Ultimate Bread

what an awesome book, interesting facts, great steps, how to...and recipes

"Page 144 the "Pain D' Epice" French Honey Spice Bread, 1 loaf. Calls for 1 1/2 cups honey, 1 1/3 cups milk, 2 eggs, spices AND 1/2 cup of flour." Actually, page 144 calls for 3/4 cup plus two table spoons of whole-wheat flour AND 3/4 cup plus two tablespoons of rye flour. I have baked this twice and it always comes out perfect.

This is an amazing book. It is so complete and detailed. My previous experiences in bread baking were with betty crocker. I liked the recipes but I wanted to go a step further. With so many books about baking bread, it was a hard choice but I decided on this one because I saw that it was filled with pictures. I'm so glad that I chose this 'cause it is indeed a great book. The recipes are incredible and the techniques also.The book starts with a "gallery of breads", beautiful pictures of french, english, italian, european and middle eastern breads.Then it shows different types of flours (with more pictures), then the techniques step by step on how to prepare the yeast, how to make a starter, mixing, kneading, shaping and baking. Photos of different kinds of glazing and toppings follow this chapter. Then the recipes. I think I've tried every recipe that is in this book. Not one of them turned out bad. They were espectacular. Outside and inside.I cannot recommend this book enough.

I loved this book. The pictures are enticing, and the detailed instructions will enable even the most inept baker to produce beautiful and tasty loaves of bread, fromt he very plain to the very festive. It gave me the courage to try making Sourdough from scratch, including the starter. I've been making sourdough every 2-3 days ever since! I would like to caution novice bread bakers that the cooking temps for most of the breads are 425 to 475 degrees, and I was not able to do that in my over or the loaves would burn on the bottom. I baked mine at the traditonal 350 degrees for a longer cooking time and they came out great!

I made 24 loaves the first two weeks I owned this book. The recipeis such as the almond fig bread varition on the raisin rosmary bread is the best bread ive ever had, and thats lot to say about a bread you made yourself The less exotic breads are refined and tasty and any fresh bread is one hundred fold better of a snack food or lunch then a "bigmac" and takes remarkably little attention from the baker.