Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* It's hard to imagine how the printed page can capture the sensations touch, taste, feel, and smell involved in baking bread. Yet lifetime baker Black manages to do so. How? By first investigating the building of a simple white loaf. The instructions are very tactile: Notice the warmth of the water, See tiny bubbles form from the yeast. Experiences are put into words: sticky hands, living yeast, fermentation, kneading, shaping, and, finally, baking. The rest of these foundational directions carefully take the novice, step-by-step and photograph-by-photograph, through the bread basics. After that in-depth chapter, Black carefully explains tools and ingredients, which prefaces the book's next three parts: building dough structure, flavor and texture, and on what you have learned. What's also unusual about this cookbook is the attention to detail. Black points out the differences between various recipes with what's new sidebars and lists other shapes to try. Photographs accompany the approximately 30 recipes, from French whole-wheat pain de campagne and fougasse to sour rye rolls with olives, lemon zest, and celery-seed salt. All in all, probably the closest a book can get to a hands-on course in the art of bread.--Jacobs, Barbara Copyright 2015 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Black, who believes "getting your hands in the dough is the best way to learn about bread," provides easy-to-follow directions for 10 types of bread, each created from one dough and with less than 30 minutes of active time. A primer on ingredients, tools, techniques, and tips gets readers ready for the master dough, which is altered for the types of bread. For example, adding additional water makes ciabatta, and rye flour is incorporated for a German rye. Shaping instructions for various style of loafs, rolls, and more are given in highlighted sidebars and shown in step-by-step photos. Recipes take the dough from basic breads to crackers, pizza, and a variety of foccacias. Sweet options included a cinnamon-raisin pan loaf; whole-wheat sourdough with figs, apples, and raisins; and whole-wheat rolls with toasted grains and currents. Full-page photos show the appeal of a just-out-of-the-oven homemade loaf, and additional features, such as "How Breads Got Their Names," are pleasantly informative. Agency: Miller Bowers Griffin Literary Management. (Feb.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
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