Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes

The other day, I read a review on another website which concluded that the Amazon reviewers who criticized the first edition were largely inexperienced home bakers incapable of appreciating recipes by a certified master baker. Thus, I trust prospective customers will realize the necessity for sufficient critique.

Commercial bakers are the primary audience of this book, although there has been an attempt to enlarge its scope to include home bakers. I purchased the first edition in 2010 through Amazon, and my review of the first edition is still extant. I'd been baking for about ten years at the time of my first purchase, and I wanted to take my ability to a new level. Because there are some important omissions in the first edition, I later purchased the second edition hoping that I would find it improved.

Let's begin with the first oversight: flour protein level. Early in the book, Hamelman writes, "When working with any bread formula, it is important to know what kind of flour is used, and its protein level. When making substitutions or when trying out new flours, adjustments in hydration are very often necessary" (p. 34). That sounds good enough, except by the time the recipes begin in chapter 4 (about 90 pages into the book), he has not ever stated what to use. So, the home baker wants to jump in and make some recipes--and they have to guess. I love the clarity with which Nancy Silverton writes in her section on white flour, "The white flour I use at the moment is blended from hard winter wheat and dark hard northern spring wheat, and has a protein content of 12.5 percent" (Breads from the La Brea Baker, p. 6). Rose Levy Beranbaum even provides the "Approximate Range of Protein in Nationally Available Flours" on p. 550f of "The Bread Bible" to make shopping easy for the home baker. "Amy's Bread" (Revised & Updated, 2010) does an outstanding job of prominently noting protein information in the Tips and Techniques section for most of the recipes, along with providing a "Flour Protein Comparison Chart." Amy Scherber's book is published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.--the same publisher as Hamelman's book--except that they had different editors.

Now, let's suppose the home baker wants to make the first recipe in the book called Baguettes with Poolish (p. 92). So, the home baker travels over to the local supermarket and stares at the shelf of flour choices. "Let's see. Hamelman works for King Arthur Flour. Here's a bag of King Arthur Unbleached Bread Flour. The recipe calls for `bread flour.' That'll work. Problem solved." As it turns out, our home baker has made a poor choice because this flour is too high in protein level to make good baguettes with. It's not really "problem solved" but rather "problem created." It was unfortunate that the first edition of this book lacked protein specifics, but to repeat the same exact omission in the second edition is really unfortunate--an opportunity lost. This hindered my progress, and quite some time passed before I got around to working in the levain breads section later in the book (chapter 5, p. 146) where Hamelman does indeed specify a protein level for those particular recipes that call for "bread flour." Using protein information from King Arthur, I concluded that Hamelman wanted home bakers to use King Arthur Unbleached All-Purpose Flour when he specifies "bread flour" for the levain breads. Given the lack of other instructions, it's likely that this also applies to other sections of the book. In my judgment, recipes have turned out better since the time I switched. To confirm, there's an excellent discussion of this problem on The Fresh Loaf website called, "Hamelman's `Bread Flour' vs. `High-Gluten Flour'" by some bakers who have taken classes at King Arthur using recipes from this book and are acquainted with Hamelman. I just found this discussion while writing this review, but it began back on December 24, 2009.

The author's dough shaping skills are exemplary--in fact, they are as good as it gets--and there are many beautiful pictures to prove it. My goal in working with this book is to try to take away as much as possible regarding dough feel and handling. King Arthur says that its bread flour substitutes for all-purpose flour with the addition of about two teaspoons of water per cup because bread flour is relatively thirstier. Without this adjustment, it will result in stiffer dough; hence, it is imperative to get the flour protein level correct. King Arthur also says that Professor Raymond Calvel, who wrote the foreword for this book, performed a blind taste test on American flours and pronounced that King Arthur All Purpose Flour is the best choice for baguettes.

You are probably wondering why I just didn't look in the index. Good question. I did. It turns out that the index does not include the particular page in the levain bread section which specifies the protein level. So, if you look under "Flour / protein level in" or any of the sub entries under "Protein in Flour" it does not include that page. This index is not as complete as it needs to be. If you decide to work with this book, then I strongly suggest that any time you come across important information that you either create your own topical index from scratch (which I do myself) or you verify that the entry actually exists in the book's index--because it can be very frustrating to retrieve information you remember reading if it has not been indexed, and sometimes, helpful information is hidden in recipes outside of the main presentation of the book.

