The Bread Bible

Read and follow the thoroughly detailed recipes in this book to create the best bread ever!

I have attempted one recipe out of this book and found the instructions exceedingly complicated and downright confusing. This is furthered by the odd placement of images splitting recipes and multiple pages of instructions. The instructions are not always in a logical order or self explanatory in the way that recipes need to be. I don't mind long processes for baking bread, as long as they can be readily understood by a nonprofessional. Similarly, many of her suggested ingredients and tools will only be found in the best stocked kitchens. For a book that has been this exalted, I am disappointed in the quality and style of the writing.

I bought this book after making pesto bread from The Herbfarm Cookbook (also an excellent book). When I took my pesto bread out of the oven, tapped the bottom, and heard the hollow sound that indicated the bread had turned out correctly, something grabbed ahold of me, and I knew I had to learn more about baking bread. I couldn't explain the excitement I felt at the abilty to create something delicious from such mundane ingredients. it's like magic!that being my sole attempt at bread making (excluding homemade pizza dough, which I put in a different catagory), Rose's book was a bit overwhelming at first. I read through all of the preliminary chapters on the hows and whys and all the different stages, feeling the same tingling fascination I had felt when I first started learning calculus. I guess I hadn't realized how mathematical and precise the "art" really is, or how appealing that would be to me. armed with all that knowledge, I decided to jump right in, and tried her cheddar loaf. her directions are laid out in clear, numbered steps, with instructions for both hand and machine mixing. ingredients are given by volume and weight, and each recipe is full of tips about when to add more water or flour, and what the dough / finished loaf should weigh. she has clear explanations and diagrams guiding you through any shaping. I never felt confused or at a loss, and even her descriptions of what the dough should feel like at different stages (something inherently difficult to convey without a physical demonstration) were incredibly helpful. basically, I felt informed, guided, and confident at every step of the process, and the end result was marvelous. the crust was golden and tasted intensely of cheddar, and the inside was crumbly and soft, just like bakery bread! even for a novice like me, this book delivers.I just finished making her cinnamon raisin bread, and even though I know you're supposed to cool it for an hour before you eat it, I impatiently sliced in at ate some right out of the oven. it, like all the other breads I have tried from this book, was fantastic. I can't wait to eat it for breakfast in the morning, and the second loaf may not make it to the freezer.I highly recommend this book to anyone interesting in learning more about making bread at home, with one caveat - these recipes are time consuming. not so much in the actual, hands on work, but in the rising and baking time. so they're perfect for a day spent working or lounging around the house, when you can keep an eye on the dough as it lazily rises.

This book really lives up to its name. `The Bread Bible' could be the only book you will ever need if you wish to bake bread at home. This is almost a shame, given the number of very good recent books on bread baking by Peter Reinhardt and Nancy Silverton, just to name two of the better known author / bakers. The chapters covering types of bread deal with:Quick Breads (Muffins, Biscuits, Scones, and the like)Flatbreads (Pita, for example)Soft Sandwich Loaves (Pullman loaves, for example)Hearth Breads (often what one thinks of by the term Artisan breads)SourdoughBrioche (on the boundary between bread and cake)The recipes in these sections follow the same precision Ms. Beranbaum has shown in her earlier books on cakes and pasteries. All measurements are given in both volume and weight (imperial and metric). Great care is also given to specifying the type of flour. We are not dealing with your everyday AP Gold Medal here kiddies.Everyone with a passing knowledge of things culinary knows there is a big difference between cooking and baking. In most cooking, the quality of ingredients varies greatly from item to item. Two steaks laying next to one another in a meat counter are invariably different, needing a bit of adaptation and attention from the cook. Cooking is very experimental, constantly observing and tasting the product in the course of mixing and heating. Baking is much closer to the theoretical, where one needs to very closely follow a formula to derive the result you wish. One thing this book clarifies is that while bread baking is still very different from, for example, meat cookery, the picture is not as simple as the one I described above.First, while ingredients like flour and water are much, much more uniform than pork chops and New York strip, there are still variations, and one dimension of quality in flour is uniformity from sack to sack. There are, for example, major differences in all purpose flour from maker to maker, even if you ignore the differences between soft and hard wheat, i.e., White Lily versus King Arthur.Second, baking is highly sensitive to conditions in the baking environment, most especially to humidity and ambient bacterial flora. The first factor is familiar to almost every pie maker, who must titrate the amount of liquid they add to pastry dough to reach just the right moistness. The second variable is most important to the artisinal bread baker.The greatest value of this book to all people interested in bread baking is that it succeeds in explaining the mysteries of bread and why things work out and why they sometimes don't work. It explains why the baker cannot take their ingredients for granted. While they do not have to deal with the great variety in tomatoes from month to month, they do have to deal with much more subtle differences. Old flour and old eggs may simply not produce the desired results, and you may not know this for 24 hours after you start the bread.This brings up the point that time is a very

