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Crumb: Show the Dough Who's Boss
Bread can be open and airy or compact and dense - it is all about the 'crumb' which characterises particular styles of loaf. In this inspiring new book, Richard Bertinet shares his hallmark straightforward approach to making bread through every step of the process, including the various techniques of fermenting, mixing, kneading and baking.
Richard shows you how to make everything from classic and rustic breads to sourdough using different flours and ferments. Learn how to bake a range of delicious sweet and savory recipes from Manchego & Chorizo Cornbread, Seaweed & Sel Gris Rolls and Chickpea Flatbreads to Orange & Cardamom Swirls and Cinnamon Buns. There are also options for gluten-free breads and the best bakes to improve your gut-health by experimenting with different types of flour. Finally, Richard shares ideas for cooking with bread and creams, syrups and purées to enjoy alongside or incorporate into your bakes. With stunning step-by-step photography, simple advice and helpful techniques throughout,
Crumb will inspire and fill everyone, whatever their experience, with the confidence to bake an exciting repertoire of breads.
224 pages, Hardcover
Published March 5, 2019
199 people are currently reading
225 people want to read
About the author
Richard Bertinet
23 books19 followersOriginally from Brittany in north-west France, Richard trained as a baker from the age of 14. Having moved to the UK in the late 1980s, he started cooking and his catering background included stints at the Chewton Glen Hotel, as head chef at both the Rhinefield House Hotel in the New Forest and the Silver Plough at Pitton in Salisbury where in 1990 he was awarded the Egon Ronay, Pub of the Year and American Express Magazine, UK Pub of the Year. In 1996, a position as Operations Director with the Novelli Group of restaurants brought him to London where in 1998 he started advising small food related businesses. The business flourished causing Richard to set up the Dough Co, his consultancy business, in 2000 and to split his time between consultancy work advising on the development of new products for several supermarket chains, teaching and writing.
In 2004, with a young family, Richard and his wife Jo decided that it was time to leave London and head West to be closer to Jo’s family. The plans for The Bertinet Kitchen began to take shape and they found the premises at 12 St Andrew’s Terrace, Bath at the tail end of that year.
The cookery school opened in September 2005 in the same month that Richard’s first book Dough was published to critical aclaim and a host of awards (IACP cookery book of the year 2006, James Beard Award for Best Book (Baking & Deserts) and the Julia Child Award for Best First Book). Richard published his second book Crust in 2007 (World Gourmand Award for Best UK Book -Baking) and Cook – In A Class of Your Own in 2010. Two immensely popular books have followed: Pastry in 2012 and Patisserie Maison in 2014.
Richard was named the BBC Food Champion of the Year 2010 at the BBC Food & Farming Awards on 24 November 2010.
Richard makes regular TV appearances on programmes such as Saturday Kitchen and An Extra Slice.
In 2004, with a young family, Richard and his wife Jo decided that it was time to leave London and head West to be closer to Jo’s family. The plans for The Bertinet Kitchen began to take shape and they found the premises at 12 St Andrew’s Terrace, Bath at the tail end of that year.
The cookery school opened in September 2005 in the same month that Richard’s first book Dough was published to critical aclaim and a host of awards (IACP cookery book of the year 2006, James Beard Award for Best Book (Baking & Deserts) and the Julia Child Award for Best First Book). Richard published his second book Crust in 2007 (World Gourmand Award for Best UK Book -Baking) and Cook – In A Class of Your Own in 2010. Two immensely popular books have followed: Pastry in 2012 and Patisserie Maison in 2014.
Richard was named the BBC Food Champion of the Year 2010 at the BBC Food & Farming Awards on 24 November 2010.
Richard makes regular TV appearances on programmes such as Saturday Kitchen and An Extra Slice.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
March 28, 2020
Read it for the techniques, not the recipes.
On March 16, my public library announced it would be closed for two months due to COVID-19. I grabbed a couple of cookbooks randomly to help me bake.
The good: with the technique from this book, I can now handle wet dough and get a beautifully domed springy ball at the end of the process. I tried it on the neo-neapolitan pizza dough recipe from Peter Reinhardt and it was incredible. Better. Even though I had made it dozens of times before.
The bad: I tried two recipes and they both had glaring mistakes in them.
- The Cinnamon knots recipe had way too much butter, so much so that there was a thick layer of butter on the tray when the knots were done baking. I got about 1/4 cup tilting the tray and pouring the extra in a jar.
- The second one is the Muesli breakfast bread (p.88).
Ingredients (for the ferment): 200g strong whole-wheat flour, 30g honey, 15g compressed fresh yeast.
Instructions (for the ferment): Combine whole-wheat flour, honey, and yeast in a large mixing bowl and leave for 2 hours until the mixture bubbles up...
How is it supposed to do anything with NO WATER??? Thankfully I caught the mistake at the beginning. Now I am wondering whether I should try a third recipe...
I will be really good at adapting my own recipes after this book. That's how you get better, isn't it? I give it three stars because I did learn something valuable from the book.
On March 16, my public library announced it would be closed for two months due to COVID-19. I grabbed a couple of cookbooks randomly to help me bake.
The good: with the technique from this book, I can now handle wet dough and get a beautifully domed springy ball at the end of the process. I tried it on the neo-neapolitan pizza dough recipe from Peter Reinhardt and it was incredible. Better. Even though I had made it dozens of times before.
The bad: I tried two recipes and they both had glaring mistakes in them.
- The Cinnamon knots recipe had way too much butter, so much so that there was a thick layer of butter on the tray when the knots were done baking. I got about 1/4 cup tilting the tray and pouring the extra in a jar.
- The second one is the Muesli breakfast bread (p.88).
