Bread Made Easy: A Baker's First Bread Book

For almost 30 years, Beth Hensperger has researched baking traditions, both ancient and modern and from all over the world. In this book, she applies her wealth of knowledge to demystifying what many feel is this most intimidating of kitchen crafts - baking the perfect loaf of bread. This is an easy-to-follow, step-by-step manual, which novices should find easy to go through the basics and quickly learn to bake eight different breads, including white, whole-wheat and flat bread.

If you bake, but making bread intimidates you, Beth Hensperger's Bread Made Easy is the perfect choice for expanding your skills. It gives all the basics a beginner needs about technique, equipment, and ingredients, in the clearest, most reassuring way.

Hensperger certainly knows about baking bread--this is her eighth book on the subject. This time, she starts with "Baking School," a comprehensive section covering what pans to use, why bottled water is best, and how to use various kinds of yeast. She describes 12 types of wheat flour as well as flour made from 8 other grains. Then Hensperger explains proper techniques for kneading, rising, and forming loaves, including more than 65 color photos. The eight master recipes start beginners off making a simple unkneaded Batter Bread, then go on to progressively more demanding white bread, egg doughs, whole wheat bread, flatbread, rustic country loaves, and yeasted coffee cakes. Each recipe is broken into five key steps, including cooling and storage. To encourage you, Hensperger gives variations on each master recipe, suggesting you make them all before moving on to the next type of bread. Progressing from challah to a cinnamon-sugar-filled egg-dough spiral loaf, hamburger buns, elegantly twisted dinner rolls, and a flat, foccacia-like Stuffed Onion Pretzel topped with poppy seeds makes this a rewarding exercise. Anyone who bakes will appreciate the clear, easy-to-use format of this book, and find it a reasonably complete and compact reference work as well as a source for seemingly foolproof recipes. --Dana Jacobi