River Cottage Bread Handbook
I absolutely love this book on making bread – the best of at least three on my bookshelf! And especially because it has a great section on building a pizza oven!
The first chapter is casting a vision for home baking bread – 1961 was a bad year for bread, because that is when the Chorleywood Technique came in to mass produce what my family calls “flannel bread”! Daniel Stevens argues that you can make a large loaf for half the price of a shop bought one!
The Getting Started section talks about the things you willneed and then goes into super detail about flour types.
The Bread Making Step by Step section is where the book excels going into great detail of how to make the basic loaf – taking 34 pages with great photos to ensure you succeed. That alone has changed my game to consistently making good bread, rather than hit and miss bread. It is worth the price of the
book for those 34 pages alone!!!
The bulk of the rest of the book contains recipes to build on those basic skills from the step by step section with different recipes and different shapes covered in great detail.
The final section covers a pizza oven build – similar to what I build, although I have a bigger chimney for greater draw!
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