January 9, 2008 - 12:18pm
The Bread Builders
Anyone have this book? Comments?
I have so many bread books and not so much "dough" so I would like all my purchases to be valuable to me.
It got some negative reviews with low ratings on amazon, then there were a bunch of 5-star ratings, but all the reviewers giving five stars either had only one review, or in the few cases where they had more than one review, all their reviews were 5-star. So it was hard for me to get a sense of how the book is.
So if you've got this book, any advice appreciated! :)
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Fascinating book. Tons of information if you have any thought of building a brick oven or starting a bakery business. Deep explaination of the sourdough cycle (although not quite as easy to understand as the authors think) - the appendix that has the interview with the German sourdough scientist is great info. Deep thoughts on the philosophy of life and bread.
If you are thinking about building a brick oven no question: buy it. If you want some deep reading on bread and life, it is a good book. However there are others I would recommend first for a beginner or someone building their recipe library.
sPh
Ditto to sphealey's comment. I do think there is some great info on bread that is not presented elsewhere but I'd check it out of the library first if you already have a bunch of other books. You should be able to find a used copy fairly easily. Abe books has some for under $30. I do like the way he presents his routine of baking but that is a pretty small part of the book. His info and history on bread/flour is similar to what many others have presented.
As a side note...I just received Leader's new book for Christmas and am very happy with it. I like how he presents his information and the tables for the ingredients are easy to use. I really like the sections he breaks his bread up into.
Now that I own both I'd describe Leader's as a bread book and the bread builders as more of an oven book.
If I had to toss all but 5 of my cookbooks, I would include this book. It is not a recipe book, but the information on sourdough is far and away the most useful and in-depth of any book I have read. The brick oven stuff is inspiring and I have dreams of actually needing to know where I need fire brick and where regular red brick will suffice. The most inspirational part for me was the descriptions of small (2-5 person bread businesses). The most interesting was the Q&A with a sourdough microbiologist in the back. It is an amazing advanced reference for building a brick oven and natural leavens. It is not a book of recipes. I would agree that getting it from a library or spending an afternoon in one of those chain bookstores with a coffee shop and giving it a good read would be a good idea before purchasing it.
edit: Amazon has it in paperback for $23.
Very good book. Makes me dream of a nice woodfired oven in the back yard...
-Chad
Thanks so much for your helpful replies! I think I should get it now! Sold!
Even though it's not in the cards in the near future, I too have fantasies of eventually having a wood fired oven, and the hubby has said we'll build one some time. :) I was wondering if the book had other interesting info on natural yeasts and sourdoughs, so sounds like there's some info there I may not have picked up from other books.
TRK, now I'm curious what 5 you would keep!
Now that is a hard question. Off the top of my head: Bread Builders, Bread Baker's Apprentice, Cook's Illustrated's New Best Recipe, Essentials of Asian Cuisine by Corinne Trang, The New Book of Middle Eastern Food by Claudia Roden.
I think.
I too have dreams of building a masonry oven but after reading Kiko Denzer's book "Build Your Own Earth Oven" I'm going to build a cob oven. Simpler, cheaper, greener and I can do it now (well, maybe not now in the middle of winter). As an aside his book as some good basic sourdough info as well. Maybe I'll build a masonry one in the future but I figure I'll learn plenty with the cob oven and if I need a biger one I can just build a second!
I'm thinking about a cob oven as well. If you're interested, take a look at what these women are doing! www.mudgirls.ca
I'm going to try and find Denzer's book in the Library and maybe The Bread Builders too. I've had bread from a very elaborate forno in an acquaintance's backyard, but the costs of building something similar would be huge. I'm looking for something simpler and lately the idea of a cob oven seems more realistic.
I hope, if you do build one, that you'll share the process on this site!
Dear Buns,
I spent four years working in a chain pizza parlor where we made our own dough and rolled it out with a dough sheeter daily. I baked bread at home for 20 years, even though I am no artisan. My fire was lit many years ago with a Sunset magazine article on how to build an adobe oven. Since then I have read Denzer, Scott/Wing, perused www.villagok.com and www.ovencrafters.com and www.traditionaloven.com . I recently ran across an amazing tool called a bricky tool, you can google it but I think it is just www.brickytool.com This tool gives me the confidence to attempt a brick oven since it reduces the "art of bricklaying" to assembly line precision for a novice like me. It takes the cost of brick construction and reduces it by 80% (the labor) and leaves the 20% material costs. I plan to start my oven project in May 09. Der Hinterhof Ofen-- translated backyard oven.
ccm