Evolutions in Bread: Artisan Pan Breads and Dutch-Oven Loaves at Home

by Ken Forkish

The New York Times bestselling author of Flour Water Salt Yeast teaches you how to elevate your sandwich bread, breakfast toast, and overall bread-baking game using everything he’s learned in the last decade to perfect his loaves.
 
“A descendent of Flour Water Salt Yeast with an even greater eye towards baking breads that are complex in flavor but simple in process.”—J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, author of The Food Lab, Every Night is Pizza Night, and The Wok

If you want to craft artisan pan breads and rustic Dutch oven loaves at home with professional, consistent results, this is the book for you. Think crispy, crackly crusts and soft, airy interiors, just like from your favorite artisan bakery—except it came from your own oven. 
 
Approachable to the home baker, while still being chock-full of expert knowledge and all-new recipes, Evolutions in Bread covers same-day loaves, overnight cold-proof doughs, and classic levains. Forkish shares the secrets he has learned for making sourdough starter that’s more flour efficient while also exploring classic breads and enriched doughs, such as Japanese Milk Bread and Brioche. 
 
Included with each recipe is a handy baking schedule, helping newbies navigate their first starters and loaves. The doughs are also versatile; most can be prepared as a lidded pan loaf, open pan loaf, or as a rustic country loaf. This book will improve anyone’s baking but also serves as a companion to Flour Water Salt Yeast , giving you everything you need to create any loaf imaginable.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Food, Reference, Nonfiction

256 pages, Hardcover

Published September 20, 2022

Reviews

[Paula · Rating 5 out of 5]

Always looking to improve my bread making techniques.
Whether a newbie or seasoned baker, provides good information on ingredients, equipment, techniques and working with sourdough. I appreciate his layout of a baking schedule, breakdown of recipe ingredients in both grams and cups with easy to follow instructions. Plus, the recipes yield some delicious results.

[Audrey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wealth of information, beautiful photos, unhelpful instructions

[Carol · Rating 4 out of 5]

I made my first loaf and took it to work today. It was devoured with high praise. I must say, all the steps make the process a bit fiddly, but in time I'll get it down. I may have to buy this book...

[Elizabeth · Rating 3 out of 5]

I loved Ken Forkish's first book, "Flour Water Salt Yeast". I still love that book. So I was excited to delve into his "Evolutions in Bread".

First of all, there are fabulous photos! But. How do these fabulous looking breads taste? Alas, many of the recipes call for reducing the amount of fermentation time - several are same-day breads. This means he is essentially advocating the reduction in flavour.

Additionally, even though he revised his earlier levain method to waste less flour, he still advocates wasting quite a lot of flour by saying to throw any of the starter away. (It's just not necessary!)

Having said all that, anyone who is not snobby about using commercial yeast (who, me??) even if there is a viable wild yeast starter raring to be used, this book is full of excellent looking recipes and very good technical advice. (Except, of course, for saying that you have to throw away parts of your starter)

For example, the 'Corn (Flour) Bread' on p.117 is wonderful. We cannot wait for next August, at the height of corn season to make his "Whole Shebang" corn flour bread!

= = = = =
If half-stars were allowed, the rating would go up to 3.5.

My next step was to revise the process for the sourdough recipes from my first book and decrease the amount of waste (extra sourdough that you throw away). The result is a mehod to make up a new natural levain (sourdough) culture that calls for only a small fraction of the flour that the Flour Water Salt Yeast levain used. [Introduction, p.2]
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All the recipes in this book except the Dutch-oven levain breads call for instant dried yeast. [Introduction, p.8]
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Added wheat gluten (sometimes called vital wheat gluten) assists the physical structure of a dough that is intensively mixed and undergoes a short, fast fermentation. This ingredient is not in bread to make the loaf taste better. It's there to make breads rise higher when other additive ingredients are in the dough [...] In my opinion, wheat gluten as an added ingredient has no place in the home kitchen (or any bread that I eat) because it does nothing for flavor and it adds to your digestive load. [Chapter 1: Ingredients and Equipment, p.14]
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Most of the recipes suggest the use of a levain as an optional ingredient. The recipes work well without it, but they will taste better with it. [...] I recommend that you make a levain from scratch. It's an easy process. [Chapter 1: Ingredients and Equipment, p.32]
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[On (p. 64): over the course of Days 1 to 4, mix a total 250 grams whole wheat flour and 250 grams water together.]
 
