The Best Quick Breads: 150 Recipes for Muffins, Scones, Shortcakes, Gingerbreads, Cornbreads, Coffeecakes, and More

In her no-fuss, straightforward style, Hensperger (The Bread Bible, etc.) expertly lays out the basics for making quick breads in this exhaustive, offbeat book. She offers 150 recipes in all: 100 from her now out-of-print The Art of Quick Breads and 50 brand new. Classic loaves, such as Lemon-Poppy Seed Bread, appear alongside innovative items like Fresh Orange-Oatmeal Bread and Amaretto Nut Bead. Standout muffins include Rye Muffins with Orange and Fennel, Zucchini-Basil Baby Cakes and Orange Chocolate Chip Muffins. Gingerbreads are redolent with spices and unusual ingredients such as stout and peaches. This is not to imply that all of Hensperger's recipes rely on wacky ingredient combinations. She includes plenty of staid recipes like Fresh Apple Coffee Cake and Chicken-and-Mushroom-Filled Cr pes with b chamel. But just as Hensperger expands the definition of quick breads to include pancakes, cr pes, dumplings and even latkes, she also enlarges the pool of potential quick bread ingredients to incorporate some new tastes: Autumn Persimmon Pancakes, Graham Popovers, and Soda Bread with Caraway and Drambuie. The entries sometimes border on the unorthodox (Chinatown Green Onion Cakes; Butternut Squash Gnocchi with Sage Butter), but with recipes this concise and inviting, readers are unlikely to complain. (Sept.)