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Summary: Bread Alone: Bold Fresh Loaves from Your Own Hands
Review: A great book for anyone wanting to know how to make traditional breads. Daniel takes you through the whole process of making really good bread.A must for anyone wanting to make bread like you used to be able to buy at a Tradition Village Bakery.
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Summary: Finally The ONE
Review: After reading more than 10 books about bread making at home I found this one. The only one making sense and good results is this one. No contradictions, no tricks, no nonsense. Not to mention the lively sweet stories.
Now: bread is GOOD.
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Summary: The fastest path to the slow way of artisinal bread
Review: An excellent book which will help everyone from the novice bread maker to the accomplished baker arrive at an excellent loaf. IMHO, some of the griping in other reviews on this site are unwarrented: my copy has held together just fine, thank you (1st ed, 3rd printing); I really appreciate the fact that the recipes are repetitive...I don't like to have to flip all through the book searching for each step's recipe...I enjoy the efficiency of having all the information in one place for each bread, even though it is repeated elsewhere; I find the book to be very clear on the difference between the various steps and "starters".Bake and enjoy!
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Summary: A wonderful book focusing on traditional, organic breads.
Review: Daniel Leader's passion for traditional breads is contagious in this book. Bread Alone has inpired and taught me how to, in my own kithcen, make the best bread I've eaten. From making fairly simple breads with a poolish to more complex soughdough breads the book is easy to follow and enjoyable to read. Daniel's personal favorite Pain Au Levain is worth the price of the book.
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Summary: Nice try, but some ruthless editing would help
Review: Having worked with several other books on baking bread, I have to say that this book is among the most disappointing. I bought the hardcover edition, and within a few months it was falling apart, even though it was not heavily used. But there are other, more serious problems. In a section entitled "Traditional" breads, Mr. Leader includes recipes for breads he fully acknowledges are creations of his own whim. Throughout the section on "levain" (sourdough), he confuses in several recipes "chef" when he means "starter" and vice versa. And the instructions themselves for making the starter would have you mix the starter with a wooden spoon until it is the consistency of a "stiff dough." A STIFF dough?! Any dough would be difficult to mix with a spoon, let alone a stiff one. Perhaps he means "stiff batter?" For the novice baker, this would be terribly frustrating. There are no illustrations, and the copious color photographs are not instructive, but rather pictures of his breads, and those of his French mentors' breads, in various poses. One photograph purports to show you what your batter should look like as your sponge develops; even here, it's not clear what you should learn from this. Better if there were illustrations or photos showing you how to knead, for example. Finally, I wonder what the motivation was to set out writing a book with a "Master Recipe" -- a great idea, in my opinion (think of Julia Child's books) -- and then repeat every last painful detail in every single recipes. And some of the recipes differ only in the size of the loaf!! I think the useful information in this book could have been reduced to a book about one-fourth its size, and it would be more useful, and cheaper, too.
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Summary: A MUST FOR ANY BREAD LOVER!
Review: Here's a book that takes bread baking to a whole new level. I own a food store and loved the easy to use and practical recipes. Great book!
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Summary: A book not only about the making of bread!!
Review: I came across this book in a public library and could not put it down once I started to read it, almost page by page. This is more than a book of recipes - recipes are really not that difficult to find - it is also about the passion of life, which has, without ourselves noticing, quickly but quietly turned into an obsession for quick tempo,profiteering, without a genuine understanding and appreciation of inner qualities. His attention paid to finding the best oven, organic wheats and slow fermention methods all related to bringing back the kind of breads which does not just look good, but which are genuinely good for health. And, for him, as a baker and owner of the shops, this is not just about a way to profiteer, but more to using human techniques and knowledge to turn the simplest and cheapest produce on earth into the best everyday food for the most people, even the not-so-wealthy ones. This is not just about the breads, but about the passion for life, substantial, earthly and without unnecessary sophistication. (the recipes are not that simple though.) This book is thus a sharing of the baker with the readers about his ways of looking at life as a baker, and letting us know also the passions of other bakers, and the persistent efforts putting into the soil by the organic farmers. In short, a book not just to function in the kitchen, but also one whose inspirations and thoughts you can share with the rest of the family.
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Summary: Good enough to suffer the BAD
Review: I discovered "Bread Alone" about five years ago and have been baking from it almost weekly over the period. I have greatly enjoyed creating breads using this book. My life has been made greater for the experience. However.....I agree with all the negatives so well discribed in other reviews. The 300 plus pages could be reduced to 50 with no loss of information. Many of the instructions are ambiguous,repetitious and confusing. There are mistakes. One specific example, pg 290 "Rose Levy Jewish Rye". Omitted the addition of fluid for the "Final Dough". The book should be edited.
Rating:
Summary: Good enough to suffer the BAD
Review: I discovered "Bread Alone" about five years ago and have been baking from it almost weekly over the period. I have greatly enjoyed creating breads using this book. My life has been made greater for the experience. However.....I agree with all the negatives so well discribed in other reviews. The 300 plus pages could be reduced to 50 with no loss of information. Many of the instructions are ambiguous,repetitious and confusing. There are mistakes. One specific example, pg 290 "Rose Levy Jewish Rye". Omitted the addition of fluid for the "Final Dough". The book should be edited.
Rating:
Summary: Good enough to suffer the BAD
Review: I discovered "Bread Alone" about five years ago and have been baking from it almost weekly over the period. I have greatly enjoyed creating breads using this book. My life has been made greater for the experience. However.....I agree with all the negatives so well discribed in other reviews. The 300 plus pages could be reduced to 50 with no loss of information. Many of the instructions are ambiguous,repetitious and confusing. There are mistakes. One specific example, pg 290 "Rose Levy Jewish Rye". Omitted the addition of fluid for the "Final Dough". The book should be edited.
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