Product Description

The owner and chef of L.A.'s famous and successful La Brea Bakery reveals her magical recipes, adapted for home bakers. Before the baking even begins, Silverton takes the reader through the wonder of bread alchemy, then introduces readers to a wide range of recipes which range from the whimsical to the sublime. 25 photos.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #136544 in Books
• Published on: 1996-03-05
• Released on: 1996-03-05
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 288 pages

Amazon.com
Silverton, who hails from the renowned Los Angeles bakery for which this book is named, goes back to square one in Breads for the La Brea Bakery: the yeast. While commercial yeast may work, using it doesn't really get to the essence of good bread or good bread making. Her book describes the two-week process required to create a starter the old-fashioned way. Once that is done, there are breads, pretzels, bagels, and a host of other good things to bake.

From Publishers Weekly
Bread is beautiful when it is made with time, care and honest ingredients; the same is true of cookbooks, and this is a beautiful cookbook. Silverton, a world-class pastry chef and owner of L.A.'s Campanile restaurant and La Brea Bakery, offers breadmaking instructions so meticulous that one gets the feeling she's divulging valuable trade secrets. Her breads are sourdough breads that depend on sourdough starter, a simple combination of flour and water left out where it can catch wild yeasts. Silverton explains the 14-day, once-in-a-lifetime process of creating the starter and the ongoing process of maintaining it. She then describes the starter and its variations and shows how they can be incorporated into a variety breads. Specialties include Walnut Bread, Rustic Olive-herb Bread, Chocolate Sour Cherry Bread and Red Pepper Scallion Bread. Lists of equipment and sources of supplies are included. Her beautifully designed book will appeal to dedicated cooks and perfectionists who are patient and brave enough to make mistakes along the way to breads, rolls, focaccia, pretzels, bagels, waffles and even-woof-dog biscuits.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Silverton and her husband (Mark Peel and Nancy Silverton at Home, LJ 2/15/94) are the chef/owners of Campanile restaurant and La Brea Bakery in Los Angeles. Silverton is a talented baker, both of sweets (Desserts by Nancy Silverton, HarperCollins, 1986) and savory baked goods. Here she offers the recipes for her popular breads and her extensive knowledge of bread baking. The subtitle might be "for the dedicated connoisseur" because every recipe but one relies on a basic starter that takes 14 days to get going (intended to be a one-time undertaking) and three "feedings" daily to maintain it, but ambitious bakers will certainly want to try Silverton's recipes. Others will find Amy Scherber and Toy Kim Dupree's Amy's Bread (LJ 4/15/96) a more accessible approach to the secrets of artisan baking, but the two books complement each other well, and Silverton's is another valuable addition to this growing genre. Highly recommended.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Nancy Silverton's Breads from the L Brea Bakery
Sensational book for the serious bread maker - Must have for those intrested the science behind the dough. This understanding allows for the ultimate in bread creation.

Best Sourdough book ever
My mother was given this book when I was 15, and never took a second look at it. That summer, I used the instructions in the book to make my first sourdough start and baked some of the most delicious breads I had ever tasted. Years later, it's still my favorite bread book.
I wouldnt recommend this for anyone who dosnt already know how to bake bread, but anyone who wants to learn to make better bread should definitely get this book.

A "How to" Sourdough Book
I picked up a used copy of this book in the late 1990s at Half Price Books for less than 4 dollars. I had just read the ingredients label on my store bought "sour dough" bread and discovered the sour ingredient was vinegar. This got me interested in real sourdough. Nancy was one of the featured bakers in the PBS series and companion book "Baking With Julia." The last time I checked, this series and Nancy's episodes from the series, is still available to view online at Julia Child's PBS website. If you buy the book, you may thus be able to go online and view the video of how she makes her starter and bakes some bread. Or you may wish to first view the video to see if this is something you wish to tackle.

This is just about a 100% hardcore sourdough bread baking book. The first thing you learn is how to make the starter (this takes well over a week). A starter is made by capturing air borne yeast. Once you get the starter down, this starter is used and reused by feeding and replenishing to make bread in an ongoing cycle. The breads in the book take from a day and a half to more than 3 days to make! This sounds far worse than it actually is. The bread is actually built over several days in stages by taking some starter and adding flour and water and fermenting slowly and then adding more flour and water, etc. Actual labor time is not that great. Making bread becomes a matter of scheduling.

The most important step is making your own starter. This book has great instructions and photos. I followed them as given and got a very lively starter as a result--her instructions WORK. Once you get this down, you then can tackle the breads, which start with a white, wheat, or rye starter and are built from some basic recipes.

Nancy is the real deal when it comes to sourdough including winning the San Francisco first prize award. A few years ago her bakery was sold and I have seen some La Brea breads at my local Costco.