I recently purchased Hamelman's book and am still reading through it.  I was excited to buy it based on the overwhelmingly positives reviews I read on Amazon.  I was particularly interested in finding a book that had more German-style Ryes, and this one seemed to be the best option.  My problem with the book is that it seems a tad on the technical side and a little light on the recipe instruction side, not to mention a lack of photos of finished breads.  I only recently got into bread baking and my first book was Dan Leader's Local Breads.  Maybe I'm just spoiled by Dan's interesting personal stories, but I have found his explanations much more straight-forward and easier to follow than Hammelman's.  I do realize now there are quite a few errors in Leader's book, but that not-withstanding, it has helped me produce some really good bread and made me excited to learn more.  I really want to like Hamelman's book, but his formulas are confusing to me.  He only lists home baking in American measurements, whereas I've gotten used to scaling in grams using Leader's book.  What's more confusing is he doesn't specify types of flours to use.  He just puts "bread flour", which I think he uses generically for any white wheat flour.  Leader always specifies what the equivalent flour is (i.e. ap, hg, etc.).  I sort of understand from what I've learned thus far that certain white breads don't need hg flour like mixed ryes do, but it would be nice to get a little more specificity there.  I also see that Hammelman tends to mix very little and rely on folding quite a bit more.  His instructions for ciabatta for example, couldn't be any more different.  While Leader calls for long kneading at the highest speeds, Hammelman says to mix for a couple of minutes and second speed and relies on a couple of folds.  I guess I'm more inclined to trust Leader because I'm more familiar with his book and it allows the less-skilled to rely on the machine a lot more than the hands. 

Sorry for the lengthy rant.  Any thoughts?

I just received my copy of Bread Matters by Andrew Whitely through Amazon's UK site.  It has a lot of info in it about modern bread that I was unaware of (modern being the factory-produced stuff), but the info on gluten-free baking might be the most helpful info in the book for a lot of people.  He has a list of all the available ingredients that make up the bulk of g-f bread, with their pros, cons, nutritive value, how to use them, caveats, etc.  He also has a few bread recipes, pizza dough, and cakes too.  I am fortunate that I don't need to eat gluten-free bread, and I never intend to make it, but I found it interesting nonetheless.  He also has a recipe for Arkatena bread, which is a chickpea-sourdough-fermented wheat bread with fennel seeds from Cyprus that sounds intriguing. 

SOL

I have been making bread from a Barm I started Nov 2001 and refresh on a regular basis.

May 2nd my 96y.o. mother in law gave me the book "Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day" by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois.  "I" having made this Barm and over the years might have used 500 pounds of flour to keep it alive all but turned my nose up at the concept of mixing all the flour, water, salt, and yeast together at one time letting it rise THEN put it in the refrigerator over night. Now when you want to BAKE some bread you take out a pound or two depending on how muche you want to make.  You stretch the dough fold it under rotate stretch it again fold it under form a ball and set it on your peel.  THATS IT! You don't knead it pray for it or beg it to turn into bread.  After it comes to room temp in about 40 min you bake it AND EAT IT!.

CAUTION!  Here I have to give some caution.  Starting with "The Master Recipe" make sure the container that you put it in is 8qts or more in size.  Thinking that "I" knew the volume for flour, water and yeast expansion put "my" first batch in a 4qt container.  Well let me just say that it was NOT big enough.

The bread came out great each time I baked a loaf.  To get the crust that "I" wanted I increased the oven temp to 500*.

I still have and feed my Barm but along side that in a much larger container I have the makings of some very good bread.

So I wonder if anyone has any experience with this book....

 http://www.amazon.com/American-Boulangerie-Authentic-Pastries-Kitchen/dp/1579595278/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1214100223&sr=8-1

I got it from the library recently and I took to it right away.  I have not had the chance to use it yet but their starter recipe intrigues me.  I liked it so much I ordered it from Amazon today.  The starter recipe is more I guess for a levain I guess that is what you call it to make a French style miche.  It starts with just crushing 8oz. of grapes and letting them ferment for 3 or so days with nothing else then flour and such is added after the juice is strained off of the grapes.  I have failed twice with a starter so I am reluctant to try again but his one seems suspiciously simple so anyone...

Congrats to Peter Reinhart, who won the James Beard book award for his latest book, Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads.

I believe this is his second third or fourth. The Bread Baker's Apprentice and Crust & Crumb also won the James Beard awards.

In case you missed it, Peter was kind enough to do a question and answer session with Fresh Loaf community members when his book came out. He had some interesting things to say, so if you missed it, check it out.

Peter's blog has more about the awards night.

And I'm probably the only one who cares about this, but I can see that the James Beard Foundation website is running on Drupal too. :)

                                       I am very excited about this and my wife just doesn't seem to share my excitement so I thought I would post it here.  I got a hardcover copy of Maggie Gleezer's Artisian Baking book today at half price books for just $10 today.  As I said I figured some of you here would share my excitement in such a great find so I thought I would post. 

I got all the ingredients to make the Sullivan Street Potato Pizza today but didn't have time to swing by the library for a copy of the recipe.  I looked it up on this site; there's just a recipe for the dough, not the topping.  Can anyone help?  Thanks!

SOL

This book sounds very interesting, I've been searching for it on the internet over the last couple days and it appears to be out of print and copies are going for well over $100.

Does anyone have a copy of this book they are no longer using and would like to sell it? Give me a shout or respond to this post if you do, we can work something out.

thanks

Alex

aturco99@yahoo.com

I borrowed this book from the library and have enjoyed it very much.  Have done a couple of recipes from it as well.  Though not for the novice, I loved it. 

I'd like to know if anyone here has used it and what you thought. 

for those who live in uk thebookpeople.co.uk have Richard Bertinet's book and dvd " Dough " on offer for 6 pds  a steal..