Artisan Baking - Books - Good Grape Wine Company

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Editorial Reviews:

Product Description
It’s a crunch and aroma you can savor in your mind before you even take a bite: that perfect crust and that perfect crumb you can get only in bread baked with craft and care. Artisan Baking puts that bread within reach of every home baker; even the beginner now deftly will be able to turn out sourdoughs, pizzas, corn breads, and baguettes that are truly out of this world. Step-by-step instructions explain the best professional methods, and mail-order sources for ingredients and equipment simplify the baking experience. This is a book to bake from, to learn from, to read from for the sheer pleasure of encountering the generosity of spirit of the country’s finest bakers as they share their abundant expertise.

First published five years ago to glowing praise and awards, Artisan Baking is “a rare combination of clear writing, meticulous recipes, and abundant expertise” (Fine Cooking) and the cookbook that “those who live for and on bread have been waiting for” (The New York Times). It was picked by the editor of Cookbook Digest as the one book she would choose if she could have only one bread-baking book in her life. Reprinted twice in hardcover, Artisan Baking is now, at last, in an affordable paperback format with a new, easier-to-handle trim size.

Customer Reviews: Read 7 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

The Only Bread Book You'll Ever Need... August 4, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

I have the hard back copy of this book that I purchased used; this was not available when I began making artisan breads. I think I purchased every artisan bread book out there and this is, by far, the best there is. I find that I rarely use my other bread books because the techniques and recipes in this book are so well written and produce outstanding results every time.

One tip for steaming your oven when making artisan breads from this book or any other - preheat your oven to 25 degrees higher than the recipe calls for. Place a roasting pan on the bottom shelf of your oven. Place your baking stone on the shelf where you will be baking. Have your breads ready to place in the oven, open the oven and put 1 - 2 cups of ice (depends on the baking time, use 1 cup for anything under 45 minutes) in the roasting pan, put the bread in the oven, close the oven door and reduce the heat to the baking temperature specified in the oven. This produces just the right amount of steam and you don't waste time and energy opening the oven and spritzing water in it every so often.

5 out of 5 stars

recipes from some of America's finest artisan bakeries July 21, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

This book is a treasure trove for bread lovers. I'm glad that it's still available in paperback. Maggie Glezer traveled cross-country and gathered recipes from most of the pre-eminent artisan bakeries across America. I lived for a time in Boston and I was excited to see recipes from Cambridge's Hi-Rise Bakery included. Their Boston Brown Bread (p.66) is the best I've ever tasted - not too sweet, the right balance between hearty, slightly bitter rye and tangy and sweet molasses. Also included is their yeasted Corn Bread recipe (p. 64).

Glezer also managed to get recipes from Acme Bakery in Berkeley, CA (considered one of the founders of the revival in artisan baking), Sullivan St. Bakery of New York (best known as the originator of the No-Knead Bread recipe popularized by Mark Bittman in the pages of the New York Times), and many others.

Two particularly tasty and famous breads included are Kossar's Bialys (p. 174) and Bruno's Italian Pandoro (p.161), which takes a full 33 hours to make. I made the bialys and they were very good.

5 out of 5 stars

This is the one June 5, 2008
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

Make this incredible bread book a part of your library...now...Just read it, and you will know....Love James Beard's Book--but this is where James would be now RIP!!

5 out of 5 stars

An outstanding book on baking bread April 26, 2008
6 out of 6 found this review helpful

I have been baking bread for about 7 years now and have managed to get by using recipes for quick rising bread that could be completed in one day. I managed to make bread that tasted good and looked fine, but somehow the crisp brown crust and the big air pockets that are the hallmark of artisinal bread eluded me.

I picked Maggie Glezer's book because of the reviews and I can confirm that this is an exceptional book for baking bread. I have used 10 of the recipes in her book and each time the loaves have turned out beautifully. There are many things I like about the book -- first, the measurements are exceptionally accurate -- even if the dough looks too soft or too firm or too liquid, the resulting loaf is perfect! It was a personal battle for me to not adjust the consistency to what I thought would be a more manageable dough, but I am glad I resisted, because the results were as shown in the book. A second useful piece of information in the book is how to convert an existing liquid starter into a firm starter that can be used for many of the recipes in the book. I have a few other books on baking where the authors insist on having separate starters for rye, whole grains, firm and liquid sourdough, etc., Ms. Glezer seems to understand that in some instances this may not be practical and I am much happier using my existing sourdough starter to bake the exceptional recipes in her book. (As an aside, I am cultivating the sourdough starter described in her book and the process is exactly as she describes.) Last but not least, the book offers recipes that can be completed in a day as well as a few that take almost 2 whole days, so you can pick what suits your schedule and your particular baking zeal one a given day.

Thanks to this book, I have managed to bake exceptional ciabatte that came out of the oven looking like loaves from a professional bakery -- truly crusty, truly holey, with a deep brown, crisp, flour striated crust, and delicious! This book is one of my most cherished baking resources and I cannot recommend it highly enough!

4 out of 5 stars

Good and useful December 4, 2007
7 out of 10 found this review helpful

I was new to artisan baking. I found the book to be very good, a good book for beginning baking. I did not give 5 stars because I purchased another book at the same time, Crust, from Richard Bertinet and prefer his book.
I find that Crust has better pictures detailing the steps, also I much prefer his kneading technique and he has a few recipes that I really like. So if I was to buy only one book I would get the Crust book but if I was to buy 2 I would also get this one because they compliment each other in terms of information and don't get me wrong this book is very nice. In any case, even after reading both, I still had to research the web to properly understand the difference between starters, biga, poolish, fermented dough and how yeast works.