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| Crust & Crumb: Master Formulas for Serious Bread Bakers | 
 enlarge | Author: Peter Reinhart
Publisher: Ten Speed Press
Category: Book
List Price: $19.95
Buy New: $12.89
You Save: $7.06 (35%)
New (29) Used (9) from $9.52
Avg. Customer Rating:  42 reviews
Sales Rank: 4682
Media: Paperback
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 209
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 9.7 x 7.8 x 0.9
ISBN: 1580088023
Dewey Decimal Number: 641
EAN: 9781580088022
ASIN: 1580088023
Publication Date: August 2006
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New, Perfect Condition, Please allow 4-14 business days for delivery. 100% Money Back Guarantee, Over 1,000,000 customers served.
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| Customer Reviews:
 The real thing, for the passionate who want to get it right April 3, 2008
This book is what I've been looking for for 15 years, with the level of depth and detail that I wanted. I have a bread machine and love it for what it does, but real rustic breads and sourdough are a special thing.
The use of natural yeasts and the slow rise method is actually less work in my opinion because you don't have to hover. Something can go 3,4,5 hours or all day before having to mess with it, and just sticking something in the refrigerator overnight is no biggie. The slow rise makes the whole process more forgiving.
I have varied the process somewhat, I don't shape the loaves and leave them overnight in the fridge because the outside gets too dry. I just do shaping the day of baking and let it do the final rise, and its a lot easier to just let a blob of dough rise in a container than to spread out things on sheets and take up space. That's just me.
It isn't unnecessarily complex but it is a re-framing of the process, and the results show. If you love rustic breads this is the real deal.
Great Homebaking Book March 27, 2008
I am not an expert baker by ANY stretch of the imagination. I have Peter Reinhart's other 2 books - The Bread Baker's Apprentice and American Pie - and have had such success with his recipes that I had to get this book. I was a little nervous about some of the comments about the complexity of the recipes but I have to disagree now that I have purchased the book and used the recipes. I like the fact that Mr. Reinhart does talk beyond a simple recipe so that you can begin to make some modifications and customize your bread, make it your own. I have made some fabulous bread with his recipes - including the Multigrain which I made last night. Let me tell you - I have made some AWFUL multigrain bread in my lifetime! With Mr. Reinhart at my elbow, I made some smashing bread last night! I had frozen some biga - as he had suggested - took it out to thaw, and began making the bread right before starting dinner. Yes, it was a very late night, but in the end I had a beautiful, very tasty loaf of multigrain bread. And I even made a hasty modification to the multigrain addition because I did not want to mess with putting grains together. Great book, great addition to one's book collection, and a terrific learning tool for bread making!
 Not bad but...... February 15, 2008
I purchased this book because I wanted a recipe for a stater for a type of bread that I wanted to make. Being new at making bread I was not familiar with terms of the different starters. It did give me the starter that I needed. But other than that I found the book really dull to look at and to read through. On the other hand I also bought a book called The Italain Baker by Carol Field and this the book that is worth buying.
I am sure that the Crust nd Crumb has it's good points but when you read it they do not give you mixing instructions that you can use with your standing mixer. Also, I would like to have seen the finish product shown in the book, I would have known what I was making in the end. Not all breads are alike. I found that the book is boring to go through.
Like a guitarist's fake book, but for bread. Mmmm, bread. January 11, 2008
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Beard On Bread? Too opinionated. The Bread Bible? Too expensive. Baking Illustrated? Too general. Breads from the La Brea Bakery? Too specific. And let's just not even get into any number of bread machine-specific books -- how someone can manage to stretch out a few different variations on included ingredients into one monotonous book with many recipes but little substance still floors me.
Bread's a fairly complex subject -- only beer is older as a subject of culinary research, and the two were intimately intertwined until not very long ago -- and before the advent of scientific baking, people could study the subject for years in order to get it right. Despite a little terminological weirdness ("barm" instead of "starter" or "natural leaven" betrays the author's training under an English baker), Crust and Crumb means to streamline the process by bringing the author's expertise in his role as an instructor at Johnson and Wales University to the common cookbook reader in a concise, cheap, yet resolutely interesting format. The recipes it provides attempt to scale the techniques used for commercial artisan bread baking down to the home kitchen, and in the process forces a bit of rethinking of the process. This is indeed, as the subtitle says, for the "serious bread bakers"; his bulk starters will not appeal to the hit-and-run baker, but do provide a firm foundation for anyone who has a lot of bread to make, either as training for a future job, a round of gift giving, or just feeding a crowd. This book is hardly unique, but coming from an author known for highly decorated, lavishly photographed books in a genre of cookbook known for high prices and puffery, Crust and Crumb provides a just-the-facts approach for an affordable price.
When I first got on my bread kick after getting the idea to try to duplicate ancient Egyptian bread, I spent a lot of time looking at bread books, and I think I overlooked this one because of its somewhat foofy title. It was a mistake -- while many of Reinhart's books are rather expensive, this one most definitely isn't, and if you want a general book on bread making, this is a good place to start. (You can move on to Nancy Silverton and Wing and Scott later, once you've got the basics down.) Just remember, though -- you will have a lot of bread on your hands if you follow these recipes, so if you don't have a big family, line up a few bread-loving friends for some freebies.
Simnply outstanding December 28, 2007
First, nobody in America is probably more qualified to write about breadmaking and doughs than peter Reinhart. He is the acknowledged master who has real-world experience, classroom experience at Jonson & Wales -- Emeil LaGasse's culinary college). Second, nobody can make it clearer and easier to understand. His ability to be motivating and yet so lucid at the same time will make any reader smile. The documentation is thorough, precise and well communicated and the photos are so good they will make you hungry. His selection of the elements and their sequence will leave you an expert -- and a happy one. He is the Man and this is the Book that started it all. The book does not grow old.
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