Product Description

Co-founder of the legendary Brother Juniper’s Bakery in Sonoma, California, author of the landmark books Brother Juniper’s Bread Book and Crust & Crumb, and distinguished instructor at the world’s largest culinary school, Peter Reinhart has been a leader in America’s artisanal bread movement for over fifteen years. Never one to be content with yesterday’s baking triumph, however, Peter continues to refine his recipes and techniques in his never-ending quest for perfect bread. In THE BREAD BAKER’S APPRENTICE, Peter shares his latest bread breakthroughs, arising from his recent pilgrimage to study in several of France’s famed boulangeries and the always-enlightening time spent in the culinary academy kitchen with his students. First you’ll peer over Peter’s shoulder as he learns from Paris’s most esteemed bakers, people like the brothers Poilâne and Phillippe Gosselin, whose pain ancienne has revolutionized the art of baguette making. Peter then walks readers through the twelve steps of building great bread, his clear instructions accompanied by over 100 step-by-step photographs. Then it’s on to over 50 new master formulas for such classic breads as rustic, chewy ciabatta, hearty pain de campagna, old-school New York bagels, and the book’s Holy Grail—Peter’s version of the famed pain ancienne. En route, Peter distills hard science, advanced techniques, and food history down into a remarkably accessible and engaging resource that is as rich and multitextured as the loaves you’ll turn out. This is original food writing at it most captivating, teaching at its most inspired and inspiring—and the rewards are some of the best breads under the sun.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #879 in Books
• Published on: 2001-11-14
• Released on: 2001-11-14
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 320 pages

Amazon.com Review
"A bread baker, like any true artisan or craftsman, must have the power to control outcomes," says Peter Reinhart, author of The Bread Baker's Apprentice. "Mastery comes with practice." As in many arts, you must know and understand the rules before you can break them. Reinhart encourages you to learn the science of bread making, but to never forget that vision and experimentation, not formulas, make transcendent loaves. The Bread Baker's Apprentice is broken into three sections. The first is an amusing tale of Reinhart's visit to France and his discovery of pain à l'ancienne, a cold-fermented baguette. The second section comprises a tutorial of bread-making basics and Reinhart's "Twelve Stages of Bread." And finally, the recipes: Ciabatta, Pane Siciliano, Potato Rosemary Bread, New York Deli Rye, Kaiser Rolls, and Brioche, to name a few. All recipes include bread profiles and ingredient percentages. Reimagined for modern bakers, these mouthwatering classic recipes are bound to inspire. --Dana Van Nest

From Library Journal
Author of the well-respected Brother Juniper's Bread Book and Crust & Crumb, baker-turned-culinary instructor Reinhart draws on his baking and teaching experience to provide an authoritative but unintimidating guide to baking professional-quality loaves of all sorts. He begins with an account of a recent tour of specialty bakeries in Paris, including Gosselin, where he learned to make the young baker's unique pain l'ancienne which, Reinhart says, would be better called pain moderne, as it uses a modern invention (the refrigerator) to produce a "cold-dough delayed-fermentation" baguette, the best he has ever tasted. He found this technique revolutionary, and he includes the recipe here, along with a wide variety of other artisan and classic breads, from Ciabatta to Poilene-Style Miche to Tuscan Bread. The recipes are preceded by a 50-page primer on the "twelve stages of bread," and there are dozens of photographs, including particularly helpful ones of shaping different loaves. Valuable for both the professional and the novice, this is highly recommended for all baking collections.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
The staff of life, homemade bread satisfies many a craving. In The Bread Baker's Apprentice, Peter Reinhart, noted bakery operator and author, has written a thorough, well-organized, and helpful introduction to bread baking that nearly everyone can profit from. Classifying the types of breads and presenting ingredients in tables helps the baker understand relationships and commonalities among seemingly dissimilar breads. Reinhart covers only yeast breads except for a single recipe for a triumphal cornbread full of fresh corn and topped with bacon. If a cook can do the math, Reinhart's tables of bakers' "percentages" allow for adjusting the recipes to any model bread machine, and the truly expert may use the numbers to create wholly new breads. A bibliography, a directory of ingredient sources, and a comprehensive list of bread-baking Web sites make this book a fount of practical, valuable baking lore. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Customer Reviews

Work hard and reap the benefits
I bought this book after carefully researching it, trying to decide if it would be a book I would use or a book that would sit on my shelf and collect dust. The recipes in this book look more time-consuming than those found in my other bread books, and I finally decided that, based on other reviews of this book, it was worth a shot.

Almost all of the recipes in this book require more than one day to make; the author bases a great many of his recipes on some form of starter, whether it's a stiff dough or a liquid sourdough starter. He asserts that this style of baking brings out the most flavor in the flour. He's right. The recipes I have tried [so far] in this book do indeed have a better and stronger flavor, in spite if the fact that the base ingredients are the same as that of other recipes in other books.

The author does more than provide a bunch of good recipes (he refers to them as "formulas"). He describes the chemistry behind the ingredients and how they react to one another when mixed. He also shows, with photographs, many different shaping methods and intermediate steps that are required in making bread dough.

The author writes the techniques and recipes in this book like a man who has a deep interest in the subject, not just a desire to crank out another cookbook. He demonstrates, through his discussion in the book, his deep understanding of the art of breadmaking. For this man, bread making is a joy and a pleasure, not just a profession. When reading this book, the reader gets pulled along into the excitement the author has for his topic, which makes the process of breadmaking even more pleasurable.

This book is not for the lazy baker. If you want to make breads that are fast and easy, look for other titles. But if you want outstanding breads, and you're willing to work for it and be patient, then this book is a superb choice.

An extraordinary book
This is an expensive book worth every penny. Reinhart will show you how to bake bread even if you've never baked anything that didn't come out of a can and if you are an experienced baker, Reinhart will strengthen your understanding of how bread is made.

His explanation of the science of how bread is mixed, baked and even tasted is definitive and clearly written. The section on shaping dough is aptly photographed and understandable. It is, by far, the clearest description of shaping dough found in the current crop of baking books.

The bulk of the book consists of recipes, more accurately, formulas, for baking various kinds of bread. I've tried only two of them so far and both came out excellent. And one of the things that makes this book so helpful is that if your bread doesn't come out excellent you'll learn why it didn't and what to do about it.

This book amplifies Reinhart's previous book, Crust and Crumb, and like that book the formulas will help you bake the best bread you've ever made. And the theory will help you to create your own signature variations.

This is a priceless book and it is also a definite classic. If you don't bake, buy it for someone who does.

Good book
This is a beautiful book and addresses the science of bread making and the chemical processes that occur during it in an in-depth fashion. The question then becomes, why don't I use this book more? I bake bread weekly and, although I have made several of the recipes in this book, I usually find myself turning to other books, where the recipes are clearer and quicker.

Most of the recipes in this book require 2 days to make. The selections are beautiful and tasty, but seem more like breads for special occassions, rather than the everyday fare I'm usually looking for. If you're thinking about getting into the business of breadmaking, I'd certainly recommend buying this book. If, however, you just bake for your family, I think you can find more affordable books that will give you extremely good recipes.

Check out "The Garden Way Bread book" if you want a more eclectic book with very tasty recipes.