Having spent most of my time in the Northeast (with a sprinkling of visits to California and Hawaii), I had never heard of Kneaders Bakery and Cafe until I received a review copy of the 25 year anniversary book. Founded by couple Colleen and Gary Worthington originally in Utah, Kneaders started with artisan bread production, but eventually offered soups, sandwiches, breakfast, and desserts. Today, locations can be found in Idaho, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona, and Texas.
I believe most of the items in “Kneaders Bakery and Cafe: A Celebration of Our Recipes and Memories,” by Colleen Worthington, are inspired by their menu but are not necessarily the exact recipes. For example, Dave’s BLT Sandwich tells you to use Kneaders sauce, which is explained as a mixture of mayo/mustard/sour cream, but no exact ratios are provided. The recipe for the olive bread comments that it is commercially made with a levain but the published version swaps in instant yeast for ease. Personally, I dislike getting a recipe that isn’t actually the recipe. I wanted the real one for good reason. Obviously this isn’t an issue for people with access to the real thing. And honestly, most people will be satisfied with easier recipes if it gets them 80% of the way there.
Anyway, the chapters here are:
- Breakfast,
- Salads,
- Sandwiches,
- Soups,
- Drinks,
- Dips and Spreads,
- Stuffings and Croutons,
- Cakes and Trifles,
- Cookies and Bars,
- Pies and Puddings,
- Sweets and Treats
Here are some of the recipes you’ll find:
- Raspberry almond muffin tops,
- Baked breakfast scones (cranberry orange white chocolate, dark chocolate cherry almond, apricot hazelnut vanilla bean),
- Buttermilk caramel syrup,
- Pecan pancakes,
- BLT macaroni salad,
- Creamy broccoli salad dressing,
- Ciabatta muffuletta sandwich,
- Gourmet picnic sandwich (made with a variety of cheese and cold cuts),
- Artichoke portobello soup,
- Irish stew,
- Pumpkin curry soup,
- Turkey curry chowder,
- Chocolate hearth bread,
- Hot cross buns,
- Sesame semolina bread,
- Easy chocolate bake box mix hacks,
- Basic chocolate cake from scratch,
- Master chocolate cake from scratch,
- Tres leches cake,
- Peanut butter cookies (with peanut butter cups),
- Blueberry sour cream pie,
- Pineapple hand pies
I noticed that about a third of the book are sweets, which is great of if you have a sweet tooth. Some of the recipes depend on Kneaders products. For example, the recipe for lemon ricotta souffle pancakes asks for Kneaders Homestyle Buttermilk Pancake Mix. And then, the pumpkin trifle recipe wants Kneaders Pumpkin Bread. I think most of the product mentions can be substituted with items locally available to you and still be delicious, but the texture and/or flavor might be slightly different.
Since New England is returning to bread baking weather, my initial recipe test was for rosemary focaccia bread, which is simply made of yeast, sugar, water, salt, butter, fresh rosemary, and all purpose flour. Instructions are fairly standard for a slightly enriched dough, and it makes two small rounds. The loaves are baked on a sheet pan in the oven, no instructions for steaming or dutch-oven baking provided. As such, the loaves didn’t develop a crackly crunchy crust. (No shade to a softer crust, but I am curious to bake one large boule in the dutch-oven… but that is an experiment for another day.) Was this like focaccia? Hmmm, I’m going to say no to that, but it did make very nice soft sandwich slices that reminds me more of white bread. (Oh, that’s another thing to try: making this without rosemary in a loaf pan specifically for sandwiches.) I think the “focaccia” in the name is mostly due to the rosemary. While focaccia doesn’t require any herbs, I think a lot of people tend to think of them together.
I shared the bread with my mom who absolutely loved it, so I’ll be re-making this again soon.
The second recipe I made was the low-fat onion spread. It’s made from cottage cheese, light cream cheese, lemon juice, roasted red bell peppers, salt, black pepper, and green onions (aka scallions). It’s pretty easy to put together. You blend most of the ingredients, but mix in the scallions toward the end. The cottage cheese I used was a bit watery so I think the spread came out thinner than intended (if I am go to by the photo in the book). Originally, I ate it on some toasted whole grain slices but the flavor combo was subpar. The spread was good, and the whole grain bread I had was good, but I found that the earthiness of the bread didn’t balance the onion flavor well. Though I didn’t take a photo of it, I ended up making turkey sandwiches with the rosemary focaccia bread and the onion spread. That was leagues better.
The only thing I didn’t like about the spread was the color. It was noticeably pink from the blended red bell pepper. It’s such a silly thing to be weirded out by. I might try an orange bell pepper next time and hope for the best.
The real complaint (as someone who loves her kitchen scale) is that none of the baking recipes, except one, have weighed measurements. The jalapeno cheddar bagel is the only recipe with gram measurements, probably because it was written (submitted?) by their corporate executive baker. But since this is a U.S. cookbook, I’m not surprised. Just mildly disappointed, so you can consider this complaint to be minor.
Overall, it’s a good cookbook. There are no surprises, and nothing too exotic. Most of the recipes are not very complicated either. If Kneaders Bakery is something you grew up with or have in your life, this cookbook probably has a place on your shelf.
Disclaimer – I kindly received a copy of “Kneaders Bakery and Cafe: a celebration of our recipes and memories” by Colleen Worthington from Shadow Mountain Publishing this review. I’m not getting paid for this post. The views and opinions expressed are purely my own. This book is available for purchase through your favorite retailer, and will be released on October 3.
Awesomesauce Eats 