Bread Baking: An Artisan's Perspective Hardcover – February 24, 2009

This is an exceptional book, unlike most of the artisan bread genere. They are mostly glitzy recipie books with beautiful pictures, lots of recipes, and a head-nod to the foundational science.This book is a textbook for bread baking appentices. It goes through the process start to finish, step by step, explaining the science at a practical level, so you know why each step is needed and how adjustments change the outcome. This is extremely useful.Worth the money at twice the price. Would buy again.

I was assigned this textbook for Breads class and was impressed with the information and layout of the text.First of all, baking (and especially bread baking) is a science. This book does a good job of explaining the ins and outs of bread baking so that the reader will gain not only the knowledge of how, but also what, when, and why. Each chapter offers a different aspect of the bread baking process and discusses in depth the processes happening during this step and the science behind it. Likewise, there is an experiment/lab at the end of each chapter that emphasizes what was learned. This is beneficial because bread baking is less about the specific recipe and more about the ingredients and the steps. Most other culinary textbooks offer a recipe and expect you to follow it - this book asks you to create the same recipe but alter one step showing you the possible outcomes and the reasons behind them. This book focuses on teaching the reader all of the necessary steps so that they can create their own bread formulas and recipes.Likewise, there is also a chapter on decorative dough pieces and also an appendix of bread formulas. As for the book itself, it's light and not too thick, however the pages are very thin and somewhat flimsy. There are only a couple of color inserts consisting of a few pages each which is frustrating as it's difficult to tell the optimal color looking at black and white pictures.All in all, this is a great book for someone interested in learning not only how to bake great bread, but also every step of the process from choosing ingredients to storage.

Daniel was my bread instructor at culinary school and I can tell you the passion he has towards making fantastic bread. If you can’t take a bread class directly from Daniel this book is the best resource to gain the knowledge he has to make authentic breads. I recommend this to anyone who wants to increase their knowledge of bread making.

For the most part I found this book easy to understand and very informative. As stated by some other reviews it does contain some unforgivable errors. I will point out one that other reviewers seem to have missed. The adjusted formula for Sourdough bread in the Appendix of Formulas on page 232 (2010 copyright edition) is VERY WRONG. The following weights appy to the 5 qt formula but in general apply to the 20 qt as well. First the sum of the weight of the ingredients exceeds the total yield, 2207 grams versus 1700 grams. Furthermore the firm levian formula calls for 300 g flour, 180 g water, 300 g ripe levian. From this formula you are to exclude 300 g in the final dough, meaning you should use 480 g of the final levian. The adjusted formula for the dough calls for 427 g of levian and 480 g of instant yeast and 0 g of salt!!!! I say that again, 480 g of instant yeast! Based on the formula you can eventually surmise it should be 480 g of levian. Next you can surmise that it should be 0 g of instant yeast since this is a sourdough bread. Lastly from the straight dough formula above the adjusted formula you can surmise it should contain 20 g salt. So it should be as follows.Bread flour 700 gWater 500 gSalt 20 g (NOT 0)Instant yeast 0 g (NOT 480 g)Firm levian 480 g (NOT 427 g)This formula gives us the expected yield of 1700 g.Such egregious errors are inexcusable in a text book.

This is the first, recently published, bread book I've purchased. primarily due to author Dan DiMuzio's interview on The Fresh Loaf website, and his continued contributions answering questions and giving advice therein. Written like a textbook, (including worthwhile student exercises) serious home bakers should find this book instructive in both basic, and advanced topics, e.g. Baker's Math. It contains formulae for most or all of the most popular artisan breads many home bakers are making. A very minor caution: a few of the formulae have numerical errors. The author has solicited user's input re found errors, but the publisher has yet to publish/post an errata list.I purchased a few more bread-books since buying this one, but it remains one of the top two I turn to for guidance, information, and, of course, baking good flavored breads.

Wife purchased the book for her baking class. It contains interesting experiments such as making two batches of dough and for instance comparing what would happen if your over proofed or under proofed the bread. Learn by actions instead of just reading a text, which is different from most baking books. However, the way concepts are described in the book are not as straight forward as other books.

This is not a recipe book: this is a textbook! That being said, it was exactly what I was looking for. I’ve just begun my journey into bread baking and I was hungry for in-depth, comprehensive information on the topic as a whole. This book provides a professional baker’s look at bread baking in terms even I can understand as a home baker. I love the additional tidbits of historical knowledge that the author provides about bread baking as a historical catalyst! Very cool book. Would recommend for those who love to learn.

If you are looking for a recipe book with a lot of glossy pictures of bread, this isn't the right book for you. However, if like me you want a book that explains the science underpinning bread baking, and that helps you to understand what the effects are likely to be of any changes you might make to a recipe, this book is excellent. It gives a history of the development of comercial bread baking, then goes on to explain in detail the effects of adding different ingredients (flour / water / yeast / sweetener / fats etc), and the variations you can apply at different stages of bread preparation (eg varying the time and temperature of different rises). If you're an experimental cook, rather than one who likes to follow a recipe precisely, this means you can vary a basic recipe to get the bread you want, produced on a schedule that fits in with the rest of your life!There ARE recipes, but they're given as formulae rather than recipes (more academic and less intuitive to follow, unless you're of a scientific frame of mind) since this is a book aimed at students of breadmaking. With that proviso I heartily recommend this book.

I'v got many recipes for bread and also have been baking for about 10 years. I wanted to know more about what happens when you do a certain thing and why it is necessary or how that makes a difference to your dough. This book explains about different methods in different processes and helps you understand more about the reasons behind bread making. This will be my bible for a long time. I will recommend this book to those who love making bread and want to know more than just recipes and basic procedures.

great book for the serious amateur who wants to know why? you do certain things and the effect this has on your dough

Good recipies and easy to follow. Would recommend this to anyone wanting to bake their own bread. Good buy for this price.