There was an errata sheet for the first edition, and we are to understand that they have gone over the recipes with a fine-tooth comb. I think they made a good faith effort. Many things got fixed in the second edition, but they did not catch entirely everything. Please turn to Five-Grain Bread on p. 281. You will note that the overall formula calls for .26 oz of instant dry yeast. There's no yeast used in the soaker, but the final dough calls for .8 oz. How do they account for this discrepancy? If the home baker does not notice this and uses the wrong number, then there's a problem. The errata sheet for Feb. 2011 contained an entry for the method of developing a liquid levain culture that is used in many recipes in the levain breads chapter. This was only partially corrected in the second edition (pp. 427-8). I used the still uncorrected amounts in the home baker's column for quite some time before I checked the math and discovered the mistakes. This impacted my results. As a general practice, I recommend that you verify the math in a formula before baking it. I do not think you will find a lot of major mistakes, but I do have some other concerns about their handling of numbers, including rounding.

This book emphasizes proper weighing of ingredients. Hamelman writes, "Cups and tablespoons are inherently inaccurate, and serious home bakers should buy a good scale" (p. 82). His recipes use baker's percentages where "each ingredient in a formula is expressed as a percentage of the flour weight, and the flour weight is always expressed as 100 percent" (p. 442). Unfortunately, Hamelman's handling of numbers while scaling the commercial formulas into smaller portions for home bakers has not been done carefully enough. Please turn to the first recipe in the book, Baguettes with Poolish on p. 92, and let's verify the yeast weight in the overall formula remembering that the yeast % is actually fresh yeast for the convenience of the professional bakers and must be converted to instant dry for the home bakers (see p. 48 if you don't already have this conversion committed to memory): 2lb flour weight x (16oz/lb) x (0.011 fresh yeast weight/flour weight) x (0.33 instant dry yeast weight/fresh yeast weight) = 0.1162 oz which they have rounded up to 0.13??? That's odd. I never learned rounding like that. Now, take a look at some other recipes all based on the same 2 pounds of flour and all specifying the very same 0.13 oz of instant dry yeast. Remember that these baker's percentages are in fresh yeast for commercial bakers: we have 1.25% for Baguettes with pate Fermentee (p. 94), 1.2% for Ciabatta with Stiff Biga (p. 96) and 1.3% for Whole-Wheat Bread with a Multi-Grain Soaker. It's like someone decided to take the easy way out and made a chart of range conversions instead of doing the math for each formula. So, if the fresh yeast percentage is between 1.1% and 1.3% then the home bakers are to use 0.13 oz of instant dry yeast. If you study recipes in the breads with yeasted pre-ferments section you will also notice they did the same thing for 2 lb. formulas calling for between 1.5% - 1.7% fresh yeast which all use the same 0.17 oz of instant dry yeast. When I was first learning baker's percentages from this book, I found it very confusing to find that some yeast quantities in the home baker's column were not arrived at by the method taught in the book. In any case where you discover a discrepancy, you will have to determine if it is significant enough to merit correcting.

Crackers and Flat Breads (p.364) is a new recipe which illustrates the problem of rounding off ounces to one decimal place in a recipe containing a small ingredient such as a spice. The recipe for home bakers is based on 5.2 oz. of flour and calling for 1% toasted cumin. So, here's the math: 5.2 oz. x 0.01 = 0.052 oz.--which has been rounded off to 0.1 oz. In other words, the rounding to one decimal place has resulted in almost doubling the amount of toasted cumin for the home bakers.

