I had Make the Bread, Buy the Butter: What You Should (and Shouldn’t) Cook from Scratch to Save Time and Money on my Amazon wishlist for quite a while now.

A few weeks ago, I was putting in an Amazon order and needed just a little bit more to reach the $25 free shipping mark. Naturally, I threw a book in. {grin}

When Jennifer Reese lost her job, she tried many food-related experiments to see if “from scratch” was more economical than store-bought. This book is a result of her findings.

Each recipe has a beginning blurb on why and when she tried it, her results, and whether or not she would make it again. There’s also a section that compares the cost of making it from scratch vs homemade, and some of the numbers will really surprise you – both ways!

Highly Entertaining, But Not Very Organized

I bought this book because I thought it would be an entertaining read, which it was. I was not disappointed in that. But I wish it read a little bit more like a story than a list of recipes with little blurbs. The author does expand on some points, but she has such a unique voice, I would have liked to hear more!

I also wish it could have been organized a little bit better. While reading along, I found recipes that would have flowed better in a previous section than where they were actually located. It might have worked had this been a story-like read, but the half-story/half-reference vibe lends itself to a more organized layout, so that it’s easier to access while cooking.

There are definitely recipes I’m going to try, and recipes I’m going to avoid based on her outcomes and preference. Overall, it will be nice to reference this book when I get the itch to make something completely from scratch!

Author Notes

Jennifer Reese was very shy as a child and spent a lot of time flipping through her mother’s complete collection of the Time and Life Foods of the World series, which she kept in the living room. She brought the books into the kitchen and started cooking.

She graduated from Stanford University in 1988 with a degree in American Studies, and has written and edited for many and varied publications in the years since, including Slate, Fortune,Entertainment Weekly,  and VIA. She’s written primarily about books and food, but have also done a lot of travel writing, specializing in homely, desolate towns of the Western United States, her favorite kind of town. Jennifer blogs at The Tipsy Baker.

I give Make the Bread, Buy the Butter a 3 out of 5

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