Bread Baker's Apprentice, 15th Anniversary Edition: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread [A Baking Book] Hardcover – Special Edition, 6 Sept. 2016

There really are a lot of good, professional bread making books available, nowadays and this is definitely one of them. There are a good range of bread recipes in the book, several of which come from world beating bakeries, but the book, as the title suggests, is a training manual. This is not to say that the casual reader will not get a lot of good recipes and you could ignore much of the training information if you are a half competent bread maker; but this misses the point of the book. The Bread Maker's Apprentice is a book to read, to absorb the value of what is being taught and to learn, not merely to be a better bread maker, but to make bread to a very high standard, to develop "a feel for the dough." There is plenty of good advice and training out there - Paul Hollywood can be seen on iPlayer, for instance and there are countless youtube videos on technique and demonstrations of the bread making process - all of which is good. This book begins with the preparation, from the mise en place, the putting together of all the ingredients and equipment, to the preparation of the ferment and all of the things that make good bread extraordinary before you begin to form it and put it into the oven. There is a good back story to the book, including how the author wins a competition and spends a week visiting the bakeries of Paris, encounters Poilane and discovers Pain a l'ancienne, which becomes life changing. This is a book for real bread aficionados - no pretensions here, it really is for people who love the whole panoply of what it means to make good bread by hand and bake it to perfection.

Our youngsters refer to the kitchen at home as 'the laboratory'. Of all the experimenting that goes on, the most delight is found in bread making. Peter Reinhart's informed, beautifully illustrated, well-bound (thread-sewn, hard-cover) guide combines his extensive practical experience as a bread-maker with fascinating information about the chemistry of what is taking place when one bakes bread. This is not a recipe book, although it contains a wealth of recipes, and it is not a 'how to' cookery book, although it contains detailed useful instructions. It is an essential artisan's companion for anyone interested in the art and craft of making a variety of good, workman-like breads.

I have bought many bread making books and after following their various recipes have had just as many failures.This book, which I thought was a bit of a expensive indulgence has proved that it was money well spent.The results of my labour, with the guidance of Peter Reinhart are something to be proud of.I would highly recommend this book to anyone seriously interested in baking better bread and also understanding the science involved. Money well spent.Also I have adapted the "formula's to use in my Bread Machine, successfully !Buy the book and see for youself.

I didn't expect much of it at first, but after trying out some of the basic bread recipes I was blown away by how good the results were - matching my bakery's sourdough bread in looks and texture, and definitely better in taste. The book is also lovely to look at, is well written (no overy complex descriptions here) and has some entertaining stories that give each bread a history and background.

Although the author has a considerable reputation and the book is very good in places I found it less comprehensive than I had hoped.I have tried 10 of the recipes since owning the book (just a couple of weeks). I have baked about 8 loaves a week for the past decade so I have a moderate amount of experience in home bread making.I have three issues:The recipes appear to be authentic and the explanations are clear but that does not mean you are going to like all the different kinds of bread. I found the bagels (extremely time consuming to make) a real dissapointment. They looked great but tasted nothing like any bagel I had ever tasted. To be fair the author does say this is a traditional water bagel and not a commercial bagel. But in a book that champions tasty bread I found this unimpressive. The explanations of why different ingredients effect the outcome and flavour are very good.The author is very keen on long fermentation to improve the flavour and the are lots of two stage two day recipes. Dissapointingly I have not yet been able to detect the flavour enhancement that deserves all this extra preparation (nor has my family). I would have been happier if the book had contained more angles on bread making. I feel that the author has collected lots of lengthy recipes because he believes this is the best way to make bread. I had expected a greater variety of approaches.And last but not least. Why only imperial measurements? What happened to metric?This is not a book for a beginner. If you want to purchase a single book on bread making I would not recommend it. As part of a library it is a very good reference book.

When i first bought this book I read the first few chapters straight away as they described in detail what was happening at each step from a scientific perspective which helped me to understand why the different processes are carried out.Since then I have made a number of breads from this book with a good degree of success. I have also found that I use the knowledge and techniques that I learned in this book to improve my results in when using recipes from other sourcesThis book is really geared for the American market and so the recipes included have been chosen to fit that market, however there are a number of French recipes included which were the main reason I bought the book.It is a little annoying that all the measurements are in American units however given that all the recipes are presented as a formula based on weight as a percentage of the total amount of flour it is relatively straight forward to scale up or down to suit any size of loaf.