Crust and Crumb: Master Formulas for Serious Bread Bakers [A Baking Book]

by Peter Reinhart

Overview

The heart and soul of classic bread baking, from master baker Peter Reinhart

From whole-wheat, sourdough, and rye to pita, focaccia, and naan, this classic cookbook from expert baker Peter Reinhart shows you how to produce phenomenal bread. Reinhart details each step in the process, giving you the knowledge and confidence to create countless versions of your own. Not merely a book of bread recipes, this book is an in-depth dive into the world of bread baking, filled with highly tested formulas to take your bread game to the next level.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781607741329
Publisher:	Clarkson Potter/Ten Speed
Publication date:	04/13/2011
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	224
File size:	6 MB

About the Author

PETER REINHART is a baking instructor and faculty member at Johnson and Wales University in Charlotte, North Carolina. He was the cofounder of Brother Juniper’s Bakery in Santa Rosa, California, and is the author of several books on bread baking, including Crust and Crumb, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice (winner of the 2002 James Beard Cookbook of the Year and IACP Cookbook of the Year), and the 2008 James Beard Award–winning Peter Reinhart’s Whole Grain Breads.

Peter is the founder and host of the popular website PizzaQuest.com, where he continues to chronicle his never-ending search for the perfect pizza through videos, essays, and recipes. He also has created two instructional video courses, on artisan bread and on pizza, for Craftsy.com.

Read an Excerpt

Introduction

The Bread Revolution

Many people are intimidated by the process of making bread, especially sourdough, or as I prefer to call it, wild yeast bread. The thought of nurturing a container of living, bubbling dough, feeding it every few hours lest it die, is just too daunting for some. I know many fine cooks who are convinced that they simply do not have a feel for bread, as if it were a separate and mysterious category of the culinary arts. What this probably means is that they have tried to bake bread a few times but have never made a winning loaf.

This book is intended to remedy any such sense of limitation. You really can make world-class, conversation-stopping bread at home without feverishly waking up in the middle of the night to feed your starter. Having won a national bread championship against other professional bakers with a loaf I developed at home, I can guarantee this. Bread, like so many of life’s formulas, relies on the 80/20 principle, in this instance, 80 percent technique and 20 percent equipment. (I might also add 80 percent perspiration for every 20 percent inspiration.) Most home bakers are concerned about their lack of the proper equipment, but the equipment problem is easy to solve, as you will see. Most of what you will learn in this book is technique, dough technique: how to build, rather than simply make, a loaf of bread. This is easier than you might think. I will arm you with the knowledge, formulas, and confidence necessary to make world-class bread at home, and I am confident in return that you will become a passionate bread maker if you are not one already.

When I wrote Brother Juniper’s Bread Book in 1991, I actually knew very little about how bread works. I was self-taught and had some talent for the process, but was driven forward more by my spiritual and religious vocation than by knowledge. That I succeeded as well as I did was serendipitous. As my success opened doors into the greater bread world, I became acutely aware of how lucky I had been and how much growth awaited me.

My niche in the bread world was built largely on the success of a number of neotraditional breads I developed at Brother Juniper’s Bakery. The most notable is Struan, a bread I still consider my greatest contribution to the bread lexicon. More than half of my early recipes were variations of that basic multigrain formula. From it I derived what I feel is the perfect proportion, a golden mean of bread flour in relation to other ingredients, which allows for a seemingly infinite number of spin-offs. Since then I have developed a strong interest in traditional hearth-baked breads, especially the naturally leavened, or wild yeast, kind. In North America we categorize these as sourdoughs. In Europe they are called levains, desums, or barm breads and are made in much the same way as sourdough, but with less of the sour flavor typically found in American sourdoughs.

In his wonderful newsletter, Simple Cooking, food writer John Thorne observed that the greatest challenge for an artisanal baker is to work without a net, using wild yeast starters under conditions that allow for the possibility of bread that is good beyond belief, while posing the greatest risk of failure. I countered this argument in my first book with the contention that an equal challenge is to consistently produce good-beyond-belief bread under controlled conditions, whether with wild yeast or the faster-working and more consistent commercial yeast, which is the economic necessity all commercial bakers face. It was, in retrospect, an apples and oranges argument. The commercial wild-yeast baker needs consistency, just as the artisanal hobbyist must be free to fail superbly in the quest for the perfect loaf.

My challenge was to bridge these paradoxes by developing master formulas that could yield both consistency and good-beyond-belief flavor and texture. I have tried to consolidate all the bread makers’ secrets I could unearth and put them in your kneady hands. I think I have succeeded, though along the way I have realized what a never-ending quest it is. I learn new things about bread every day, but the formulas in this book should keep you busy and satisfied for a long time to come.

