Book Review: The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, 15th Anniversary Edition by Peter Reinhart

336 Pages
Publisher: Ten Speed Press

Cooking, Food & Wine, Bread, Cooking Methods

I have always been intimidated by making bread. I purchased a bread machine about 15 years ago when it was the in thing to do. I never liked the texture of the bread. It was either doughy or chewy and never attained the desired outcome. For years, my bread machine has been in the pantry. I take it out sometimes but am never satisfied. I began watching the Great British Baking Show and thought it did not look so hard and maybe I should try it. In the past, I have made cinnamon buns before and did not think bread would be that different.

The book is divided into several sections.
• What is it about bread?
• Deconstructing Bread: A tutorial. This section discusses the twelve states to making bread.
• Formulas (Recipes)

This is the 15th anniversary of Mr. Reinhart’s book. He shares his latest techniques and includes additional recipes that were not included in the original edition. I was very happy to find this book. It gave me confidence that I could make my own bread.

I must say this book is more like a textbook than for someone who is at home wanting to bake bread. As much as I was looking forward to reading it this book left me flat like I forgot to put in the yeast. I have been baking bread since I was a teen first with my grandmother then making pizza dough at an Italian restaurant where we made everything from scratch and then back in my own kitchen. This book actually taught me nothing, the recipes were even lacking. I will say one positive that the cover photo is well done and will get people to either open the book and hopefully though won’t buy it, maybe check it out at the library. Sorry, I tried to be positive maybe it is me.

This book made me want to bake bread every day! My loaves never looked like they belong in a cookbook or on a cooking show, but they tasted good!

This book is fantastic for those who bake and want to improve their technique. The recipes are amazing and the information that accompany the recipes are valuable for those who are trying to get just the perfect texture or rise to their breads. I marked off several recipes that I'd like to try. There's a reason that they re-released this tome for its 15th anniversary.

Now, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice is a book for those who love breads. It really helps you understand bread making. You actually feel like you are a Bread Baker’s Apprentice. There is the basics of bread making and how the entire bread making process works. I used to bake breads before but this books has explored in depth the process and has a detailed techniques. Even though the general process for all breads are the same, there are differences especially in the yeast used. This books explained each of the process and how one can know when each step is done. It explains how we can know when the dough has been kneaded properly and so on. There is also a lot of stories on the authors travels in search of bread. It was fun to read about the different bread makers and how the made bread. I don’t get many kinds of breads here because we have rice as staple diet. So we just usually get the basic sandwich breads and some other varieties. But this books showed me how, in countries like France and US how much importance each bread maker gives to the process of bread making and how much the people care about bread. It was an eye opener in the sense that I understood how important bread was in those cultures. I absolutely loved the writing style and how the book was presented. I tried out a few recipes and they turned out great. A bit of a problem I encountered with it was that I couldn’t change the recipes according to my country’s climate. Like, in the sourdough breads they require a cool climate but I felt that the author could explain the temperature influence in the bread a bit better. Like what we should do in the case of a tropical climate. So that was a bit of a downer. But otherwise I really enjoyed the book and how it presented the bread making process in great detail.