Good Grape Wine Company

This book will serve well for a beginner, an amature hobbiest or as a tool for the most demanding professional baker.

Hats off to my esteemed colleagues


Wonderful book, wonderful resource   March 9, 2000
 38 out of 38 found this review helpful

Dan Wing and Alan Scott have answered all the questions I have ever asked about bread and ovens, and then some. After baking regular yeasted bread for years, I learned to make small, wood-fired ovens out of mud, and started making naturally leavened breads. In the process, I stumbled onto some of the "secrets" of good bread, for which I was very happy. For people who don't want to spend years stumbling, however, The Bread Builders is a thorough, authoritative, and inspiring door into the hows and whys of really good bread. For people who already know the "secrets," it's an absolutely brilliant explanation and exploration of what makes good bread (part of which is, of course, the oven).

If you want to understand the principles of what you're doing, this is it. And if you want to build a commercial quality oven for baking your own bread, here are plans and detailed instructions. I have had the pleasure of meeting, and learning a little about ovens from Alan Scott. I am very happy that now, in addition to having a master baker on my bookshelf, I also have a master oven builder as well. Thank you both very much.


you can now make bread better than what you had in france   February 19, 2000
 36 out of 36 found this review helpful

this book teaches you how to bake the best bread you've ever ever had. and it's surprisingly easy.i've been making bread on the weekends and such for about 15 years now, ever since i saw a recipe for batter bread in an old joy of cooking. but although i'd tried many recipes and supposed "tips and tricks," i couldn't get a tasty or really beautiful european-style country loaf.so i would go to gourmet shops and spend US$5-7 a loaf and think,"o if i only had the fancy steam oven, the expensive mixer, then...."but daniel wing shows you how anybody with the most simple equipment can make incredible bread. although a lot of the book is devoted to building a brick oven, he explains how you can get that brick-oven effect with a regular home oven for only $50 with a special baking dish called "la cloche."if you've made a lot of bread, or read many recipes, you have certain ideas about"how bread should be made." it turns out a lot of the conventional wisdom is wrong! daniel wing includes a lot interesting scientific information that proves why his methods are superior to the conventional wisdom. following his methods gave me unbelievable results: crusty, tasty, made-in-a-french-village bread. i'll never go back to my old way of breadmaking. the best part -- the methods in this book are actually less work than the supposed "rapid" methods you find elsewhere.


Le pain sous toutes ses formes   February 18, 2000
 12 out of 19 found this review helpful

"The bread builders" est un magnifique livre, qui fournit toutes les informations scientifiques ou pratiques que tout amateur de pain aimerait trouver. En plus le livre comporte une partie tout aussi passionnante sur la construction des fours a pain. Sans oublier les bonnes adresses de boulangerie dont le Cheese Board de Berkeley que j'ai personnellement teste et que je vous recommande! Et non, il n'y a pas qu'en France qu'on apprecie le bon pain. Une bonne claque aux idees recues!