In addition to commercially yeasted and wild-yeast methods, this book explores such alternative techniques as carbon dioxide-leavened quick breads and flat-out unleavened breads. In each case I offer basic principles and formulas from which countless variations can spring. I am not out to impress you with the number of recipes, but with their quality. I want you to be convinced when you taste these breads that they are the best you have ever had, or at the very least, the best you have ever made. My goal is to empower you not only to produce phenomenal bread but to understand how you did so. I want to feed your bread pilgrimage much as others have fed mine.

Table of Contents

PREFACE	IX
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS	XI
INTRODUCTION: THE BREAD REVOLUTION	1
A New Paradigm	3
A Note on Format	5
How to Get the Most Out of This Book	5
1. WHAT IS WORLD-CLASS BREAD?	7
The Basic Types of Bread	9
Crucial Concepts	12
Master Techniques for Making World-Class Bread	13
Definitely Read This before Making Any of the Master Formulas
Terms You Should Know	30
2. FOUNDATIONAL BREADS: BUILDING THE LOAF	34
Pre-Ferments	34
Master Formula: Poolish	35
Master Formula: Biga	37
Master Formula: Pâte Fermentée	38
Basic French Bread	40
Master Formula: French Bread I	41
MasterFormula: French Bread II	43
Rustic Breads	46
Master Formula: Ciabatta	47
Master Formula: MushroomCiabatta	50
Master Formula: Universal Rustic Bread	52
Master Formula: Sweet Rustic Bread	54
Yeasted Bagels	57
Master Formula: Yeasted Bagels	58
White Bread	62
Master Formula: White Sandwich Bread	62
3. THE STAFF OF LIFE: 4,000 YEARS OF BREAD	65
The Barm Sponge Starter	69
Master Formula: Barm Sponge Starter	72
Sourdough: San Francisco and Otherwise	76
Master Formula: San Francisco Sourdough	76
Master Formula: Mild Starter	79
Master Formula: Basic and Country Levain	81
Master Formula: Sourdough Bagels	84
4. THE QUALITY OF GRAIN: THE WHOLE-WHEAT RENAISSANCE	87
Master Formula: 100 Percent Whole-Wheat Bread	90
Using Different Grains	92
Master Formula: Yeasted Multigrain Bread	94
Master Formula: Leavened Multigrain Bread	95
5	THE ROMANCE OF WOOD-FIRED BRICK OVENS, AND A FEW ADVANCED TECHNIQUES
Master Formula: Yeasted Rye	104
Master Formula: Naturally Leavened Rye Bread	106
Master Formula: German Five-Kern Bread	110
6	ENRICHED DOUGH: NOT WHAT YOU PUT ON BUT WHAT YOU PUT IN
Master Formula: Brioche	116
Master Formula: Kugelhopf	119
Master Formula: Challah	122
Master Formula: Ali-Purpose Holiday Bread	126
Master Formula: Multipurpose Sweet Dough	130
7	A TORTILLA BY ANY OTHER NAME: FLATBREADS AROUND THE WORLD
Master Formula: Peppery Polenta Crackerbread	136
Master Formula: Chapatis and Matzoh	138
Master Formula: Pita Bread	140
Master Formula: Naan Bread	142
Master Formula: Flour Tortillas	145
Pizza and Focaccia	147
Master Formula: Pizza Dough I	149
Master Formula: Pizza Dough II	152
Master Formula: Focaccia	155
8	THE BANANA BREAD REVOLUTION: BREADS FROM OTHER LEAVENS
Quick Breads	159
Master Formula: Banana Bread 162
Master Formula: Muffins of a Thousands Faces 164
Master Formula: Sweet and Moist Corn Bread 168
Master Formula: Blitz Buttermilk Biscuits 170
Master Formula: Biscuit Scones 173
Master Formula: Cream Scones 175
Pancakes	176
Master Formula: Buttermilk Pancakes 177
Master Formula: Sourdough Pancakes 178
9. THE BREAD BAKERS GUILD OF AMERICA	180
Master Formula: Team USA Baguettes	183
Master Formula: Team USA Swiss Sunflower Rye Bread	185
Master Formula: Team USA Ciabatta	188
Master Formula: Team USA Corn Bread	190
Master Formula: Team USA Beer Bread	192
POSTSCRIPT: RESOURCES	195
INDEX	205

Editorial Reviews

Reinhart has provided not only a cookbook with delicious recipes, but a book that takes you, as a student, on a journey through the art and background history of breadmaking. He inspires and motivates throughout, and keeps the process remarkably simple. . . . Highly recommended; this is a great cookbook which will appeal to a general audience. -- ForeWord Magazine

Nancy B. Tamburello

1999 James Beard Award Winner

From the Publisher