Artisan Baking

by Maggie Glezer

It’s a crunch and aroma you can savor in your mind before you even take a that perfect crust and that perfect crumb you can get only in bread baked with craft and care. Artisan Baking puts that bread within reach of every home baker; even the beginner now deftly will be able to turn out sourdoughs, pizzas, corn breads, and baguettes that are truly out of this world. Step-by-step instructions explain the best professional methods, and mail-order sources for ingredients and equipment simplify the baking experience. This is a book to bake from, to learn from, to read from for the sheer pleasure of encountering the generosity of spirit of the country’s finest bakers as they share their abundant expertise.

First published five years ago to glowing praise and awards, Artisan Baking is “a rare combination of clear writing, meticulous recipes, and abundant expertise” ( Fine Cooking ) and the cookbook that “those who live for and on bread have been waiting for” ( The New York Times ). It was picked by the editor of Cookbook Digest as the one book she would choose if she could have only one bread-baking book in her life. Reprinted twice in hardcover, Artisan Baking is now, at last, in an affordable paperback format with a new, easier-to-handle trim size.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Food

236 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2005

Reviews

[pea. · Rating 3 out of 5]

too many details... then not enough details.
too bad there is no bibliography.

[Joe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent book for experienced home bakers. The author takes the reader through all aspects of the baking life — growing the wheat, milling the flour, mixing the dough, ovens, baking competitions, etc. — as she visits various famous artisan bakers around the country. She also provides detailed recipes shared by those bakers. The book is heavily weighted to bread baking rather than pastry baking. For anyone who loves to bake rustic breads and pastries at home, this book is a lot of fun. Anyone who bakes traditional sourdough breads should be warned that most of the book's bread recipes involve breads that are baked with commercial yeast products.

[Liquidlasagna]

The paperback version of Artisan Baking Across America

oh it's maddenning when people change a title on a book like that

[Leslie Gasser · Rating 5 out of 5]

Recipes are magnificent!

[Jen · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pretty. I got on a bread kick recently when I found recipes that rise over multiple days, so it isn't the old "stay home all day to bake bread" feel...although it does end up being like that the day you finally bake anyway. I don't often sit down with the intent of actually reading a cookbook, but the interspersed essays on wholesome people baking bread, growing grain, milling wheat, etc. are interesting. The author gets so into this though that most of the recipies use some bizarre rare flour - eg white wheat, stone grount flint cornmeal - and manages to convince you that nothing you could possibly find to substitute would ever come close. All the info on breadmaking is so different than how I'm used to making it though that it is really interesting - kneading really wet doughs, or without flour on the cutting board, etc. Now, if I could just learn to love crunchy crusts, I'd be getting a lot more out of the 4 pound sourdough country French loaf I just made!

[Mike · Rating 5 out of 5]

For people who want more than just recipes, this is definitely your book. Each chapter has a theme about a specific baker or bakery, or wheat miller, or type of bread that leads into specific recipes. Many of the recipes are daunting and I haven't tried any of them. I like the book more for what it has to say about the places and people that make up the world of artisan bread baking than for the recipes, though I'm sure they're great.

[Kyle · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a lovely book with a minimum of misinformation (all too common in bread books), but it just doesn't teach you how to make very many breads since it's half travelogue.

[Ben · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautifully photographed...Maggie Glezer gives good detail behind the recipes and bakeries that she includes. Book is well organized and good for both beginners and advanced bakers.

[Sue · Rating 3 out of 5]

Beautiful book, interesting material, gorgeous loaves of bread, but it wasn't quite what I was looking for.

[El · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing- the best book on baking bread I've read. Also well organized and easy to follow.