For some time, my impression has been that some of the recipes could use more salt. Since I'm not going to be able to bake a loaf for you over the internet, the only way I can describe what I've learned from looking into this issue is to do more baker's math for you. A part of this problem arises from the fact that they round off the salt in home recipes to one decimal place--an inconsistent practice considering that they use two decimal places for yeast. Hamelman writes, "Generally, the correct amount of salt in bread dough is 1.8 to 2 percent of salt based on flour weight (that is, 1.8 to 2 pounds of salt per 100 pounds of flour)" (p. 44). For home bakers, Hamelman often scales recipes to 2 pounds of flour. When you do the math, this means that 1.8% salt would be 0.576 oz while 2.0% is 0.64 oz.--both of which round off to 0.6 oz. There are numerous examples throughout the book of recipes where this rounding off has taken place. For home bakers, the rounding off of the salt means that you will not be able to experience the subtleties of his salting as you are effectively baking all of these recipes at 0.6 oz salt weight / [2 lb flour weight x (16 oz / lb)] = 1.88%. Clearly, this was not his intent, but they did not think this issue through enough before deciding to round off the salt to one decimal place. The remedy is for you to redo the math on any recipe that you make if you want to experience the subtleties of Hamelman's recipes. "The Fundamental Techniques of Classic Bread Baking" by The French Culinary Institute has adapted several of Hamelman's recipes for use in their book and they also offer grams, which is a superior choice over rounding ounces to only one decimal place. For home bakers, it may be in your best interest to simply redo the entire recipe in grams using the baker's percentages.

Question: Why does this review have to be so long?

Answer: The author has justifiably achieved a high standing in the bread baking field, but teaching this subject though a book is not a trivial subject. My review is as long as it has to be to cover what I feel needs to be said, and my experiences may help shorten the learning curve of others. If you understand my review, then you should be able to understand the book--and bake from it successfully. In the preface to the first edition of "Brother Juniper's Bread Book," author Peter "Reinhart writes, "With pen in hand I...pray for your patience, and goodwill, and most of all, for good results." Said a little bit differently, with patience and goodwill you can learn to achieve excellent results with this book.

Hamelman offers seven different formulas for French Baguettes. I can't think of another author who even comes close to that amount! All seven of these recipes have salt in the range of 1.8 to 2%. It's helpful to mention some other prominent authors whose use of salt is in a very different range. Julia Child's famous recipe for Plain French Bread (Pain Francais) which she worked out with the assistance of Professor Raymond Calvel is approximately 2.9% (see "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" by Julia Child and Simone Beck, volume two, p. 57). Elizabeth David's general preference for salt in bread is upwards of 3.13% (see "English Bread and Yeast cookery," p. 120), and James Beard's taste is in the same range (see "Beard on Bread," pp. 22 and 28). One of the advantages of using baker's percentages is that it makes it very easy to adjust a single ingredient such as salt to suit your preferences. The layout of the baker's percentages in this book is very easy to understand compared to other books that I've used. As this particular style takes up more space on the page, it demonstrates a positive commitment from the publisher towards readability of the formulas. Working with baker's percentages is definitely a skill that you will value having learned from this author.

There is a Baking at Home section, but it is only marginally improved in the second edition. It talks about baking on stones, for instance. Many authors focusing on home bakers will also include information on La Cloche bakers. I've had some success particularly with the rectangular La Cloche for some of Hamelman's recipes. This section is only two pages long and could have been more robust, particularly given the varying performance of home ovens. Bake times and temperatures are for commercial ovens, and it is well for you to have reasonable expectations regarding how well you expect this information to work with a home oven before you add this item to your shopping cart. This has required more of my time than any other challenge presented by this book despite the fact that I believe my oven to be correctly calibrated!

The dividing and shaping information is casually thought out for home bakers. Bagels (p. 328) is an example of a recipe based on 3lb 3.5 oz of dough which is expected to yield 13 bagels, and the instructions call for dividing into 4 oz pieces. This is physically impossible even if you could scale exactly to 4 oz because 13 x 4 oz requires a minimum of 3 lb 4 oz to begin with. In reality, you will want to have some extra dough to work with to avoid having to reuse tiny cutting scraps. There is an excellent discussion in Daniel T. DiMuzio's "Bread Baking: An Artisan's Perspective" (p. 36) suggesting a 5% cutting loss as a starting place until you know your actual loss. Hamelman does teach how to scale a recipe properly, allowing you to adjust recipes.

Mixing times are for commercial-type spiral mixers, but some general guidelines are provided to assist home bakers using KitchenAid type stand mixers to adapt this information. Generally speaking, these guidelines have worked pretty well for me with only a few exceptions. In these cases, I needed to study similar recipes from a variety of sources until I was able to figure out what went wrong in the mixing process.

