[.ca] Artisan Baking Across America: The Breads, the Bakers, ... (ISBN 1579651178)

From Amazon.com:
"Cookbook" would be a grave understatement for Maggie Glezer's Artisan Baking Across America. With its sumptuous photographs and intimate profiles of the practitioners of this noble craft, it is a loving tribute to the art of baking bread. Beautiful enough to serve as a piece of art on the coffee table, it is nonetheless a practical guide for anyone who wants to bake bread like a pro. According to Glezer, a professional baker and writer, "artisan baking" refers to the process--part of which must be done by hand--that produces the crusty, European-style breads conjured by careful craftsmanship. Glezer traveled around the country in search of the best breads and bakers in America, convincing them to share their stories, their recipes, and their knowledge of America's artisan bread movement. At first glance, this book seems only for serious bakers, as many of the recipes are quite complicated, but fortunately each is categorized by skill level--from beginner to advanced--to steer inexperienced bakers away from the trickier recipes. Best of all, the meticulous recipes are scaled-down versions of original bakeshop formulas--levain, ciabatta, dark rye, bialy, and much more--and reproduce the professional excellence of some of the best breads being made today. Beginning with flour--bread's most important ingredient--Glezer explains the various techniques of artisan baking, details the necessary equipment, defines the language of bread baking, and much more. She goes on to introduce the men and women who have devoted their lives to mastering this intricate craft and shares their most treasured recipes: Rustic Baguettes from the Acme Bread Company in Berkeley, California; Sweet Perrin (pear bread) from Seattle's Essential Baking Company; Kalamata Olive Bread from WheatFields Bakery/Cafe in Lawrence, Kansas; Semolina Filone from Tom Cat Bakery in Long Island City, New York, and many more. Whether you're serious or just curious about the art of baking bread, this book provides possibly the best education you could find outside of cooking school. Suffice it to say, if one could live on bread alone, this book might very well be the Bible. --Robin Donovan

Special Breads:
The first task of this book is defining the "artisan" bread. The author has a little trouble pining it down, but it means high quality bread made by hand in small batches at modest, neighborhood bakeries, some of whom have gained international reputations. I live in the San Francisco bay area, one of the homes of this new trend, so I was looking forward to this book. Sadly, this book tries to be four different things at the same time, and is not particularly good at any of them. The most charitable thing I can think of to say about this book is that it is an interesting introduction to the subject of artisan breads. The first intended audience is the beginning bread baker. These beginning recipes are identified as such, but there is not enough information for the uninitiated to actually make these recipes. The second audience is the experienced baker, and this is the most successful one. Everyone who has baked bread will find an interesting recipe that is within his ability. I found several that I was intrigued by and tried. Unfortunately, the recipes in this book are not that complete. On an interesting page, the author describes 5 different pre-ferments, but does not give exact recipes for them, or the most appropriate recipes to use them in. When I tried some of the recipes in summer, many of the doughs fermented faster than the times given in the recipes and over-proofed (I halted fermentation before it happened, and this may have affected the flavor, but what I got was very good). This may not necessarily be a fatal flaw, but only an experienced baker can make them work under typical and variable home conditions. On the positive side, the author is an experienced baker and educator, and has done a good job of translating professional recipes into ones suitable for the home. The third is as a coffee table book. The format is a large 9x12, but there are not enough pictures for this book to qualify as such, and many of the pictures included are neither interesting nor informative. The last is an account of the best recipes and bakers the author found while traveling across America. The ones included are interesting enough, but the number of people/places/types covered is surprising small. The book has the following chapters: Baking Basics, Starting With Flour (simpler, plain breads suitable for beginners; some recipes are based on fermented poolish), Crafting Bread (fermented, sourdough-type breads), Specialty Breads (rye, pizza, pandoro, bialy, etc.), The Baking Life (holiday breads, along with some interesting accounts of baking as a vocation), and miscellaneous references.

excellent cookbook:
This is the best cookbook I have ever read. Be warned, once you make a few loaves from this book you will never be able to go back to eating Wonder bread again and will scoff and imposter artisan breads.

You don't have to be in the trade!:
The homebaker can shop for the same flours which are available to the trade, in order to bake artesian breads, and get them in small amounts, altho' it seems to have been a well kept secret not listed in the Sources section of the baking books. To me, it was like a miracle to find heartlandmill.com. They are a small farm in Marienthal, Kansas and will ship the grains or special baker's flours in whatever small amounts the home baker wishes to order. Their prices don't have a lot of overhead built in and to top it off their products are organic! It is a joy to shop from them. To get the special flours is no big deal, you don't have to be in the trade! You can do the recipes in all the fabulous books on artesian baking: Artesian Baking by Maggie Glezer, Crust and Crumb and The Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart, Nancy Silverton's Breads from the LaBrea Bakery, Bread Alone by Daniel Leader,..... without struggling or compromising.

Coffee table reading:
Artisan Baking Across America: The Breads, The Bakers, The Best Recipes by Maggie Glezer, is a beautiful book for coffee table reading;it is not however a "how-to" book for artisan bread baking. It is chock full of information with all the special vocabulary of bread baking--"poolish", "levain", etc. BUT! It is not a user-friendly book which makes it possible for me to do what I was hoping to do--namely bake these crustly delicasies. So, if you are wanting to read about bread making, this is the book for you. Otherwise, buyer beware.

A Novice Baker Find this Book to be Wonderful:
I wanted a book about artisanal baking so that I could learn from the masters, so to speak. Up until now I'd only baked a dozen or so loaves from recipes gleaned from the internet so at first I thought the baking instructions would be too advanced for me. I plunged in, however, starting with the baguettes,and really loved the results. My most recent endeavor was the Focaccia, which was a big hit with my family. The author is very exacting in her measurements and clear with her instructions, which I need. (I'm sure, however, that as I become comfortable with baking and read books by other artisanal bakers, I'll relax a bit and trust my own creative process). This book is a great teacher as it goes through explanations of flours, interviews with bakers about their methods and tools, and descriptions of how doughs should look and feel. The book is a fine guide to bread baking and certainly isn't relegated to mere coffee table status in my house!