Bread for Breakfast

Rating:
Summary: Some recipes disappoint
Review: Beth Hensperger has created another great bread cookbook with her newest release, Bread for Breakfast. Ms. Hensperger, who has created a series of great bread cookbooks that cater to bakers of all abilities, has created a new cookbook, which is wonderful to view. The book is filled with mouth-watering photographs taken by Leigh Beisch. Time has not yet allowed me to try many of the recipes in the book, but I look forward to trying the many recipes that include pancakes, muffins, sweet rolls and even spreads. If the author's previous books are a guide, there will not be a bad recipe in this book. I've baked many breads from the author's Bread Bible (which contains 300 recipes), and I haven't found one that I wouldn't make again. Whether you are a beginning baker or a master baker, you cannot go wrong with the purchase of this book. In fact, it is worth a purchase just for those who want to get hungry by looking at the pictures.

Rating:
Summary: great breads
Review: Bread For Breakfast contains excellent recipes for the bread-making enthusiast, as well as many recipes easy enough for the beginner to complete successfully. I made three recipes the first night. Buttermilk White Bread is very light and is wonderful toasted. The Orange Bread is divine in rounds as suggested in the book, or baked in a french bread pan. My Biscuit Muffins almost rose from the pans on their own. Beth Hensperger has provided quite a variety of items in this most delightful book,not just for breakfast but for anytime at all.

Rating:
Summary: Some recipes disappoint
Review: I've tried several recipes in Bread for Breakfast, and I've had a number of disappointments. In many recipes, ingredient amounts are inaccurate or seemingly excessive. For example, in many recipes Hensperger says that 2 packages of dry yeast is equivalent to 2 tablespoons. Actually, 2 packages yields 1 1/2 tablespoons.

In her recipe for Oatmeal Egg Bread with a Cinnamon Swirl, which makes 2 loaves, the filling calls for 1 1/2 cups of brown sugar. When I used this amount, some of the sugar melted in the oven and spilled out of the pan. What remained became large clumps of unmelted sugar in the middle of the loaf, which was unappetizing and made the slices hard to toast.

My most recent attempt was the Lemon and Blueberry Bread with Lemon Glaze. It omitted a crucial instruction which is a must whenever baking with berries: toss them with a small amount of flour before adding them to the batter. Because the recipe didn't mention it, I forgot to do this, and I wound up with Blueberry Upside-Down Cake: all the berries sank to the bottom, and the bread fell apart when I removed it from the pan. The Lemon Glaze also seemed unnecessary: it made the bread soggy and needlessly sweet.

The majority of the recipes I've tried from this book are very sweet. This is a matter of personal taste, but I would have been happier with a better balance of flavors in the finished products.

Not all her recipes have problems, though. Her Seeded Dakota Bread is wonderful, with a complex nutty flavor and interesting texture.

I really enjoy making morning pastries. Bread for Breakfast is full of great ideas, and has helped expand my repertoire. But I find I need to interpret the recipes carefully, and not be afraid to make adjustments where I find potential problems. Novice bakers should be aware of these pitfalls before buying this book.

Rating:
Summary: Two recipes worth the price of the book
Review: You have not had the perfect cinnamon roll until you have had the macadamia nut cinnamon roll. And the brioche pretzels are worth the effort and time.

Henspergers recipes are usually flawless but these two work better with a little tweaking. Instructions for the cinnamon rolls are to pat out the dough into a rectangle 20 inches by 14 inches. After spreading the filling and rolling the dough into a pinwheel one is to cut 16 rolls 1 1/2 inches thick. The math doesn't work. The dough is pliable -- easily worked by hand into a 24 X 14 inch rectangle. Now you will get your 16 rolls.

The orange-based frosting really enhances the rest of the flavors but the recipe is too parsimonious. For best results increase by 1 1/2 or 2 times.

The problem with the brioche pretzels again is in the dimension of the rectangle. Instructions are to cut 12 equal strips from a 14 X 14 square. Much better results were achieved by reducing the size of the square to 12 X 12 inch square. The strips were easier to cut evenly and much easier to roll into the 20 inch long "ropes" from which to form the pretzels.