Bread Made Easy: A Baker's First Bread Book

by Beth Hensperger

Covers the fundamentals on baking bread with recipes for eight basic breads, including batter bread, egg bread, white bread, and whole wheat bread, and four to six recipe variations for each one.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Nonfiction, Food

132 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1999

About the author

Beth Hensperger is a passionate professional- and home- baker who is both extremely creative and extraordinarily prolific as an author and developer of quality recipes. Her training included a ten-year apprenticeship as a restaurant and hotel pastry chef as well as having her own custom wedding cake business and attending classes given by some of the top bakers in America. Though restaurant trained, she considers herself more of a dedicated home baker than a chef.
Beth’s writing career began when she was chosen as the Guest Cooking Instructor for the March 1985 issue of Bon Appetit. She is now the author of fifteen cookbooks, many of them best sellers. Her most recent books include: Williams Sonoma Breads (Weldon Owen), Bread For Breakfast (Ten Speed Press), and The Bread Lover's Bread Machine Cookbook (HCP). The Bread Bible (Chronicle Books) is the recipient of The James Beard Foundation Award for Baking in 2000. Beth's Basic Bread Book (Chronicle Books), a sequential text for the beginning home baker, published in the Fall of 1996, was chosen as one of the best baking books of the year by People Magazine. She has been nominated twice for the IACP Julia Child Cookbook Awards. Her books are all represented at the prestigious Culinary Collection of the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
When she isn't up to her elbows in flour, Beth is a monthly food columnist with the San Jose Mercury News "Baking By the Seasons". She is a regular contributor to Cooking Pleasures, Food & Wine, Shape Magazine, Bon Appétit, Veggie Life, and Pastry Art and Design Magazines.

Reviews

[Rob · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think the subtitle on this book is pretty apt. If you want to learn to bake bread, this is an outstanding place to start. It opens with foundations (i.e., an overview of essential ingredients, technique, and equipment) and then progresses through a series of increasingly sophisticated-to-make bread styles. Each of those styles has a core recipe accompanied by a series of variations. Also the full-color images help you to match up your own dough with expectations. (In other words, "Am I doing this right?" *checks pictures* "Yeah, that's fine.")

My two little nit-picks:

First, most (all?) of the recipes seem to be oriented to making two or more loaves. When you're making your first few loaves of bread, this is surprising and intimidating. Not that I wasn't happy to have two loaves, but had it gone badly (i.e., translating recipes into real physical but inedible bread) I would have been frustrated, and upset by just how much flour etc. I'd burned through. (I've since learned this is fairly common -- that many if not most bread recipes are for two or more loaves, but that was surprising.)

My second nit-pick is that the text of the core recipe has a weird flow. There's an introduction (OK) followed by the recipe itself but... The portion of the recipe that discusses the initial mixing and kneading discusses by-hand, with-KitchenAid, and with-Magic Mill DLX approaches. You get used to this after the first recipe or two, but it can throw you off at first.

[Erica Drum · Rating 5 out of 5]

Really good, my breads I tried turned out great.

[Oscar Brown]

i love to learn more about bread

[Destiny Dawn Long · Rating 4 out of 5]

When I decided to try my hand at baking bread, I borrowed this book. It was recommended by my MIL as a great book for beginners. She was right. Hensperger does an excellent job at describing tools and technique--it was clear and straightforward.

For my first endeavor, I decided to make challah... It came out AMAZING. Everyone was really impressed. I was pleased. Making bread from scratch takes a lot of time and effort, so it's really important that the recipes you're given contain clear instructions and produce top quality results. This book delivered. I'm looking forward to baking more of the bread recipes in the future.

[Chrystal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great book for the beginning bread makers, such as myself, who are looking to make more than your typical white loaf. Lots of tips and pointers, as well as some insight into the science behind breadmaking.

[Phobean · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm obsessing over bread right now. Don't mind me.

[Ren · Rating 5 out of 5]

I can actually bake bread using this book. (Well, some bread.)

[Christopher Prosser]

cookbooks

[Valerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't use this one so much, but it describes every step, so it is a handy reference.