A long time ago, I decided that I wanted to make every recipe in a cookbook. Don’t ask me why, I am a nerd and love any good reason to make a spreadsheet. Thus began the hunt for the perfect cookbook for this project.

I knew it had to be the right type of genre. I’d never make every recipe in an InstantPot cookbook or Cheap Meals. I knew it had to be baking related – nothing pretentious, nothing exuberantly expensive, and nothing that my family wouldn’t love.

The Project

After 10 long years of search, I randomly stumbled across the perfect title at my local library. “Bread Illustrated” by America’s Test Kitchen was everything I needed it to be. Baking? Check. Easy to follow instructions? Check. Enough recipes to keep me busy for a while? Check. Bread???? CHECK PLUS!

America’s Test Kitchen, historically, is a 30 minute long cooking show that has been broadcasted since 2001. It is a trusted source of quality recipes in my mind. Each episode, the hosts present a selection of recipes. These recipes are thoroughly tested. Think 40-60 times and tested with a huge network of volunteers. They present the science behind “why” their final recipe is the best.

The Method

The plan is to make each recipe, one a week, test, and grade them. Simple, right? Every good experiment needs a grading rubric. I took to Google to figure out how to grade each recipe. I ended up coming up with 5 categories: Ingredients, Difficulty, Time, Taste, and will I make it again. I rate everything on a scale of 1-5, with 5 being the ideal score.

Ingredients

I broke this category into two subsections – availability and cost.

Availability: While I have a [weirdly] well-stocked pantry, most people don’t. In order to get the top score, I have to believe that each and every ingredient in the recipe could be found in a typical pantry. I chose to model my thinking after my Mom’s cabinets. The lowest score would mean that you might need to take a few special trips to special stores to find ingredients.

Cost: Remember how I said I was a nerd? I painstakingly entered every ingredient used in a spreadsheet and calculated the unit cost of each one. With this information, I can also track how much, to the penny, each recipe costs to make! To get the top score, the recipe total has to be less than $1.50. Any recipe that costs more than $4.00 gets the lowest score.

Difficulty

I also broke this category into two subsections – Perceived Difficulty and Actual Difficulty.

Perceived Difficulty: This was an important distinguisher for me! Half the battle of any project is getting started. I wanted to see how my perception of the recipe compared to how I felt after it was all done. To get the top score, I needed to think that this recipe was going to be “easy as pie”. The low score meant that I thought I would fail the recipe.

Actual Difficulty: Similar to my pantry, I am a more practiced baker than most (my waist line proves this!). I decided to use the lens of “can my husband make this” when deciding how difficult it actually was. A top score means that it was as “easy as pie”. While a low score meant that it was unnecessarily difficult.

Time

I hope this won’t come as a surprise, but I broke this one into two subsections as well – Total Time Taken and Active Time Spent.

Total Time Taken: While I decided not to include this value in my end score, I did think it important enough to acknowledge. Total time includes all the moments when the recipe works on itself: rising, blooming, baking, resting, etc. To get the top score, a five, the entire recipe has to taken 30 minutes or less from start to finish. To get the lowest score, a one, the entire recipe would take longer than 4 hours to finish. Worthwhile to note, I do not consider cooling time into this total.

Active Time Spent: In this category, I report on how much time I actually spent working. To get the top score, I have to work for 30 minutes or less. To get the lowest score, I would have to work for more than 4 hours.

Taste

This is an easy one. How did it taste? Did it need salt? Was there a strange bitter flavor? Does it knock my socks off? You know, the usual questions. I labeled the top score in this category by “Is it recipe card worthy?”. (Because, yes, I still use recipe cards in a box!). The lowest score is described as “I would not eat this again, even if someone paid me.”. Blech.

Make Again-ability

Seemingly related to taste, this category is one I deemed most important. Will I make this again? If it is an absolute “YES”, then it gets a five. If it is a “no way”, then it gets a one.

The Rubric

Here it is, all together, in all its glory – my rubric.

If you’d like to download the rubric and join me on this journey, please find it linked here.

Last but not least…

Well friends, that’s it. That is the whole project. “Bread Illustrated” by America’s Test Kitchen. 86 recipes. From simple sandwich bread to the delectable croissants – this is going to be a wild ride.

Have you ever attempted a project like this? Do you love baking? Let me know below!

Enjoy!