Re the rye bread, on page 326, step 2, delete the words 'rye flour.' (the rye flour is used only in the sponge on page 325.) Also, on the chart for the flour mixture, the 2 1/4 cups of bread flour weigh 12.3 ounces.Hope you are enjoying the recipes. If you haven't used the instant yeast before, you're going to love the ease and reliability of adding it directly to the flour!Best bread baking,Rose Levy Beranbaum

Rose Levy Beranbaum's "The Bread Bible" is the "New Testament"!There are now many good bread books, but if I could have only one bread book, this would be the one.Ms. Beranbaum includes non-yeasted breads in this book.Oh, this book is so good. I have been baking bread for over 15 years, and I knew more than a little, but this book has opened a wider world. She has diminished some of my anxiety about sourdough bread, by talking about her sourdough anxiety, which she vanquished.Ms. Beranbaum encourages mechanical mixing, and does not consider it a "crime," like some other writers on bread. However, manual mixing is included. She has written lots of information on flours. Detailed, yet accessible.She encourages home bakers to think in more professional terms by giving weight measures (grams and ounces,) as well as volume measures (cups, spoons). She also gives proportion percentages.Ms Beranbaum's introductory comments are fascinating.The index is complete and easy to use.The photos and technical drawings are complete and well chosen.This book is definitely one of MY "desert island ten."

Cookbook author/humorist Ann Hodgman once wrote, of Rose Levy Berenbaum's masterpiece The Cake Bible, that perhaps The Gideons should leave this "bible" in hotel bedrooms instead of that other, better-known one. Hodgman has a point. I have baked extensively from both of Berenbaum's previous "bibles," on cake and on pastry, and have yet to come up with a dud.Since we're talking about bibles here, clearly Berenbaum finds that God is in the details. She gives clear, concise explanations of the "whys" of baking without ever getting tedious. I have been baking regularly for nearly thirty years, and yet in my first read-through of The Bread Bible, I learned at least a dozen facts that I hadn't previously known, and yet made perfect sense. For example, the inclusion of Wondra bleached, granulated flour (not a typical staple among serious bakers) in her Butter Popovers eliminate the resting period that the batter typically must undergo before baking.Her books also inspire: A round, Gruyere-spiked cheese bread baked in a souffle dish--which Berenbaum whimsically names, "The Stud Muffin"--will send me out today on a quick trip for a couple of necessary, missing ingredients.Berenbaum's recipes run the gamut from simple "quick" breads to more time-consuming (but hardly more difficult) artisanal loaves. She also provides sources for ingredients and equipment. This tome, with its gorgeous photographs and numerous line drawings, might intimidate some fledgling bakers, but don't let it! If it does, I suggest The King Arthur Flour's Baker's Companion. However, true breadheads are justified in wanting both.Rose Levy Berenbaum's passion both for detail and for routinely spectacular results reminds me of Maida Heatter, whose equally comprehensive and delightful baking books inspired beginning bakers like me more than twenty years ago. Heatter's books have withstood the test of time. I'm sure Berenbaum's Bread Bible will become as annotated and batter-spattered as Heatter's books are in my kitchen. There's no higher praise than that!