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Summary: The book for the aspiring bread baker
Review: I have been baking bread for over 30 years, but have never found a helpful guide to approaching the fine , chewy, flavourful artisan loaf of the Europeans. I have devoured this book from cover to cover, and learned that bread baking is not just an art, but a science. I am now experimenting with time, temperature, weighing everything, and learning the patience of slower-paced bread making and its rich reward. I highly recommend this book to anyone on the quest for the perfect loaf.
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Summary: Daniel's breadmaking technique revolutionized my breadbaking
Review: I have owned and used Daniel's "Bread Alone" for several years now and have been impressed with the positive change in my bread baking results. From the study of and the importance of using organic flours to using a slow raising process to add flavor to the loaf,and on to the finished look of the loaf, my breads can now compete with anything out there! I highly recomend the use and study of Daniel Leader's "Bread Alone."
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Summary: Excellent book for us neophyte bakers!
Review: I have read and used many different books on baking bread. Dans' book has basically held my hand and walked me thru different areas of breadmaking I did not know or did not understand completely. Great job Dan!
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Summary: Bread Alone: Bold Fresh Loaves from Your Own Hands
Review: I have tried for years to replicate the Artisan breads of Baltimore and Washington bakeries in my kitchen oven. Although the breads were fine tasting, they never had the tough, chewy, delicious crust of those breads I favored and bought as often as I could. Daniel Leader, author of Bread Alone, presents the "secret" of Artisan bread making. The first recipe I tried resulted in the crust and crumb I have tried for years to produce! Not only does Mr. Leader show the home baker, through step by step process of making Artisan bread, he laces his recipes with personal stories of his trips to France, learning from the French Boulangers and their sometimes personal stories. Not only is the book well worth it's recipes, it makes for enjoyable reading. This book goes beyond the recipes found in Baking with Julia, a very good book. Bread Alone shows step by step how to build the chef, the poolish and the slow fermentation of the dough to produce that wonderful tastey crust, so elusive in other books.
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Summary: It works very well!!
Review: I wrote one review after I read the whole book. But now, after owning other very famous books of bread and after gaining much experience now as a homebaker who bakes bread every other day, I must say this book is a must for the serious ones. Comparing the explanations of the ingredients and techniques, as well as that of the recipes of how to make complicated starters and sourdough with other books, this one is indeed the most detailed and easiest to follow. And, like other reviewers said, they make really high-quality breads which far excel those available in the market. Of course, like any skills which aim at excellence, the Bread Alone methods take a bit of time and patience to master.
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Summary: A must for serious artisan bread bakers
Review: If you're interested in making serious artisan bread, this book gives you the basic essentials in terms of ingerdients, method and recipes. Other reviewers gripe about his level of detail but let's be honest. Anyone can make bread with yeast, all purpose flour and a couple of hours to spare. But this is not that kind of bread. Leader goes through the steps of what it takes to make great bread, and temperature (yes, 78 degrees) as well as proportion and timing are crucial in artisan sourdough breads. So if you want easy, this is not for you. Buy a bread machine. If you want a thorough run-down on what it takes to make great artisan breads, I can think of no better place to start. And the product is great. From here, however, I would proceed to Nancy Silverton's "Breads from the La Brea Bakery." She makes Leader look like a simpleton in comparison.
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Summary: Inspiring, but unhelpful
Review: It's so sad to see such potential squandered for the sake of word count. If the authors had spent as much time on the accuracy of their writing as they do on the accuracy of the temperature and weight of their ingredients, this would have been perhaps one of the greatest bread books ever written. However, the combination of gross omissions, editorial blunders, and what I believe to be bad recipes is truly disappointing.Just a short taste of the mistakes I encountered:
- time tables were inconsistent. One place in the recipe instructs allowing 2 hours for mixing the poolish, while another says it will take 24 hours.
- a chapter on straight dough breads gives an alternative time table for mixing, kneading, and baking. It says that all the recipes in this chapter can be used with this method. However, there are no recipes at all in the chapter it mentions.
- too much salt. I followed the instructions precisely, and didn't think a thing of adding a full tablespoon to the mix as suggested. The bread came out flat and so salty that it was inedible. I reduced the amount of salt by 1/2 and my loaves were much better. Please, don't waste your money on this book.
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Summary: Inspiring, but unhelpful
Review: It's so sad to see such potential squandered for the sake of word count. If the authors had spent as much time on the accuracy of their writing as they do on the accuracy of the temperature and weight of their ingredients, this would have been perhaps one of the greatest bread books ever written. However, the combination of gross omissions, editorial blunders, and what I believe to be bad recipes is truly disappointing. Just a short taste of the mistakes I encountered:
- time tables were inconsistent. One place in the recipe instructs allowing 2 hours for mixing the poolish, while another says it will take 24 hours.
- a chapter on straight dough breads gives an alternative time table for mixing, kneading, and baking. It says that all the recipes in this chapter can be used with this method. However, there are no recipes at all in the chapter it mentions.
- too much salt. I followed the instructions precisely, and didn't think a thing of adding a full tablespoon to the mix as suggested. The bread came out flat and so salty that it was inedible. I reduced the amount of salt by 1/2 and my loaves were much better. Please, don't waste your money on this book.
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Summary: Good read, but the detail level is tiresome to extreme.
Review: Learned how to make a good sour-dough bread and a marvelous hearth bread, but the level of detail is extreme and very boring. As a previous reviewer suggests, the detail could be cut at least by half or more and there are several mild contradictions and/or errors that would have been removed by an editor familiar with bread-making. After all, how many times must you be warned about spraying a hot oven light and the tiresome emphasis on adjusting temperatures to exactly 78 degrees? Also, the mechanical book construction is poor at best and careless by any standard. The book fell apart just from a few days of use.
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Summary: You too can bake great bread
Review: Okay, I agree with some of the negatives pointed out by the other reviewers. The excruciating detail can become repetitive, we do not all have access to the exact ingredients, nor the patience to deal with the precise temperature requirements. That said, this book allowed me, an amateur, to make some amazing bread. I follow the instructions fairly closely, but use common sense where appropriate. I have not yet used a thermometer, and yet have produced some great regular and sourdough loaves, bagels, pitas, etc. What this book does is tell you the steps you need to follow, techniques to use (particularly kneading), how the dough should look and feel at different stages. This book provides everything you need to learn the basics of bread-making (except patience, of course).
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