Dear Fellow Bakers, ands Friends,

Happy new year to you all and especially my fellow Horses on the Chinese New Year!

I trust you all had a warm and restorative holiday season. Please note that beginning this year, BetterBaking.com will be published every two months. This allows me to share new recipes and writing more thoughtfully — and to focus on the bread books currently in progress. As always, thank you for being here and baking along with me.

The start of the new year is typically when I offer soups and breads because that’s what’s needed. I recently made this soup for the umpteenth time and marvel at how good it is: minestrone! As I write this the soup is still simmering. Do you realize how much care there goes into a beautiful minestrone? It doesn’t ask for much, but you must remember to have fresh herbs on hand or at least fresh parsley. Fresh basil and oregano would be nice but dry herbs are fine . Don’t forget lots of fresh garlic, preferably from Mexico, Argentina, Spain or Quebec or wherever you are locally or a combo of a few garlics. Great garlic is a deal breaker in cooking and when you take the time to smell different ones you begin to appreciate that a bouquet of different garlic cloves adds incredible dimension to the soup.

Then you need a wee touch of red wine for body and along with some lemon juice that brings a note of acidity.  You'd think the tomatoes offer enough acidity, but tomatoes also have some sweetness in them and if you've taken care to have some Parmesan rinds on hand, that too will offer a hint of unami/dairy sweetness. What else? Never put too many beans in you soup because it is a soup, not a stew and no one wants to chomp their way through too much beany starch and what looks modest in dried bean form can be simply too much once the beans reconstitute.

As for the vegetables, I recommend baby carrots (the right size, no cutting and no washing and peeling) and diced squash, a tad of zucchini, spinach or (spinless) kale and a some finely chopped yellow onion. Instead of celery, which can be watery and has a peppermint sort of note, I use celery seed powder. It's more verdant and the powdered form of celery doesn't water down the soup. A can of corn is nice but no barley because that changes the whole nature of minestrone. Let your soup simmer until the tomatoes, herbs (did I mention a touch of extra virgin olive oil?) and vegetables all surrender their flavors into a hearty soup. As it cools, boil up some imported pasta such as De Cecco bowties or rotini that you can slip in the soup after it cools a bit and before you're ready to ladle it out or freeze containers. On a cold day, when you are bone-tired, you’ll thank yourself for taking care of yourself. The soup is a treasure of comfort. If you know ahead you will be having a bowl, make a few of my quick and easy baguettes. Or find a bakery you respect and buy some hard rolls. Somewhere in your city there’s also organic butter, Irish, Polish or French butter. Like my recommendations about different types of garlic, different butters sport a unique taste profile and it’s fun, if you’re having a bread and soup meal to venture into the diverse butter world.

Some extra tricks I use in my minestrone is to throw in a package of a Knorr soup (vegetable, leek or mushroom). This adds a little more body to the soup. If you are in Canada, my secret trick is a tablespoon of this insanely good spice blend, El Ma Mia. It comes in many flavors but the Lasagne Spice https://elmamia.com/products/seasonings-for-sauce/?lang=en is what makes any minestrone recipe extra fine.

When all is ready the soup, bread and butter will be a feast. One taste and you'll your own heart singing and any flu germs hanging around? They will scatter like dust!

As I always remind you about baking, it’s no different for cooking: how you do anything is how you do everything – the little things converge and count to much.

Warm wishes to for a new year and happy baking, I’ll see you in March!

Marcy Goldman
Master Baker, Author, Publisher
www.Betterbaking.com
Est. 1997

Minestrone Soup
https://betterbaking.com/recipe-items/beautiful-minestrone/
I have so many ways of making minestrone, but this one is relatively quick and easy and the one I turn to most often because it’s so flavorful. I don’t sauté the vegetables; I dump and boil everything together. This is a reputation maker.

Quick and Easy No Knead Baguette
https://betterbaking.com/recipe-items/quick-and-easy-french-baguette/

This wonderful baguette recipe makes 3-4 baguettes. It doesn’t require kneading or special treatment other than time itself. I make the dough in the morning and bake off before supper, serving one for dinner and freezing the rest of using them for sandwiches. The outside is crusty and crackly and inside it’s moist and full of holes (but not the gaping ones).

Red Velvet Cookies Cheesecake
https://betterbaking.com/recipe-items/red-velvet-cheesecake/
A little Valentine’s Day glamour? I have RV brownies and cookies on this site but this cheesecake is my favorite!

Banana White Chocolate Muffins
https://betterbaking.com/free-recipe-2025
Gorgeous to look at and homey to taste, this is a break-the-mold banana muffin!