Day 5 [...] Now you will switch to white flour [...] Stand next to the trash can and dump the mixture until 100 grams/ 1/2 cup remains. [...] Add [100 grams water and 100 grams white flour [...]
Day 7 [...] Remove all but 50 grams and add [200 grams white flour and 200 grams water]. [...] This is your levain. It will now be usable for any of the recipes in this book. [Levain . Sourdough (A New Approach), p.65]

[Nick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love the focus on pan breads, not enough focus on that in the artisan bread world. But most recipes can also become Dutch oven loaves, great. The recipe tables are immaculate, as they were in FWSY. Really appreciate that, makes it so you can quickly understand a recipe and bake it from just a glance. Really excited to try the apple cider levain loaf and the corn loaf with the corn cob broth and corn husk flour(!!!!!!). Great resource, excited to use it for years to come just like FWSY!

If I had to search for criticisms it would be two things (and these are really minor nitpicks):

1. I’d have loved an updated version of the essay about making a loaf to call your own from FWSY that was tailored towards pan loaves. What should I be thinking about when doing pan loaf experiments? Something to help the creative juices flow.

2. The shokupan recipe has scalded flour, obviously since that is a key characteristic of that bread, but I’d have loved more loaves that experimented with scalded flour. I guess there is always Chad Robertson’s Bread Book (the least google-able name in the world) for this kind of thing, where almost every recipe includes some kind of scalded flour.

But yeah overall I am super pleased with this book and very excited to bake some pan loaves!!

[Robert Bradbury · Rating 4 out of 5]

I started with Forkish' first book, Flower, Water, Salt, Yeast, and you know, every loaf I made turned out from okay to pretty good. I can't say that too many of them were outstanding, but there were certainly no flops even if somewhere in the process things seemed too wet, or too dry, or too hard to move around. I have been pretty impressed by that. The downside of his first book is that he wanted you to make these big batches of dough that make two loaves and I needed smaller quantities. So, I read websites and other books and figured out pretty much how to do the things he talks about in this book, Evolutions. He acknowledges in this book that he needed things to be less involved, more flexible, smaller portions, less waste, and just more down-home all around. I had already adopted a few of his techniques before reading this book and I've picked up a few more since. I'm not a fan of his method of not wasting starter. It is still too complicated. I did not try any of the recipes except the main ones. But it seems to be a good, practical book and I'm confident you won't have flops after reading it. It was good that he recognizes we have busy lives and need more flexibility in our baking and tries to address that.

[Kerry Croucier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yum! Never have I been more anxious to have free time to bake as I have since EVOLUTIONS IN BREAD: ARTISAN PAN BREADS AND DUTCH-OVEN LOAVES AT HOME by Ken Forkish landed in my hands. I love bread but have been intimidated to do more than toss the ingredients in a bread machine and push a few buttons. Forkish has changed that feeling of intimidation and I am ready to try my hand at more. The recipes are detailed, and the explanations are interesting. Kneading has always scared me, but he not only provides step-by-step instructions: he also provided YouTube videos! How great is that? I would still like to acquire a few pieces of suggested equipment (I already picked up a Dutch oven for breads I don’t want to put in a pan, but my kitchen is space challenged). I don’t need anything more than I already have for the Brioche recipe, so I am starting there. I am looking forward to baking my way through Forkish’s recipes for Artisan breads and perfecting my bread-making technique.
Thanks to Ten Speed Press for the gifted copy. All opinions are my own and freely given.
#EvolutionsinBread #kenforkish #TenSpeedPress #Cookbooks #BreadBaking

[Emma James · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed how the author went I to describing different types of wheat, how they are milled, and some of the science behind bread. I also enjoyed that the recipes included a "sample schedule" on the ingredients list so you can see at a glance how long it is going to take you, instead of trying to read through the recipe. Im excited to try some of the recipes as I've discovered a love for bread baking and especially breads that can be made in the same day! I do think that some of the in-depth instructions are just too long, and I also felt like the author kept referencing his previous books as if you were supposed to know what he was talking about. Some of the ingredients are not necessarily ones you can find in local grocery stores though, which makes a lot of these breads more artisan in nature.

