Salty Snacks: Make Your Own Chips, Crisps, Crackers, Pretzels, Dips, and Other Savory Bites

When you think of baking, the first things that pop into your mind are probably cupcakes, cakes and other desserts. Baking is associated with sweet things, even though there are all kinds of savory goodies that can come out of an oven, including breads, pizza and crackers. Salty Snacks: Make Your Own Chips, Crisps, Crackers, Pretzels, Dips, and Other Savory Bites is a cookbook that reminds us that the oven isn’t just for dessert, with recipes for dozens of snacks that will satisfy a salt craving instead of a sweet tooth.

Salty Snacks covers exactly what the title promises, teaching you to make a variety of savory or salty snacks at home. It you find that you’re drawn to salt a little bit more than sweet, the terrific photos of the recipes in here will get your mouth watering as you flip through the pages and try to decide where to start. The book is divided up into chapters that include crackers, chips, breads, savory cookies, dips, nuts and spreads. As you can tell from some of the subjects covered, the book certainly isn’t limited to things that you bake in the oven, though the fact that they include so many baked recipes is a big plus compared to books that stick to more “semi-homemade” snack foods. Everything in here is made from scratch, whether you’re looking at a recipe for homemade bread, savory biscotti, dips or homemade potato (and other vegetable) chips. The range of recipes included you’ll find here is a big bonus, since you can keep things very simple with a spiced up nut mix and homemade bread sticks, or go gourmet with something like duck fat potato chips, and that means there is something for every occasion and every craving.

This book is particularly good if you enjoy entertaining because it allows you to make all the finger foods and snacks that you might normally serve at a party from scratch – and you can probably make them better than you can buy them. Most of the recipes are straightforward and not difficult, even if making your own potato chips takes a little bit more work than buying a bag down at the grocery store, and the results are well worth it. Plus, it is fun to learn how to make a bunch of treats that you might ordinarily buy, not to mention that you will know exactly what went into them and that each thing can be customized to your own personal tastes.