Sarabeth's Bakery: From My Hands to Yours

From her modest beginnings selling fruit spreads, jams, and preserves in specialty shops and opening a bakery café "on what was then a distinctly inelegant Amsterdam Avenue on Manhattan's Upper West Side," the James Beard Award-winning pastry chef's star, like her dough, continues to rise. These days, Levine focuses on growing her brand and expanding into a number of other New York neighborhoods and Key West, Fla. Now, in her first cookbook, she gives a historical overview of Sarabeth's and offers scrumptious descriptions of the baked treats she and her staff regularly make. Chapters cover morning pastries, muffins, breads, pies, cakes, and cookies in great detail. Though recipes calling for homemade puff pastry or croissant dough may prove too complicated for the average home cook, they provide a challenge to the ambitious. Sections on spoon desserts like Crème Brûlée, chocolate and bread puddings, ice creams and sorbets, and spreadable fruits (the item that helped Levine launch Sarabeth's three decades ago) add to the appeal of this handsome volume. Photos. (Oct.)