Product Description

Recipes from the back rooms and basement bakeries that produce Europe's best breads.

When Daniel Leader opened his Catskills bakery, Bread Alone, twenty years ago, he was determined to duplicate the whole-grain and sourdough breads he had learned to make in the bakeries of Paris. The bakery was an instant success, and his first book, Bread Alone, brought Leader's breads to home kitchens.

In this, his second book, Leader shares his experiences traveling throughout Europe in search of the best artisan breads. He learned how to make new-wave sourdough baguettes with spelt, flaxseed, and soy at an organic bakery in Alsace; and in Genzano, outside of Rome, he worked with the bakers who make the enormous country loaves so unique that they have earned the Indicazione Geografica Protetta (IGP), a government mark reserved for the most prized foods and wines. Leader's detailed recipes describe every step that it takes to reproduce these rare loaves, which until now were available strictly locally. 32 pages of color illustrations.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #14134 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-13
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 448 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Leader's new bread-baking book is distinguished from his earlier classic Bread Alone by its focus on regional specialties, from the Alsatian classic pain au levain to Tuscan black olive puccia, from German laugenbrezeln or pretzels to the dark Silesian rye of the Czech Republic. The book opens with 50 pages of well-written and thorough instructions on everything from ingredients to equipment. The most helpful part is the explanation of the basic steps of any bread-making process, which serves as a primer on the procedural elements that are universal across the various European traditions. Leader, who founded the heralded Bread Alone bakery in Woodstock, N.Y., is most interested in teaching holistically, so that his readers will feel comfortable becoming apprentices and then experts themselves. One can't help imagining, however, that bread baking is best learned in the flesh. Leader advises that the only way to figure out if the dough is ready is through experience, and a hapless home baker might agree. Still, the book is an excellent primer on the best breads of Europe, and the traveler who has returned home with a longing for the Roman specialty pane di altamura might be satisfied with a mouth-watering trip down memory lane. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
After perusing the remarkable recipes in Leader's compilation of the best of Europe's artisanal breads, only the most resolutely self-controlled baker will be able to resist marching to the kitchen to reproduce one of these captivating loaves. Leader explains how to create a sourdough from airborne yeasts, and he uses that starter for many of these breads to yield superior, deep flavor and thick, crunchy crusts. Ranging from baguettes to chocolate croissants, from Italian ciabatta to dark Silesian rye, and from Czech country bread to potato pizza, these recipes give access to bread bakers' highest art. For those lacking the courage and patience to ferment a real sourdough starter, Leader offers several different shortcuts to success. Line drawings guide the novice, and full-color photographs render ideals for Leader's students to emulate. Question-and-answer sections throughout the book succinctly clarify potential problem areas. Leader's Auvergnat blue cheese rye rolls alone make this book a must for devotees of the baker's art. Knoblauch, Mark

About the Author
Daniel Leader is the founder of Woodstock, New York's legendary bakery, Bread Alone, and author of Bread Alone, which won an International Association of Culinary Professionals Cookbook Award. He lives in the Catskills.

Customer Reviews

Fabulous resource for the artisinal baker
A wonderful, extremely well-written book that should be on the bookshelf of any bread baking fanatic, or anyone who wants to delve into the world of artisinal breads. I would give it 4.5 stars, but that is not an option here.

The book focuses on breads made with starters and sourdoughs, and provides easy, step-by-step instructions to make them. Leader's book covers some of the breads of specific regions of France, Italy, Germany, Austria, Poland, and the Czech Republic. If you area looking for European breads from other regions, they are not in the book.

Overall, the recipes are clearly written. Even the most complicated recipes are very doable because Leader provides clear instructions. Novice bakers may have a bit of trouble if they stick to the recipes exactly, because anyone who bakes bread for a while will tell you that flour measurements are ESTIMATES, so be ready to add a bit more flour than called for in the recipes, especially if you live in a humid climate.

There are also some problems with typos. For example, in his recipe for Flax, Sesame, and Sunflower Rye (Dreikornbrot) pg p. 282, Leader calls for 22 CUPS of water - a pretty significant typo. There are also errors in baker's percentages. Luckily, one of the strengths of the book is that it provides measurements in US volumes, US weights, metric weights, and baker's percentages. So, I would recommend reading the recipes carefully before starting, and while you don't need a kitchen scale, it would be a great investment for anyone who is serious about bread baking. I also think that a few photos of properly kneaded bread dough would be very helpful for a future edition - the rye breads look a lot different than the semolina breads, and photos of this (and more detailed descriptions) would help.

I've made about 6 different breads from the book so far, and they have ALL been absolutely outstanding. My family raves about them, and even though I've had the book for only a few months, it's already looking pretty worn. I highly recommend this book, and hold back on a full 5 stars is because it could use a few more photos, and needs some more careful editing of the amounts and baker's percentages.

Good book; Very poor editing
This is a book that I have mixed feelings about. If you are comfortable working with weights, understand the concepts of dough hydration, and are prepared to think while you bake then it is a keeper. Unfortunately, the recipes read as though they were rushed and, overall, the book suffers from very poor editing. There are numerous errors in the listed recipes. Ingredients are given in terms of weight (g), weight (oz), volume (cups/tbsp/tsp), and baker's percentage. In practice, however, you can only trust the metric weights as conversions to the others are haphazard and often completely nonsense. Similarly, you cannot always expect the weights/volumes/% listed in the tables to agree with that listed in the written instructions. The latter are clearly coppied and pasted between different recipes with a frustrating lack of care. My copy is now inscribed with more margin notes and corrections than any other cookbook I own. The low score reflects my belief that, more than the average cookbook, baking recipies need to be accurate as there is little margin for error.

Despite the above reservations, if you are capable of working around the editing issues, the resulting breads are excellent. The author is clearly knowledgable and enthusiastic about bread; I just wish he and the publisher were more careful in copy editing the book. I have shared a few (corrected) recipes from this book with friends, but I wouldn't recommend they purchase it themselves.

One of my favorite bread books!
I love this book, I've made a few breads from this book, and they all came out great! (with minor flaws because of my inexperience)
What I really like is the care with which the book is written:

-it's very easy to understand for someone who never made bread before (like me), and written with almost motherly care meant to explain the process to the last detail without over-complicating it.

-great photos that include levains-so that if you never made levain before you can see what they look like when they're done. Also, sometimes it's difficult for me to select a bread based on the name of the recipe since I have no idea what the finished result would look like, so I select breads from the photos, and each bread photo has its name and a page # for the recipe which makes it so easy to find.

-finally I love many FAQ's that he has through out the book to help understand common questions that bakers have through all stages of bread making, including questions about what went wrong, why and how it can be fixed or avoided in the future.

love it!