The repertoire of breads is primarily European artisan of the French, German and Italian traditions. The book features a lot of recipes with seeds and grains that I have enjoyed baking and are worth studying. Despite working for King Arthur, a long-standing American company in Vermont, Hamelman has very little interest in North American tradition nor regional favorites from the northeast such as Portugese Sweet Bread, Boston Brown Bread, or Anadama Bread. The repertoire of whole-rye and medium rye breads is especially distinguished, appealing, and tasty. Lovers of sourdough rye bread should find this book to be a must-have. Although, regarding baking with white rye flour, Hamelman writes on p. 42, "White rye flour has little in the way of flavor or color, and is generally a poor choice in bread making." White rye is often used in Eastern European traditions. Therefore, I would qualify Hamelman's repertoire as being "select European artisan." Within this focus, there is a strong repertoire of variations.

One of the best features of this book is the shaping and handling information. There is also a strong presentation of braiding techniques, as well as decorative dough projects. The book features beautiful line drawing illustrations by the author's wife. I have uploaded some customer images for viewing. These pictures were originally uploaded with captions including favorable comments pointing out various features of the book. Amazon has since changed it's method for displaying picture galleries, and the captions have subsequently been lost.

There are some recipes found herein that both put a smile on my wife's face and that I really value having in my baking repertoire--but I have had to persist through some unnecessary challenges. Current family favorites include the Roasted Potato Bread with Chives (p. 111), Corn Bread (p. 143), and the sourdough rye chapter in general. I am especially grateful that the author introduced me to the Detmolder 3-stage method of rye production (p. 216). This book is particularly suited to professionals and advanced home bakers. I do not recommend this book to new bakers. I bake from the book cautiously, with calculator in hand, having verified the math beforehand. This book is also very useful as a reference book. The author has a lot to offer in terms of baking expertise and delicious recipe offerings, and the journey has been worthwhile despite its challenges.

As an experienced home baker, this is the only book I've chosen to buy. I absolutely wouldn't say it's the be-all-and-end-all of baking; it's no "bread bible". But for the types of European breads I happen to like, it's the perfect book.
There are no gimmicks here. Hamelman doesn't have some new method with each book (like Reinhart), he doesn't hold your hand (like Barenbaum). Just good core formulas and practical baking techniques. The critics are all correct when they note: the mixing times are for professional bakers and you have to double them for home; the moisture content can be off at home; the flour protein is not specified; you have to scale down for home use with a calculator; general hints are hidden in obscure places rather than highlighted for general use. He also leaves out many hand-holding steps he assumes you know. In other words, you pretty much have to make each of his recipes your own. That alone is why I can't recommend this book to the average home baker, especially a beginner. (Berenbaum's Bread Bible much better for beginner's.)
But for the experienced home baker who already knows their way around dough feel, knows how to adjust hydration. salt, and yeast and sourdough fermentation times, this book is rock solid. Many classic formulas here, and once you get his thinking you can extrapolate many more.
Most of the people I know who love this book end up adapting the recipes to their own tastes. In other words, Hamelman gives you an excellent starting point for many classic European breads. That is why I bought it. I have tons of recipes on my harddrive, but for a paper volume this was it.
It's important to note Hamelman's training and tastes lean heavily toward German breads. You wouldn't guess that from the title or that he works for King Arthur. So you won't get "irish soda bread" or "anaconda bread" or many American classics. Heck, he barely has a classic white sandwich loaf here! Instead you'll find Sunflower seed bread, flax rye, vollkornbrot, pumpernickel, scalded rye. He also favors multigrain whites, with six different recipes for that in different forms. Those happen to be my favorite types of bread; but I wouldn't call that typical.
Last criticism: not well bound. I already have pages falling out after a couple uses. No excuse!
In short: Good book for core formulas for European (especially German) breads. No handholding for beginners, and no complex discussion of dough handling for experts. For those purposes I'd recommend a couple other books to augment this excellent resource.

This book presents good information about bread baking, giving the author's years of experience about ingredients, techniques and history. I've tried two of the recipes and had success in both cases with complements from all that eat the results. There seems to be hundreds more recipes to try, and I am looking forward to continued success.

BUT..... there is a BIG problem. It is not with the content which I believe deserves 5 stars. The problem is with the editors and publishers of this book....

