The title says a lot. This is one of those solid tomes that many people put in their top five bread books. You probably will too.

---

Product Description

The new baking masterwork from the author of The Cake Bible and The Pie and Pastry Bible.

The Bread Bible gives bread bakers 150 of the meticulous, foolproof recipes that are Rose Levy Beranbaum's trademark. Her knowledge of the chemistry of baking, the accessibility of her recipes, and the incomparable taste of her creations make this book invaluable for home cooks and professional bakers alike.

Recipes include bread made with yeast starters, quick breads, flatbreads, brioche, and much more. From ciabatta, semolina, rye, and sourdough breads to bagels, biscuits, crumpets, and pizza dough, The Bread Bible covers all the baking bases.

"Understanding" and "Pointers for Success" sections explain in simple, readable language the importance of various techniques and ingredients demonstrated in a recipe, providing a complete education in the art of baking, with thorough sections on types of flour, equipment, and other essentials. Easy-to-use ingredient tables provide both volume and weight, for surefire recipes that work perfectly every time. 225 line drawings and 32 pages of color illustrations.

---

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #7665 in Books
• Published on: 2003-10-17
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 640 pages

Amazon.com Review
Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Cake Bible introduced readers to a newly illuminating baking-book approach--a precisely detailed yet accessible recipe format emphasizing baking science. The Bread Bible follows the same plan, offering 150 recipes, arranged by type, for a great variety of baked goods--from muffins, popovers, and English muffins to sandwich loaves, focaccia, rolls, hearth breads, rye bread, challah, and more, with a particularly vivid (and passionate) stop at sourdough loaves. Instruction is abetted by 32 pages of photos plus 300 step-by-step illustrations that depict, for example, bagel forming, in exact, imitable detail. In addition, an introductory section, "The Ten Essential Steps of Making Bread," includes a particularly lucid discussion on the way yeast works plus an invaluable comparison of kneading methods. Like the book's final look at ingredients, these "mini-texts" provide information uncommon to most home bread books, rendered in simple language that allays fears of putting one's hand in the dough.

All this is impressive indeed, and readers bitten by the bread-baking bug will welcome the ultra-thorough Beranbaum approach. The less committed may find her technical demands too painstaking (her baguette recipe requires two starters, for example; though simpler loaves are, of course, offered) or even impractical (ingredient quantities using grams are sometimes given in minute fractions, requiring a special scale). The frequent inclusion of alternate mixing methods and equipment options can also make the formulas unwieldy. On the other hand, features like Pointers for Success and Understanding often yield exciting discovery as well as rewarding results. In short, this Beranbaum bible answers virtually every bread-making question, as well as providing exemplary formulas. It's the real deal for those willing to bake along with Rose. --Arthur Boehm

From Publishers Weekly
As in her seminal The Cake Bible, which won an IACP prize, Beranbaum doesn't just offer recipes here; she dissects them, explains how they work, then puts them back together again with a number of variations. The front matter to what Beranbaum terms her "bread biography" contains perhaps the best explanation anywhere of how yeast works and a description of the sponge method used for almost every yeast-risen bread. Each recipe also includes a "Rose ratio," which shows at a glance the percentage of water, yeast, flour and fat in each bread. The author's discussion of the pros and cons of various kneading methods (bread machine, by hand, etc.) is invaluable. After all this information, bakers will be eager to get to the recipes, which are equally rewarding. Beranbaum covers everything from a Chocolate Bread made with cocoa nibs to a Traditional Challah. Recipes are arranged by type of bread, with groups including sandwich loaves and dinner rolls and brioche breads. A chapter on artisanal hearth breads includes Heart of Wheat Bread, with wheat germ for extra crunch, and New Zealand Almond and Fig Bread with an apricot glaze. Every time Beranbaum seems about to go overboard with too much information, she steps back from the brink, as in the excellent introduction to sourdough, where she thoroughly explains how sourdough works, then provides a simple box with eight rules for making a starter. Beranbaum could have a second career as a scientist, but luckily for home bakers she seems intent on creating a library of seminal cookbooks instead.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review
A quotation that I apparently utter with the repetitiveness of a mantra is Escoffier's declaration that 'The art of cookery is the constant expression of the present.' Trust Rose to understand this fully, as she uninterruptedly demonstrates with constant pitch-perfect responses to the craving for technical know-how of today's younger generations. . . .The years this oeuvre has taken, the author concludes, she now looks back on as a humbling as well as an elevating experience, 'opening the way for a lifetime of continued discovery,' a path that readers, taking her hand, can follow too, to the end of their bread enlightened days. (Michael Batterberry, founding editor of Food Arts and Food & Wine magazines )

A scholarly addition to the art of bread making. -- Seattle Times, 26 November 2003

An amazing amount of useful information with many great and trustworthy recipes....this book is heavenly, just as the title promises. -- Peter Reinhart, author of The Bread Baker's Apprentice

Covers crumpets to kugelhopf in this meticulously researched tome. -- Newsweek, 17 November 2003

Every book by Rose Levy Beranbaum is a highly anticipated event but this one is particularly close to my heart. The Bread Bible brings together an amazing amount of useful information with many many great and trustworthy recipes--you can always count on a recipe by Rose, and her attention to every detail. For a baker like me, this book is heavenly, just as the title promises. (Peter Reinhart, author of The Bread Baker's Apprentice )

Rose will not only walk you through a recipe, she will hold your hand all the way. She is the ultimate perfectionist and we readers are the beneficiaries. We can always count on her to create recipes that not only work flawlessly, but taste out of this world. Way to go, Rose! (Maggie Glezer, author of Artisan Baking Across America )

