Classic German Baking

A German cook book. Now your talking. But first let me start off with my biggest complaint about ‘Classic German Baking: The Very Best Recipes for Traditional Favorites, from Pfeffernüsse to Streuselkuchen’ – by Luisa Weiss, there are not enough pictures of the recipes themselves. When reading a recipe it always helps to see the finished product and decide ‘that looks great I might give that a try’. I mean we have pictures of Berlin which is nice but this is a cook book not a travel book.

Some recipes are a little to complex such as the quark… but other recipes are wonderful. The recipe for Brötchen made my day. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find this kind of bread in the USA? So thank you for that one.

There are also a number of other good recipes that easily take you back to Germany.  (side note: There is a german word misspelled that should have been caught)

“I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.”

Escape into the Tunnels

You look at the Berlin Wall and think why. ‘The Tunnels Escapes Under the Berlin Wall and the Historic Films the JFK White House Tried to Kill’  by Greg Mitchell is an amazing piece of history with a lot of historical background. Some facts I knew others I did not.

I mainly wanted to read this book because not only had I see the Berlin wall (also have a small part of it) but I had family that were stuck in east germany. Very eye opening book.

When one sees the innovation what people did to try and make it past the wall…not just by tunnels but car, balloon, bus just to name a few. And you think about how long it stayed up and how many made it and yet how many people did not…

Its also fascinating to see what went into building a tunnel and how quickly all those weeks of hard work could come to an end when the wrong people would find out about the operation.  Just as shocking was to see how the JFK white house tried to axe the documentary.  But it shows you how the cold war really interlinked the world.

The major escape was captivating. I do like that some photo’s are included and the epilogue was added as well.

My only issue with the book are this:

1) there are a lot of names and at times I would mix them up.

2) It was mention that NBC had uploaded the Tunnel documentary but I would like to have know if/where one can still see the movie.

3) Minor issue but I felt the paper used for printing was a little thin and since this is a book I found myself flipping back and forth in I worried I might rip a page.

“I received this book from Blogging for Books for this review.”