1) After having the book a couple of days, a couple of pages fell out of the book. They make a handy bookmark now, but one wonders if the rest of the book will go “loose leaf” in the future.
2) NOW THIS IS THE BIG ONE!!! Whoever was the designer of the layout of the book obviously doesn't actually read books, but only is interested in making books “pretty.” The paper of the book is a cream color. This in and of itself isn't bad, but when paired with a typeface of slightly grayed type makes reading the book difficult except in good lighting conditions. But what is even more terrible, there are side bars that contain interesting information throughout the book that have a blue background. Black type is placed on top of this solid blue which makes reading these sections of the book especially hard. Who is training or supervising these people?!?! Where is their common sense?!? Putting black type on a dark background isn't a way of highlighting some text, but a away of making it disappear, making it difficult for the reader to gain the information for which they paid good money. For this sophomoric or should I say kindermoric (my apologies to kindergarten students everywhere), the book itself only deserves one star.

So buy this book for its good information about bread making and recipes, BUT be ready to read it only in a well lighted kitchen!

I cannot believe how low contrast the text is in this book, with dark gray-silver, highly reflective ink throughout, sometimes on light gray backgrounds, obviously printed that way by choice. Is it an art project or a text book? I am really disappointed, after being so excited about the book, that it takes so much energy to read it; I can literally only read it under the brightest light I own while concentrating harder than anyone should. I imagine the content will be wonderful still, but the product is ableist as hell.

I am very disappointed by this book. I was expecting a "text book" on making bread. I am wanting a book that will help clear up much of the confusion related to making bread. I think that if I could talk with the author I would be able to get all of my questions and more answered but this book certainly does not do that for me.

Pros of this book:
Clearly the author has a vast knowledge of the topic of making bread. Each of the diversions and rabbit trails of this book leads to some related topic. When the topic is addressed it becomes clear that the author is well versed in making bread. (It would help if the author had the assistance of an editor who was familiar with the concept of well organized books that are instructive on a topic.)

Very impressive coffee table book for the kitchen. It will impress visitors without a doubt.

Cons of this book:
Very poorly organized. The book is a collection of rabbit trails through various topics. I felt like I was reading a discussion between Alice, Tarrant Hightopp (the Mad Hatter) and the discussion was lead by the March Hare. The topics are interrupted with short tangential information printed on a blue background in the middle of the current topic which is printed on standard white pages. These rabbit trails are very distracting when trying stay focused on the topic. Much of the information that is relevant to the topic at hand is discussed else where on a separate rabbit trail on some page or other. There are numerous parenthetical comments that the current issue is discussed in more depth "on page xxx". There are also other intersecting tangents on pages that are printed on a gray background. Each color seems to indicate a change in direction.
Trying to focus on a technical topic in this book is similar to having a conversation with Alice, Tarrant Hightopp ,and March Hare about what the dormouse just woke up and said at the tea party.

Very French. I don't read French well enough for the numerous inclusions of French to be anything more than just another annoyance. I was looking for a book that would expound on the basics of bread that is popular and commonly available in my country - the USA. Someday if I ever have to live in France I will probably be interested in what French bakers are doing but for now I am looking for something that will be useful to me here where I live in a small town in South Texas. ¿Habla español?

An Ample Sufficiency of Arithmetic Errors. I was expecting a few simple errors of arithmetic but that is not the case. There are numerous rounding errors and simple calculation errors. Somebody should explain the normal algorithm for "rounding" numbers to the editors of this book - and the issues associated precision when doing simple multiplication tasks in arithmetic. (one decimal place precision times 2 decimal places precision equals an answer to three decimal places which you would not normally then round off to just one decimal place.) This book would also benefit greatly from a clear understanding of the topics of accuracy and precision as they relate to weights and measure.

No discussion of the significance of errors or the effect of variance, related to applying the recipes for home baking. I don't own an international bakery and I am not planning on buying one any time soon. The home baker seems to be nothing more than a passing additional rabbit trail. There will be an expected range of error and variance in scaling massive bulk recipes down to home baker quantities but that topic is not really addressed.

