Rita Davenport

This is a lovely little cookbook, and I've had it on my shelf right through the Friendship Bread sourdough craze of the 1990s. I have frequently made the Quick Chocolate Cupcakes, which are an enduring family favourite (although due to poor indexing listed under Q instead of C). They require a small amount of baking powder and baking soda, about half what you'd expect to use in a recipe this size. This is typical of the pancake, quick bread, and cake recipes in this book.

However, returning to the book during the yeast shortage of the 2020 pandemic, I find that oddly, nearly all of the bread recipes use at least one packet of dry yeast (and the rest use about half a packet). Some use up to two tablespoons. I guess that's down to the desire of the 1970s-1980s for instant gratification. A purely sourdough recipe might take days to complete.

In short, this is not really a practical breadmaking reference for the yeast-deprived household, but if you like the flavour of sourdough and have leavening available it's worth trying some of the wide variety of recipes. There's also a lot of practical information on starting and maintaining sourdough.

The list of Bantam Cookbooks facing the title page was a hoot. This book is part of a series including Crockery Cookery and Crepe Cookery (both so trendy then!). Other Bantam offerings include two books on Microwave Cookery (absolutely cutting edge at the time; also, see remarks above on instant gratification), and two on blender cookery, including Blend It Splendid Natural Foods by Stan and Floss Dworkin, whose prose in their other book The Good Goodies was as twee as their name and titles. Bantam also published some cookbooks at that time which turned out to be classics, like Laurel's Kitchen, the More-With-Less Cookbook, Putting Food By, and Whole Earth Cookbook; and some that were so timely as to be destined for oblivion, like Make-A-Mix Cookery (when the height of self-sufficiency was to make your own Bisquick) and Cooking Without A Grain of Salt (when sodium free diets were supposed to be good for everyone rather than something medically prescribed when indicated). A blast from the past!… (mais)