I’m a huge fan of the Ace Bakery breads, and I quite enjoyed the Ace Bakery Cookbook. So I was quite thrilled when More from Ace Bakery came out.

According to the book, the Ace Bakery has been branching out across Canada and into parts of the United States. It is definitely a Toronto institution, though. If you aren’t from around Toronto, and you come across some of the breads from the Ace Bakery, it would definitely be worth your while to give their artisan breads a try.

More from the Ace Bakery isn’t just about breads, so don’t be afraid to get the book if you don’t like to bake. In fact, there aren’t actually that many yeast bread recipes - the breads section is the first chapter in the book, and out of the 12 recipes in that chapter, only a small handful actually require yeast and all the rising that goes with it.

Mainly, the book showcases recipes for breakfast, lunch and dinner that use fresh ingredients. There are chapters on breads, breakfast, starters, soups, salads, sandwiches, dinner and sides and desserts. And despite the cookbook not being about baking, there’s a glossary of terms and baker’s lingo section.

Recipes showcase the use of fresh ingredients, and the titles are enticing: Lemon Pepper Cashews, spicy, seasoned cashews for snacking; African Papaya Soup, a richly thick and orange flavourful soup; Warm Roasted Sweet Potato and Pear Salad, a combination of two differing textures and tastes; Gardiane de Boeuf, a delectable sounding rustic beef stew; Bread Bits for Kings, an Indian-style bread pudding.

We have actually been on the look-out for a good beet soup recipe. Beets have all that healthy goodness but I, for one, don’t particularly like it’s earthiness. So to put More from the Ace Bakery through a test run, we whipped up a batch of Roasted Beet and Apple Purée with Crème Fraiche (p.82).

The ingredients are quite simple: beets, onions, Granny Smith apples, garlic, carrots, raspberry vinegar and beef stock. The vegetables were roasted, which we found really locked in the sweetness of the beets and made them much easier to peel (just make sure you have washing up gloves on hand or you’ll end up with rather bright red fingers, though.) Basically, you roast the vegetables, and then puree everything together.

The picture I took doesn’t do the soup justice. In real life, it was a beautiful jewel red, reminiscent of tart strawberry jam. We were divided as to the taste. I enjoyed the soup as was (we didn’t bother with the creme fraiche), which wasn’t earthy at all, but my mother would have liked a bit more tartness.

All in all, More from the Ace Bakery is a good cookbook, both for perusing from the comfort of the couch, as well as in the heat of the kitchen.

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