[Mark A Kelley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent

This is a natural evolution of Ken's first book, Flour Water Salt Yeast. You'll find welcome additions of other multi-grain bread recipes and a modified approach to levain starters, which will have you using less flour, while easier to maintain. Ken's ability to explain techniques used by seasoned professional bakers in terms that home bakers can learn and incorporate early on, has given me a firm foundation to build on. I have found a new passion in baking wonderfully delicious and amazing breads.

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

I made one recipe twice and another three times, faithfully. Maybe I didn't give them enough of a chance, but taste-wise, the bread didn't measure up to Flour, Water, Yeast and Salt. This book did produce thinner, neater slices for sandwiches, but I've never been much of a sandwich person. The folding technique was a lot more work once all the extra handwashing was added in.

Glad I checked it out and will use some of the techniques when I want sandwich bread.

[Pam Monheimer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent! New bread recipes from Portland’s best baker. Didn’t think I’d need to bake any bread not in Ken’s “Flour Water Salt Yeast”, but he’s done it again, I’ve already baked several of the new recipes in Evolutions and loved them all. Several are simpler than the pure levain breads. Don’t miss his YouTube videos.

[Susan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A second book from Ken Forkish that taught me new things, baking with loaf pan,, standard overnight bread became my go to, so tasty and so well received with Peter. This book finally got me making brioche and shokupan the latter is well received by two critical judges at home will become a recurring recipe.
I want my own copy.

[Kirk Dobihal · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliantly written. I have one question - In the Cold Storage of Levain the ending step has an addition of flour - No mention of mixing. Does this mean you just cover the levain with dry flour insulating the mix or is it mixed and this was not indicated???

[Charles Bahr · Rating 5 out of 5]

Answers the question: what’s next.

I made a lot of Dutch oven bread. I didn’t suffer any major burns. But how do I transition to normal loaves for sandwiches or toast? This book answers that pretty reasonably.

[Spencer Mize · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ken consistently writes baking books that are approachable and produce fantastic foods with minimal effort. I've made a delicious corn loaf today with about 10 minutes of actual work.

Phenomenal.

[Lindsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

I like it better than the original because sourdough is treated as a beneficial additive to work alongside the yeast--much more manageable for the home baker.

[Karrie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Didn’t have Challah tho ;/

[Cole]

Val and I are gonna make so much bread this year

[PJ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I luv u Ken Forkish ... the breads in this book are dead simple and come out consistently perfect I've already made four loaves and I love my levain ... this book is da bomb !

[Ruth Malinas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book for sourdough lovers!

Easy to follow. I have used several of the recipes. The family loved them all. We enjoyed especially the levain Dutch oven recipes.

[Ericka Jade · Rating 4 out of 5]

Quite of bit of background and technique with pictures. I’m going try this but I have some shopping to do. An easy understand format.

[bookcookery]

Although Michael Pollan makes baking sourdough bread seem straightforward in The Omnivore’s Dilemma, I was left intimidated (mainly due to his comically failed attempt to extract salt from the ponds beneath the San Mateo Bridge). So when I set out to bake sourdough myself, I knew I needed a guide that would walk me through every step with minimal room for interpretation. I tried Bonnie Ohara’s Bread Baking for Beginners, Emilie Raffa's Artisan Sourdough Made Simple, and Elaine Boddy’s The Sourdough Whisperer and The Sourdough Bible, but it was Evolutions in Bread that really made the process click. If, like me, you appreciate instructions that are obsessively detailed and unapologetically repetitive, this is the book for you.

Note: in relation to Forkish's other books, this one is largely a refresh of Flour Water Salt Yeast and features almost identical recipes to Let's Make Bread!: A Comic Book Cookbook (though I did find the comic format useful for understanding shaping). For pizza recipes, perhaps unsurprisingly, I preferred the naturally leavened dough in his The Elements of Pizza over the recipe in this volume.

[William Watson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent - with great explanation and easy to follow

I appreciate the explanation of each step while keeping it simple. So easy to follow. For someone new to baking bread I continually go back his books as my staple.