Local Breads: Sourdough and Whole-Grain Recipes from Europe's Best Artisan Bakers

by Daniel Leader, Lauren Chattman (Editor)

Overview

Recipes from the back rooms and basement bakeries that produce Europe's best breads.

When Daniel Leader opened his Catskills bakery, Bread Alone, twenty years ago, he was determined to duplicate the whole-grain and sourdough breads he had learned to make in the bakeries of Paris. The bakery was an instant success, and his first book, Bread Alone, brought Leader's breads to home kitchens. In this, his second book, Leader shares his experiences traveling throughout Europe in search of the best artisan breads. He learned how to make new-wave sourdough baguettes with spelt, flaxseed, and soy at an organic bakery in Alsace; and in Genzano, outside of Rome, he worked with the bakers who make the enormous country loaves so unique that they have earned the Indicazione Geografica Protetta (IGP), a government mark reserved for the most prized foods and wines. Leader's detailed recipes describe every step that it takes to reproduce these rare loaves, which until now were available strictly locally.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393050554
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	08/17/2007
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	368
Sales rank:	507,156
Product dimensions:	8.40(w) x 10.30(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Daniel Leader is the founder of Woodstock, New York's legendary bakery, Bread Alone, and author of Bread Alone, which won an International Association of Culinary Professionals Cookbook Award. He lives in the Catskills.

Table of Contents

List of All the Recipes in This Book     viii
Acknowledgments     x
Introduction     3
Ingredients and Equipment for Making European Artisan Breads at Home     15
Bread Recipes, Step by Step     26
Making and Using European Starters and Sourdoughs at Home     41
Read This First: Frequently Asked Questions about Making Bread     50
From Baguette Normal to Eric Kayser's Cutting-Edge Batards: Real Parisian Breads, Old and New     60
Organics in Alsace: Rediscovering Pain au Levain at Fabiopain     103
The Auvergne: Surprising Wheats and Ryes from Two of France's Meilleurs Ouvriers     135
Verona and Tuscany: Biga, Doppio Zero, and Regional Italian Breads     162
The Pride of Genzano: Italian Country Bread with a Government Seal of Approval     191
Il Fornaio and Italian Independent Bakers: Baking Local, from Rome to the Dolomites     210
Untouched by Time: The Singular Case of Pane di Altamura     246
In Search of Authentic German Ryes: High-Tech and Whole-Grain Baking across Germany and Austria     269
Discovering New Ryes in the Czech Republic and Poland and Remembering My Grandparents' Light Rye     301
Mail-Order and Online Resources     333
Index     335

Editorial Reviews

Leader's new bread-baking book is distinguished from his earlier classic Bread Aloneby its focus on regional specialties, from the Alsatian classic pain au levainto Tuscan black olive puccia, from German laugenbrezelnor pretzels to the dark Silesian rye of the Czech Republic. The book opens with 50 pages of well-written and thorough instructions on everything from ingredients to equipment. The most helpful part is the explanation of the basic steps of any bread-making process, which serves as a primer on the procedural elements that are universal across the various European traditions. Leader, who founded the heralded Bread Alone bakery in Woodstock, N.Y., is most interested in teaching holistically, so that his readers will feel comfortable becoming apprentices and then experts themselves. One can't help imagining, however, that bread baking is best learned in the flesh. Leader advises that the only way to figure out if the "dough is ready is through experience," and a hapless home baker might agree. Still, the book is an excellent primer on the best breads of Europe, and the traveler who has returned home with a longing for the Roman specialty pane di altamuramight be satisfied with a mouth-watering trip down memory lane. (Aug.)

Copyright 2007 Reed Business Information

Publishers Weekly