Rose, of course, is the reigning Goddess with regards to the definitive word on all things pertaining to pastries and cakes. But now she has decided to clear away all misunderstandings by giving us The Bread Bible. My question is, "When are we going to have a 'Rose Levy Beranbaum National Holiday'?"
(Charlie Trotter )

The world of bread baking has been a secret society for 5000 years. Not any more. This book explains bread in all its historical, gastronomic, chewy, crusty, glorious detail. Of course, it took Rose to do it. This is the bread book. (Bill Yosses, pastry chef, New York City )

This is the bread book. -- Bill Yosses, pastry chef, New York City

This is a book that has left no questions about how to make and bake bread. The Bread Bible belongs in every baker's kitchen. (Marion Cunningham, author of The Fannie Farmer Cookbook )

This is a book that has left no questions about how to make and bake bread....belongs in every baker's kitchen. -- Marion Cunningham, author of The Fannie Farmer Cookbook

---

Customer Reviews

Rose has done it again... created a classic, that is
Cookbook author/humorist Ann Hodgman once wrote, of Rose Levy Berenbaum's masterpiece The Cake Bible, that perhaps The Gideons should leave this "bible" in hotel bedrooms instead of that other, better-known one. Hodgman has a point. I have baked extensively from both of Berenbaum's previous "bibles," on cake and on pastry, and have yet to come up with a dud.

Since we're talking about bibles here, clearly Berenbaum finds that God is in the details. She gives clear, concise explanations of the "whys" of baking without ever getting tedious. I have been baking regularly for nearly thirty years, and yet in my first read-through of The Bread Bible, I learned at least a dozen facts that I hadn't previously known, and yet made perfect sense. For example, the inclusion of Wondra bleached, granulated flour (not a typical staple among serious bakers) in her Butter Popovers eliminate the resting period that the batter typically must undergo before baking.

Her books also inspire: A round, Gruyere-spiked cheese bread baked in a souffle dish--which Berenbaum whimsically names, "The Stud Muffin"--will send me out today on a quick trip for a couple of necessary, missing ingredients.

Berenbaum's recipes run the gamut from simple "quick" breads to more time-consuming (but hardly more difficult) artisanal loaves. She also provides sources for ingredients and equipment. This tome, with its gorgeous photographs and numerous line drawings, might intimidate some fledgling bakers, but don't let it! If it does, I suggest The King Arthur Flour's Baker's Companion. However, true breadheads are justified in wanting both.

Rose Levy Berenbaum's passion both for detail and for routinely spectacular results reminds me of Maida Heatter, whose equally comprehensive and delightful baking books inspired beginning bakers like me more than twenty years ago. Heatter's books have withstood the test of time. I'm sure Berenbaum's Bread Bible will become as annotated and batter-spattered as Heatter's books are in my kitchen. There's no higher praise than that!

CORRECTION FROM THE AUTHOR
Re the rye bread, on page 326, step 2, delete the words 'rye flour.' (the rye flour is used only in the sponge on page 325.) Also, on the chart for the flour mixture, the 2 1/4 cups of bread flour weigh 12.3 ounces.
Hope you are enjoying the recipes. If you haven't used the instant yeast before, you're going to love the ease and reliability of adding it directly to the flour!
Best bread baking,
Rose Levy Beranbaum

A new and improved update after my first (3-star) review
Okay, so I did break down and buy this book after vowing not to, and would change my review to 4 stars if I could. I'm glad I purchased, but as I said before, it's not a book for the beginning baker (or the impatient!). It does contain a wealth of technical information and very specific start-to-finish instructions for each recipe, which to a more advanced bread baker might sound oxymoronic but actually is not. I believe Beranbaum wants us to achieve optimal results from our efforts, thus the great detail in her instructions. Just be sure to read your recipes through thoroughly before starting, as her directions, although detailed, do tend to be confusing, especially when it comes to adding ingredients. I have had great success and compliments from several of these recipes, among them being the raisin pecan bread, the Tyrolean ten-grain torpedo, and the olive bread. Even I have not had the patience to attempt the very involved sour recipes (yet!), but am looking forward to trying them.

Here is my old, 3-star review:

I rarely feel the need to review, but having tried two recipes in this book, and feeling misled at some point in both, I feel a warning is in order.

First, let me say that I am quite an avid bread baker, and that this book, while chock-full of technical information, is definitely not for the neophyte, unless he or she is just interested in the science of breadmaking. Next, let me be specific about my complaints. Although I read a recipe through before I attempt it, I don't tend to memorize it; I just get an idea of the steps involved, decide if it's worth the effort, and go from there. My problems in the recipes both involved ingredients being mentioned in a list, and then the author not being specific enough about when they were to be added. To wit: in the "Heart of Wheat Bread" recipe, she lists salt as one of the ingredients in the "flour mixture." Below that, she says to combine the ingredients for the flour mixture and add to the sponge (in bold print). Only several sentences farther down on the page did I notice that the salt wasn't supposed to be added until four hours later. I don't know how much of an effect this had on the finished product (which was good but not great, considering the effort), but I feel she should have been more specific. I encountered almost exactly the same problem when I made the "Touch-of-Grace Biscuits," where self-rising and regular flour are both in the ingredients list (although not one right after the other), but again she is not specific in her directions; she simply instructs you to whisk together the flour, etc., etc. I included both types of flour and then discovered on the next page that the second amount was supposed to be used to shape the biscuits, not added to the dough. Again, the recipe came out okay, but I was disappointed that the directions hadn't been clearer.

As a result, this book, which I had seriously considered buying for my collection, will be returned to the library and probably not renewed. There are plenty of more comprehensively-written bread books out there, and I don't need the aggravation of this one! I only gave it three stars for the technical information, and I completely agree with another reviewer about the fact that having to have so many specific types of flours, pans, etc., on the shelves in your home to use this book properly will be a big turn-off for all but the most dedicated bread bakers.