About the Author

Beth Hensperger, a New Jersey native who has lived in California since her teens, has been educating, writing, and demo-lecturing about the art of baking for over 30 years. In the last few years, she has shifted focus to countertop appliance–driven cookbooks that embrace adapting traditional and professional recipes for the home cook: the bread machine, the rice cooker, the microwave, and a four-volume compilation specifically for use with the electric slow cooker, stressing personal creativity in preparation and selection of ingredients.

Hensperger is the author of over 22 cookbooks, including the best-selling Not Your Mother’s series, which includes: Not Your Mother’s Slow Cooker Recipes for Two,Not Your Mother’s Microwave Cookbook, Not Your Mother’s Fondue, Not Your Mother’s Casseroles Revised and Expanded Edition, and Not Your Mother’s Make-Ahead and Freeze Cookbook Revised and Expanded Edition, along with the blockbuster first volume, Not Your Mother’s Slow Cooker Cookbook. Her other books include highly-acclaimed titles such as The Bread Lover’s Bread Machine Cookbook and The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook. She is also the author of The Bread Bible (Chronicle Books), winner of a James Beard Award in 2000. She has twice been nominated for the Julia Child/IACP Cookbook Award.

Hensperger wrote a San Jose Mercury News food column for twelve years, Baking with the Seasons. She is a contributor to dozens of national and online cooking and lifestyle magazines, such as Food & Wine, Every Day with Rachael Ray magazine, Veggie Life, Cooking Light, Working Woman, Victoria, Prevention, and Family Circle, and is a sought-after newspaper and radio interviewee speaking on slow cooking, bread baking, and entertaining. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area. Visit her website at bethhensperger.com and blog at notyourmotherscookbook.com.

Julie Kaufmann, a native of Albuquerque, New Mexico, has lived in California since 1979. She is an editor of the food section of the San José Mercury News. Before becoming a food editor, she wrote “Kids in the Kitchen,” a twice-monthly food column for kids, also for the San José Mercury News. She previously worked on West, which was the Sunday magazine for the San José Mercury News, and spent a decade on the paper's business section. In addition to her work at the San José Mercury News, Kaufmann has taught editing in the Communications Department at Santa Clara University, in Santa Clara, California. Until recently she co-wrote a monthly mystery novel review with her husband for the San José Mercury News. She is an avid home cook who has coauthored several books with Beth Hensperger. Kaufmann lives in Palo Alto, California, with her husband and two children. Web: NotYourMothersCookbooks.com; Facebook presence.