Product Description

Bread in Italy is rough country loaves with thick chewy crusts and flat disks of focaccia seasoned with the wild herbs of the fields. It is celebratory sweet holiday breads dense with fat raisins, toasted nuts and candied fruit peels. It is "new wave" wave" breads, recently invented by artisan bakers and studded with roasted peppers, sun. dried tomatoes and salty olive paste. It is imaginative multi-grain breads and rolls with tastes and shapes that vary dramatically from region to region.

Recipes for the breads of all these regions, for the comforting rustic soups and salads and appetizers based on them, for breadsticks and rolls, pizza and focaccia, for holiday specialties, for pastries, cookies, cornetti and nut tortes, fruit tarts, cheesecakes and spice cakes and other confections-all are offered in this landmark volume which presents, for the first time in English or Italian, the diverse baking traditions of Italy.

Knowing these regional specialties and the stories behind them is like taking a trip through the Italian countryside. Putting the recipes on paper as Carol Field has done is like preserving the villages in the Italian hillsides with their churches and frescoes, for they are part of a tradition that has never before been recorded. In preparing for this book, Carol Field spent two years working with the bakers of Italy, traversing the country again and again from Lugano and Como in the north to Lecce and Palermo in the south, tasting and testing, then going back to the States to rework the recipes in an American kitchen with American ingredients. The result is recipes that are impeccably written for utmost ease and flexibility. Some are simple and earthy, some elegant and refined, but all will be a revelation to Americans who have previously known Italian breads and desserts only from the limited and stereotyped range available until now. Each recipe offers instructions for making doughs by hand, by electric mixer, and by food processor. Illustrations provide clear step-by-step how-to, and chapters on ingredients, equipment and technique reveal all the whys and wherefores.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #141352 in Books
• Published on: 1985-10-30
• Released on: 1985-10-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 448 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Italy's breads are "expressions of an earthy culture that still talks about its most fundamental experiences in terms of bread. . . . A down-to-earth man with a real heart of gold is described as 'buono come il pane'good, like bread," observes Field (The Hill Towns of Italy). Her book of baked goods is packed with recipes for breads made with herbs, mushrooms, fruits and cheeses; traditional loaves; breadsticks and rolls; chocolate and holiday breads; pizza and focaccia; as well as strudels and tarts, cakes and cookies. There are even recipes for leftover breadcrostini, garlicky vegetable soup, apple cake. Included also are directions for kneading by hand, by mixer and by food processor; dry ingredients are measured by both volume and weight. In order to write this book, Field worked with bakers in different regions of Italy and watched women making bread for their families. She recreates here for the American baker authentic Italian tastes and textures. Her informed discussion of ingredients and methods and her engaging commentary on the role of bread in Italy's history make this an important book for bakers. 20,000 first printing; Cooking & Crafts Book Club main selection; author tour. Foreign rights: Harper. October 30
Copyright 1985 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Carol Field is the author of four cookbooks, In Nonna's Kitchen, Focaccia, Celebrating Italy, and The Italian Baker, as well as The Hill Towns of Italy and Mangoes and Quince, a novel. She has won two IACP Cookook Book Awards, a James Beard Award, and the Gold Medal for Cookbooks at the World Media Awards in Australia. She lives in San Francisco with her architect husband and continues to travel back and forth to Italy.

Customer Reviews

Age hasn't dampened its usefulness
The Italian Baker by Carol Field covers a unique niche market for English-language bakery and pastries: the art as practised specifically in Italy. There are tons of French-inspired bakery books around, and I recommend you to go through Rose Levy Beranbaum's three 'bible' series on bread making, pies and pastries, and cake making, and Sherry Yard's works, and perhaps Dorie Greenspan and Pierre Herme if you decide to learn from French-inspired pastry making. Of course other English-speaking countries have slight variations as to what baking and pastry making consists - the Australian Women's Weekly Bake book will be the best choice for baking as practised in Australia (and New Zealand).

I must say as an amateur cook I only baked bread once when I was a child and it ended up in abject failure. From reading the recipes, it covers most of the pastries and bread making under the sun under Italian-style cuisines. Panettone is a pretty standard baking item, which in an interesting twist, is not commonly available in almost all Italian cookbooks (most common cookbooks don't have it, and the only cases of common type of cookbooks that have this recipe are Mario Batali's Molto, Ursula Ferragano's La Dolce Vita, and Michele Scicciolone's 1000 Italian Recipes). This book does have one, and there are many more far more specialized pastries around. Even though the book was published almost a quarter of a century ago and despite the limited availability of gourmet or artisan ingredients in the English-speaking world in the early 1980s, I did not sense the recipes have been watered down to cater for Anglo-American ingredient availability of the time. In addition, Field does emphasise in the book that whenever substitutions are made, she would provide sufficient contextual information as to what the original undiluted recipes would be like. Despite the time of publishing, it is still at the forefront of Italian-style baking today.

A few reviewers have complained about a lack of measurement by weight. I did not quite notice this myself, and in fact the recipes I have gone through so far all have weight listed in metric system as well as volume.

The only other book that can be said to cover essentially the same subject is Giuseppe Orsini's Italian Baking Secrets. It is not apparent to this reviewer that the far more recent publication date of Fr Orsini's work means it is more up to date or more able to faithfully reproducing the authentic recipes than Field's book. I would suggest buyers to pick Field's work over that of Orsini's.

Highly recommended this book for Italian-style baking.

My kind of Bread Book!!!!
I always wanted to make bread and I had purchased other books about making bread but this book is far the best. I like the fact that it gives you instructions with you standing mixer, or by hand or processor. The instructions are clear and easy to understand. I like how it goes into detailed discription on everything you use but also the Italian words that are used and that in it's self is interesting. It also tells you which equipment is good for baking bread and why. I found this book is a world of delight. So far most of my neibours have enjoyed the fruits of this book as I have. I will continue to look for any other book written by Carol Field and will purchase them. I do know one thing if you were ever thinking about making bread, buy this book and you will be very happy you did, especially after your first loaf is made.I only wished I had found this book years ago. I give this Book my 5 loaves of love!

I love the cook books by Carol Field
reading this book you can feel the heart and soul she has for the Italian land and it's people. One of the great treasures of cook books. Carol Field's books bring out the history and wonderful cultural recipes. This Book is Art! Good cooking is art!