Ingredients (for the ferment): 200g strong whole-wheat flour, 30g honey, 15g compressed fresh yeast.
Instructions (for the ferment): Combine whole-wheat flour, honey, and yeast in a large mixing bowl and leave for 2 hours until the mixture bubbles up...
How is it supposed to do anything with NO WATER??? Thankfully I caught the mistake at the beginning. Now I am wondering whether I should try a third recipe...
I will be really good at adapting my own recipes after this book. That's how you get better, isn't it? I give it three stars because I did learn something valuable from the book.
August 26, 2023
This elegant hardcover was my introduction to the science of baking dough during the great bread-making resurgence of the 2020 pandemic and stay-at-home search for meaningful activities. The sub-title of the book is “show the dough who’s boss” and, Bertinet recommends novice bread-maker (such as myself) work the dough by hand to get a feel for the process and understand what is happening. This is good advice as it helps you show the dough who is the boss - but unfortunately my sourdough is currently my boss (but practice makes perfect. Looking at the photography in the book is inspiring and has me hankering to up my game and try some of his more difficult recipes.
August 2, 2024
Bertinet has videos on YouTube that are refreshingly straightforward (too many bread videos on YT are all clickbait titles and zero content). I like his approach and I might even try a sourdough again. However, as usual, most of the book is made up of recipes that are variations on the same thing. Bonus points for including a challah recipe, but minus points for adding butter to it (you can't add dairy to a bread intended to be eaten at a kosher table).
February 23, 2023
Great book for showing you how to get into artisan breads including sourdough.
Extensive photographs to help you with techniques. Made the malted wheat sourdough.
my only quibble with the book is that he has you making waaaay too much starter/pre-ferments. I wouldn't know how to scale down.
Extensive photographs to help you with techniques. Made the malted wheat sourdough.
my only quibble with the book is that he has you making waaaay too much starter/pre-ferments. I wouldn't know how to scale down.
December 26, 2023
Fantastic book, written with a lot of understanding of the process, and patience.
The brioche recipe is the best, I will bake it all the time now, it will join my personal recipe collection!
Great pictures and the writing style.
Highly recommend.
The brioche recipe is the best, I will bake it all the time now, it will join my personal recipe collection!
Great pictures and the writing style.
Highly recommend.
October 9, 2024
Love the concept and the attitude of this boom but since I can’t find fresh compressed yeast anywhere in 50 miles, it’s not a book I can use. I really like his ideas and thinking however.
June 13, 2019
Excellent book. Many recipes I will be trying in the coming months.
May 30, 2019
When I discover a new cookbook that grabs my interest I always order it from my library to peruse it before I decide whether to buy it. I also tend to skim a cookbook quickly before settling down to really read it.
I was unfamiliar with bread author Richard Bertiner. When I first skimmed Crumb: Bake Brilliant Bread I thought this fellow is just too clever by half, but then as I came to READ the book, I revised my opinion. I LOVE that he optimistically introduces bread bakers to "compressed fresh yeast", which is used in every recipe and is probably more available in England than it is here, and ingredients that might be outside of their comfort zone. A warning though, you need a good scale to make every recipe in this book because all the ingredients are measured by weight in grams. I appreciate that though. because it is so much more accurate than volume.
The work pictures in Crumb: Bake Brilliant Bread are exceptionally well done and helpful, but I tend to roll my eyes at what I consider to be useless artistic and/or self-indulgent people/tool pictures in cookbooks.
I don't particularly like to turn back and forth in a cookbook to refer to a technique when attempting to make a recipe, but in this case, once you've done a technique a few times you won't have to refer back again. Going back to review a technique is not as odious to me as the unnecessary complication of having to refer back to one recipe in order to make another recipe, as has been done in other cookbooks.
One concern I have with Crumb: Bake Brilliant Bread is referring to the misting of the bread to create the proper crust. Yep, that's absolutely true, BUT that technique also warrants a warning regarding misting and a GLASS door in an oven that has been preheated at a high temperature. If I mist instead of using other moisture techniques, I always, always, always cover the glass door with a heavy bath towel while I mist. Great bread is not worth the chance of cracking my glass oven door.
I can't wait to make the Oatmeal, Honey, and Raspberry loaves and the Apple and Cider Rolls.
I was unfamiliar with bread author Richard Bertiner. When I first skimmed Crumb: Bake Brilliant Bread I thought this fellow is just too clever by half, but then as I came to READ the book, I revised my opinion. I LOVE that he optimistically introduces bread bakers to "compressed fresh yeast", which is used in every recipe and is probably more available in England than it is here, and ingredients that might be outside of their comfort zone. A warning though, you need a good scale to make every recipe in this book because all the ingredients are measured by weight in grams. I appreciate that though. because it is so much more accurate than volume.
The work pictures in Crumb: Bake Brilliant Bread are exceptionally well done and helpful, but I tend to roll my eyes at what I consider to be useless artistic and/or self-indulgent people/tool pictures in cookbooks.
I don't particularly like to turn back and forth in a cookbook to refer to a technique when attempting to make a recipe, but in this case, once you've done a technique a few times you won't have to refer back again. Going back to review a technique is not as odious to me as the unnecessary complication of having to refer back to one recipe in order to make another recipe, as has been done in other cookbooks.
One concern I have with Crumb: Bake Brilliant Bread is referring to the misting of the bread to create the proper crust. Yep, that's absolutely true, BUT that technique also warrants a warning regarding misting and a GLASS door in an oven that has been preheated at a high temperature. If I mist instead of using other moisture techniques, I always, always, always cover the glass door with a heavy bath towel while I mist. Great bread is not worth the chance of cracking my glass oven door.
I can't wait to make the Oatmeal, Honey, and Raspberry loaves and the Apple and Cider Rolls.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews