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Cooking, Food & Wine |
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The Bread Bible
written by Rose Levy Beranbaum
Studio : W. W. Norton & Company
by W. W. Norton & Company
Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company
Released : 2003-10
Availability : Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Number of Items : 1
EAN : 9780393057942
Avg. Customer Rating: (based on 94 reviews)
List Price : $35.00
Our Price : $19.99
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Product Description |
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The new baking masterwork from the author of "The Cake Bible" and "The Pie and Pastry Bible" provides bread bakers with 150 meticulous, foolproof recipes. The accessibility of Beranbaum's recipes and the incomparable taste of her creations make this book invaluable for home cooks and professional bakers alike. Easy-to-use ingredient tables provide both volume and weight, for surefire recipes that work perfectly every time. |
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Americancivilwar.com Review |
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Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Cake Bible introduced readers to a newly illuminating baking-book approach--a precisely detailed yet accessible recipe format emphasizing baking science. The Bread Bible follows the same plan, offering 150 recipes, arranged by type, for a great variety of baked goods--from muffins, popovers, and English muffins to sandwich loaves, focaccia, rolls, hearth breads, rye bread, challah, and more, with a particularly vivid (and passionate) stop at sourdough loaves. Instruction is abetted by 32 pages of photos plus 300 step-by-step illustrations that depict, for example, bagel forming, in exact, imitable detail. In addition, an introductory section, "The Ten Essential Steps of Making Bread," includes a particularly lucid discussion on the way yeast works plus an invaluable comparison of kneading methods. Like the book's final look at ingredients, these "mini-texts" provide information uncommon to most home bread books, rendered in simple language that allays fears of putting one's hand in the dough. All this is impressive indeed, and readers bitten by the bread-baking bug will welcome the ultra-thorough Beranbaum approach. The less committed may find her technical demands too painstaking (her baguette recipe requires two starters, for example; though simpler loaves are, of course, offered) or even impractical (ingredient quantities using grams are sometimes given in minute fractions, requiring a special scale). The frequent inclusion of alternate mixing methods and equipment options can also make the formulas unwieldy. On the other hand, features like Pointers for Success and Understanding often yield exciting discovery as well as rewarding results. In short, this Beranbaum bible answers virtually every bread-making question, as well as providing exemplary formulas. It's the real deal for those willing to bake along with Rose. --Arthur Boehm |
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Deserves the word "Bible" in its title |
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As an owner of The Cake Bible, The Pie & Pastry Bible and Rose's Holiday Cookies, I wasn't surprised by the excellence of this book. Rose's clear explanations of the science of baking are helpful & allow the reader to experiment. I noticed on her website that she offers corrections (errata)for all of her books, which has also been helpful (there really weren't very many uber boo-boos). I appreciate the consistency with which she presents recipes, and the initial desciptions of technique at the beginning of the book. The section on sourdough is especially thorough. For those afraid of yeast doughs, the quick breads in this book are phenomenal. I have given them out as holiday gifts many times to the great pleasure of my friends (the apple-cinnamon surprise is buttery deliciousness, and there's a great chocolate quick bread, too). |
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Wonderful book, odd reviews |
I find myself confused and surprised by some of the reviews already here. Myself, I have had perfect success every single time with this book, and I have made a great many of the breads -- some, like ciabatta and baguette, a great many times. So I read a bunch of the negative reviews to see if I could figure out where the problem lies. I have a few guesses.
First, this is a book on making bread her way, which means obsessive precision. If you do exactly what she says, in my experience, you will get spectacular results.
Second, you must discard your presuppositions and prior preferences. If you want to make bread the way you already make bread, this book will be quite irritating. If you want perfect success by doing it her way, this is the book for you.
Third, you really do have to read the text. I'm sorry, but I have no sympathy for people who get halfway through a recipe and discover that "rising time" refers to something quite specific, whereas there is an earlier period of preliminary rising that takes longer. Why didn't you read the recipe in advance?
Fourth, if you do read the text, you can very quickly start adapting and altering recipes to your taste. It means sitting down with a pencil and paper and calculating out altered weights in order to keep it all together. But once you've done it, you've got a new recipe that will work.