Too many additives and too many "crafty" techniques. I wanted some education on homemade American white bread that is better than what I can buy at Walmart. I don't want peas, carrots, walnuts, sunflower seeds, millet, buckwheat seeds, fruits, oats, or the kitchen sink in my toast with my breakfast. I don't want rings, triangles, double loops, bread shaped like bunnies - I am looking for a normal loaf of American bread. I just wanted a rational education on making a good quality bread and what the elements are that will allow me to consistently produce just that. There is an explanation of how to shape the dough into just about every possible configuration except a common loaf that is of even height along its length. I am looking for homemade bread that is about 4" to 4 1/2" tall by 4"to 5" wide in a loaf that is around 8 1/2" to 10" long. I am not going to try to braid the dough and shape the braid into a loop, bake it, and then slice the braided bread to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

If there is a practical comparative discussion of the basic ingredients in this book I must have missed it on one of the switches between rabbit trails. Rapeseed oil (aka "Canadian" + "ola" = "Canola") and soybean oil are a long way from traditional ingredients. I would appreciate a discussion of long standing traditional ingredients ( such as in common use for more than the past 100 years?).

No discussion of how to know how much dough to prepare for a given set of loaf pans. How many pounds of flour of each type of flour for the volume of the loaf pans on hand? The 5 lb bag of King Arthur unbleached bread flour is noticeably shorter than the 5 lb bag of King Arthur All-purpose flour. Clearly the density is different per unit of volume, so what is the effect of these issues on the finished product?

It seems to me that most of the recipes in this book take anywhere from 6 to 8 hours of labor to make to as much as several days of constant work. I was expecting around 3 to 4 hours start to finish.

If anyone understands my issues with this book and can suggest a different author who might be better suited to my needs I would appreciate it if they would leave that suggestion as a comment to this review.

My go - to book for bread. It is spectacular in every way. That said, I waited 6 or more months after being on a bread blog and learning to make sourdough breads to buy it. I knew from what was written there that it is not for the beginning baker or even for a casual home baker. But if you are into breads and want to learn a lot and bake a lot of wonderful breads this is your book. I cannot say enough good about it. I have one of Reinhart's books (BBA, it didn't speak to me) and Forkish's book (started my Sourdough venture with that one, and I like it a lot), and also Tartine. This beats them all by a mile. Or more. You need to have a basic level of knowledge of breads and bread making to fully appreciate and use this book to it's max.

The only flaw is not one of the author's but rather a design one. It was not a wise decision to have "Baker's notes" and other informative pages and paragraphs printed on a mellow blue background with a thin font. The font may well be black but against that background it appears gray and is too difficult to read.

It's still worth every penny. Every one. Just don't buy it before you are ready.

I've only been baking bread for a short while but very quickly learned that leavened bread is a different beast than anything I've cooked before. There is a lot to learn and many ways you can make yourself an unimpressive bread. If you want to gain an understanding of all that happens when you create a loaf you need some good education. This book fits the bill. I also have Peter Reinhart's [[ASIN:B000GVOWYS Bread Baker's Apprentice]] which is great but doesn't go as deeply into the science, mechanics, etc. of working with yeasted dough as Bread. Both books are great though.

If you are serious about getting into bread you should also check out some online resources like blogs and forums (The Fresh Loaf being my personal favorite). Once you start baking you'll be amazed at how many questions you have.

One complaint though: Home recipes aren't given in metric!

This is without a doubt the best book on bread baking there is. I had the first edition and used it for many years. I decided to upgrade to the second edition year and 1/2 ago. After 14 months of use the binding cracked so that a number of leafs are loose and sections are beginning to come loose. My first addition is intact and has survived for many years. I treated both books in the same manner and there is no reason this finding should have fallen apart so soon. I complained to the publisher who said they could not be responsible for the book once it left the warehouse. They seem to try to imply that perhaps this was not their product. I then called Amazon and complained but they said it was too long and there is nothing that can be done. I would caution anyone that despite how great this book is, a cookbook that falls apart after year can quickly become useless. I don't know where the fault lies but the product is faulty in its manufacture.

Contrast between font and background is way too low! Font choice makes it worse. I’m not being precious. Legibility is indeed so poor that it requires effortful concentration just to, well, read.

As others pointed out, it appears it was done on purpose. I can only imagine this went to print with proofing.

This is a 5-star book but I am giving one star, hoping I get someone's attention at the publishing house. The important additional information sections that are thin black type on a blue background are atrocious! Absolutely a nightmare. You have got to change that in future editions. It is beneath a magnificent book such as this to have such a high school sophomore kind of layout/design mistake.