers many, many things. Major plus.
On the other hand, some of the recipes are either badly written, untested or just plain bombs. After the salt issue in the bread recipe*, I found another: when using instant yeast aka rapid rise as called for, a one hour first rise will completely deflate your dough. The whole purpose of rapid raise is to eliminate a lengthy first rise; it only needs 10 minutes, not an hour. {I use Fleischmann's and their website quite clearly states that RapidRise yeast needs only 10 minutes of rest after kneading.} After random failings of the recipe, I went to King Arthur Flour (from whom the White Bread recipe was adapted) and ended up using the Oatmeal Bread as my standard.
The yogurt recipe calls for a comparatively large amount of starter (1/2C per quart). I've switched back to my old Mireille Guiliano 1-2Tbsp/quart recipe.
Following the Yellow Cake recipe to the letter still results in a dry end product. But it smells really good.
The Buttermilk recipe is not really a recipe, more like instructions on how to use pre-purchased buttermilk culture, although that can be said for most of the Dairy chapter.
Since I bought the book, I haven't turned to it nearly as much as I anticipated. The hit-and-miss nature of the recipes doesn't make me eager to try most of them.
At least the information on canning is solid.

*The author has acknowledged an error in the White Bread recipe (p214): 2.5 teaspoons of salt, NOT tablespoons.

I have no doubt that if you are perhaps older than 40, you've noticed a change in store-bought foods, especially snack foods. The taste somehow has changed over the year. Also, not a few of us have become aware of additives in food we really don't want to eat. Or, we have allergies and so do our kids. In any case, wouldn't it be GREAT if you could have the same treats and snacks in your biscuit tin, pantry or cookie jar that your kids love but you are ashamed to even be seen buying? I certainly think so and that is why I got a copy of this book.

I am going to say right out of the gate, I am not one of those people who only eats organic, or vegan or really takes tremendous care, but I buy very few packaged baked goods or crackers. (Which is why most coupons are useless for my buying habits.) And I have never EVER eaten a Pop Tart(tm). My mom when we grew up, simply refused to buy that kind of thing. But if your kids would like a treat and clamor for toaster pastry, here is a recipe for absolutely delicious-looking flat tarts that you could serve with your head held high (even to guests, with a cup of coffee.) If you can roll out pastry dough (and to the author's credit, she gives a pie dough recipe rather than "buy a package of refrigerated pie dough") you can make these and they are cute as can be. And the author tells you how to freeze them effectively (on parchment paper, flat, so they can be stacked into a container) so you could simply pull them out on a weekend or even weekday, heat them up in the oven and serve them up for breakfast.

Some of the other recipes are jerky, homemade yogurt (which I do frequently), mixed nuts, granola bars, and crackers. Now, I was really interested in the crackers because crackers and cheese happens to be my snack of choice (I'd rather have that than a cookie.) But I have found most crackers to be very salty, or starchy and the flavor doesn't seem to be there. Here we have a recipe for wheat crackers using spelt, wheat, flax seed and are they ever good! And the author gives gluten free variations using brown rice flour.

Staples like pancake mix, ketchup (no hfcs) and even mustard are covered. The ketchup is good--I tried it, but it will not taste like (you know who) because that recipe is difficult to duplicate. Mine was more tomato-ey, spicier, but I liked it.

The downside to this book is that it takes some planning and preparation (a weekend canning, mixing, boxing, freezing) but if you do plan ahead, you could have a pantry of American favorites in a convenient form but lacking additives, corn syrup, even wheat, which sneaks into many mixes as wheat starch, so if you are concerned about such additives or if you or a family member has an allergy, this is a welcome book and the pictures make the most ordinary foods look very tempting indeed.

I'm off to make more crackers...

I bought this book less than a week ago, and it's already a favorite. I've made the mozzarella cheese (which I've made before but her recipe and instructions were superior)and made the granola bars twice (my middle school son took them to school for a PARTY, that's how good they were!), and made the nut butter (for the granola) and I can't believe how easy THAT was. I cook from scratch almost every night, and I'm amazed at how excited I am to try the other recipes in this book (ok, especially the pop tarts...). Given how delicious and easy the first few recipes were, I know this book will be creased, noted in, and dirty in no time. In "my" kitchen, those are the signs of a great cookbook.