Amazon.com Review
"A bread baker, like any true artisan or craftsman, must have the power to control outcomes," says Peter Reinhart, author of
The Bread Baker's Apprentice. "Mastery comes with practice." As in many arts, you must know and understand the rules before you can break them. Reinhart encourages you to learn the science of bread making, but to never forget that vision and experimentation, not formulas, make transcendent loaves.
The Bread Baker's Apprentice is broken into three sections. The first is an amusing tale of Reinhart's visit to France and his discovery of
pain à l'ancienne, a cold-fermented baguette. The second section comprises a tutorial of bread-making basics and Reinhart's "Twelve Stages of Bread." And finally, the recipes: Ciabatta, Pane Siciliano, Potato Rosemary Bread, New York Deli Rye, Kaiser Rolls, and Brioche, to name a few. All recipes include bread profiles and ingredient percentages. Reimagined for modern bakers, these mouthwatering classic recipes are bound to inspire.
--Dana Van NestFrom Library Journal
Author of the well-respected Brother Juniper's Bread Book and Crust & Crumb, baker-turned-culinary instructor Reinhart draws on his baking and teaching experience to provide an authoritative but unintimidating guide to baking professional-quality loaves of all sorts. He begins with an account of a recent tour of specialty bakeries in Paris, including Gosselin, where he learned to make the young baker's unique pain l'ancienne which, Reinhart says, would be better called pain moderne, as it uses a modern invention (the refrigerator) to produce a "cold-dough delayed-fermentation" baguette, the best he has ever tasted. He found this technique revolutionary, and he includes the recipe here, along with a wide variety of other artisan and classic breads, from Ciabatta to Poilene-Style Miche to Tuscan Bread. The recipes are preceded by a 50-page primer on the "twelve stages of bread," and there are dozens of photographs, including particularly helpful ones of shaping different loaves. Valuable for both the professional and the novice, this is highly recommended for all baking collections.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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