The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book: A Guide to Whole-Grain Breadmaking - Books

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Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
The Laurel’s Kitchen Bread Book is the classic bestselling cookbook devoted to baking light, healthful, delicious bread entirely from whole grains. This specially updated edition includes an entirely new chapter on making excellent whole-grain loaves in a bread machine. Now even the busiest among us can bake the delectable loaves for which Laurel’s Kitchen is famous.

New research proves what we’ve known all along: Eating whole grains really is better for your health! Here, the switch from “white” is made fun and easy.

Like a good friend, the “Loaf for Learning” tutorial guides you step-by-step through the baking process. You’ll make perfect loaves every time, right from the start.

Here you’ll find recipes for everything—from chewy Flemish Desem Bread and mouthwatering Hot Cross Buns to tender Buttermilk Rolls, foolproof Pita Pockets, tangy Cheese Muffins, and luscious Banana Bread—all with clear explanations and helpful woodcut illustrations.

The brand-new chapter on bread machines teaches you to make light “electric” loaves from whole-grain flour. No matter what your schedule, you can come home to the wonderful smell of baking bread, fresh, hot, and ready to enjoy.

Customer Reviews: Read 39 more reviews...

2 out of 5 stars

Forget the Bread Machine June 23, 2008
I purchased this book because it offered a chapter on Bread Machines. Well, it does offer a chapter on bread machines. The advice? Keep a notebook and experiment. This advice I didn't need to pay for. I'm still looking for a bread machine cookbook for home-milled grains.

3 out of 5 stars

Really, this is a recommendation. No, I'm serious. Just bear with me. May 15, 2008
5 out of 6 found this review helpful

I... ay-yay-yai. How can you be into bread baking and not own this book -- and yet, how much of it can you put up with?

The recipes are fine. The "Loaf for Learning" is a critical introduction to yeast baking with whole grains, and you should go through it before you tackle anything else in the book. It's nicely illustrated (even without photographs), with an 8-page FAQ on troubleshooting. There's plenty of good recipes for anyone who has a taste for whole grains, including an extensive section on rye breads. There's plenty of information on bread machines, and the centerpiece of the book -- the Flemish desem bread -- is worked out in just as great detail as the Loaf for Learning. Certainly if you have an interest in whole-grain baking, or bread in general, this (along with the King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking book) ought to be in your library. But...

Truthfully, the book is spoiled for me by the invocation of raw food guru Hy Lerner and macrobiotics huckster Michio Kushi as nutritional experts, as well as the rather radical anti-processed-anything attitude (Lerner may be a great baker, but the raw food movement is scientifically wrong about most of its beliefs). This book comes from the post-hippie back-to-nature movement of the 1970s, when close to 100 years of Western vegetarianism coalesced with the ascetic eco-consciousness of Frances Moore Lappe's Diet for a Small Planet. While this led to the adoption even by the American mainstream of once-exotic items such as miso and pita bread, it also led to a strong presumption that natural, in any of its forms, is better than synthetic. Rather than adopt a non-judgemental approach advising moderation in everything, Robertson et al. become evangelical about it, essentially treating refined foods as poison.

Furthermore, her centerpiece recipe, the Desem starter, is highly impractical for most bakers -- access to freshly ground organic whole-wheat flour is unreliable at best for most people, as most people simply don't own flour mills or have easy access to multiple varieties of flour-grade wheat, and grinding ten pounds of flour for the sole purpose of storing a ball of levain is extraordinarily wasteful. Whether a Desem could be started by inoculating flour with a couple of tablespoons of a liquid starter, thereby short-circuiting a long, resource-intensive, and weirdly ritualistic process, is never discussed.

So, if you bear all that in mind (and it is a lot to bear in mind), this book is a good one to have in your library. There aren't many others like it, and this is a must-have if only for historical reasons. But I wouldn't recommend drifting too far away from the recipes, as Robertson and coauthors drastically overplay their hand with whole grains. Yes, whole grains are, on the whole, better for you than processed, and as a whole we don't eat nearly enough of them in our diets (I'm certainly no exception in that regard). But neither the authors nor the authorities they cite are half the experts they think they are on the subject; Harold McGee and others provide much more solid nutritional data. I'm personally anticipating making the rye Vollkornbrot recipe myself.

5 out of 5 stars

Best Bread Book In Town February 8, 2008
Starts off with a basic recipe and branches off from there with variations and other types of bread. Very complete and comprehensive book for a person wishing to learn the art of bread making.

5 out of 5 stars

wow December 26, 2007
this book is everything i expected it to be and more.....i've only had it a month, but it looks like i've had it 2 years.....

4 out of 5 stars

4.5 stars for unique bread book December 9, 2007
6 out of 6 found this review helpful

This was the first bread baking book I bought after I bought my home grain mill. This book is very unique: it provides a primer for new bread bakers, is loaded with tons of recipes from old classics (French, Sourdough) to funky, cool loaves (like the orange rye that includes rose-hips, buttermilk, honey, and orange peel), and has recipes not only for yeasted loaves, but also quick breads and muffins.

My only complaints are that 1) Laurel does not always specify whether the herb ingredients are fresh or dry, so I have to guess, with unfortunate results sometimes; and 2) I always weigh my ingredients b/c I mill my own flour, which is much fluffier and more unpredictable than store bought. In this book, about 3/4 of the recipes do give both volume and weight measurements, but the other 1/4 have only volume, so I have to figure it out myself. It's a small nuisance though for an otherwise indispensable book.

I prefer the delayed-fermentation method of dough preparation as described in Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads, because the quality of my loaves is far superior using Peter's method, but I still find myself returning to Laurel's book every few loaves because her recipes are so unique and her book is loaded with recipes I can't find elsewhere.

Good Grape Wine Company