One thing I notice in many negative reviews is the word "should." Bread baking SHOULD be simple, or SHOULD be easy, or SHOULD require minimal fussing, or whatever. Why should it? This is what I mean about preconceptions: if you have strong preconceptions about how bread baking should be natural and flow from your hands or something, you're going to hate this book. If you want good bread and the hell with the myths, you'll like this book. But you do have to pay attention.
I started baking from this book because I was surrounded by "handmade organic artisanal whole-grain bread" that was leaden, tasteless, and expensive. Bread like that is made by people who think it's all about being natural. I have had perfect success with Birnbaum, and find that I can always plan things around the schedule she proposes, contrary to the negative remarks about timing and such: make the biga, sponge, poolish, or whatever, the night before; mix and go in the morning; shape and raise in the afternoon; bake in the early evening. What's so hard about that?
Anyway, ignore the negative reviews. Get this book, read the text, don't start a recipe until you've read it carefully and thoroughly, and do what she tells you. The results will be wonderful, every time. |
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For the love of bread, get this book! |
I started off my journey with the Cake Bible and was enchanted with that collection of recipes - and the background information provided so that I could truly understand what made each recipe tick! And then came the Bread Bible - a lovely Christmas gift from my niece. I've been happily baking my way through the book ever since!
Cinnamon Raisin Loaf is a favorite among family and friends (a thick slab is sitting in front of me as I write this review - it's swirled with a sweet, gooey ribbon of cinnamon and sugar and studded throughout with plump raisins - I use brown sugar and more cinnamon than the recipe calls for, by the way), Cranberry-Banana Walnut Quick Bread is to die for. My husband, who brews his own beer, often contributes his homebrew and malt powder (a must, I think, for this recipe - available at any homebrew store!). It has an amazing, crisp crust that crackles as it cools. The rich depth of flavour and moist crumb contrast with the crust for one of the best breads I've ever had - I may have to go start a loaf, just thinking about it!
I should say that I am by no means an expert baker - more like an enthusiastic novice. I love the educational information Rose provides so that you can understand why you do what you do as you explore bread baking. I started by following the recipes carefully and now feel comfortable enough to "Depart the Text" and make the recipes my own. She has wonderful tips for success with each recipe and offers suggestions for optional additions to the loaves. I'm happy to have a pizza stone, which now stays in my oven most of the time. I will often bake the loaves directly on the stone which has been preheated for 45 min. to an hour at the temperature recommended for the recipe.
One word of advice, though - please read through the recipes carefully before you begin!! I know another reviewer mentioned this already, but it's worth saying again! Some of the recipes take more than one day to make (I often make the biga or starter the day before I bake or allow for an overnight rise/rest in the fridge) and her recipes are broken down in a unique way so that you will sometimes find additional ingredients on a subsequent page. There are often duplicate sets of directions - one for hand kneading and one for your KitchenAid stand mixer and a dough hook. Once you get used to the method she uses to write/organize her recipes, it will feel more comfortable to you - but it is different from most other cookbooks I have used and I had a couple of false starts the first couple of times I tackled the recipes.
I can't say enough about this book for it's education, recipes and most of all for the hours happily spent elbow deep in flour and yeast. If you've ever been curious about baking your own bread, give this one a try - I don't think you'll be disappointed! |
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Disappointed |
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As a seasoned bread baker, I am disappointed that a 640-page bread cookbook contains only two whole grain recipes. She could have at least included a section on whole-grain, but one has the impression that Beranbaum doesn't like the taste of whole-grain. Her methods are good, but, considering that part of the reason to make a sponge is to soften the whole-wheat flour, it surprised me that her sponge-based recipes do not contain any. This is a good cookbook if you want to learn the sponge method of bread baking, but as a source for a variety of bread recipes, I wish I had purchased a different one. |
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Found it great to use and have had excellent results |
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I liked the Breadmaker's Apprentice a lot better than this book, not enough colour plates and I thought more complicated, but after following the receipes to a tee, great loaves came out of the oven. The Pugliese bread is excellent, but please sit down and read the tips she gives first, as they really work in a non commercial oven |
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