There's over 26 book reviews (and counting) on this page, totalling 9456 pages worth of material, and that doesn't include the associated addendums, or the YouTube videos and documents found on various linked sites.

Similarly, I've baked a lot of bread from these books. I've discussed some of my personal experiences. Hopefully that can provide you with some valuable insight(s) into each book.

All this info can lead to a lot of unnecessary scrolling. So to make life easier, pick a book, click on the image, and it'll skip to that review. When you're done, simply hit "back" on your browser to come back here.

If that helps you to avoid a causing/exacerbating a repetitive strain injury (RSI) or a Musculoskeletal Disorder (MSD) that's great, but just be careful when stirring/kneading stiffer doughs by hand ok?

Be warned, these reviews are probably a lot more in-depth than you'll find elsewhere. So please grab yourself a snack, perhaps a tasty beverage, and put some nice relaxing music on.

Area of focus: A freely-shared Introduction to sourdough techniques & knowledge, ranging from starters, through to baking and ultimately, storage. The few recipes are largely for illustration... but they do work.

Total page count: 194 (at the time of writing)

No. of pages before recipes: 51

Metric/imperial units? Metric

Number of recipes: 3 actual bread recipes. (I may have missed a couple, but there's very few specified "Ingredients" & "Method" sections that I generally look for in a recipe.

Photos for every recipe? No.

Price range (new): Free download! The hardcover book is $50 (USD) or $79 (AUD).

Price range (used): N/A (not found)

Notable Features & FYI: Despite the extremely low number of recipes, it's enough to get you started, and understand the entire process to a very good degree. That said, the troubleshooting section is amazing and would augment any other book (sourdough or not) in this list. I also like the "Mix in" section for adding fruits/seeds/herbs, and beyond. The linked videos, as well as the "I need answers quick, my bread's misbehaving, help me Obi-wan McLoafy!"

Firstly, you can read the entire book on the book's official site. You can download it for free in both epub and PDF formats. There are also downloadable shortened versions (under TL:DR which means "too long: didn't read") which is less empowering, but get's you most of the way to great bread in minimal time.

If you're on a budget and can't afford a book on the subject, simply offer to contribute to help the community through their Discord (forum) on www.the-bread-code.io in any number of ways. For example, there's translation, (if you speak foreign languages) there's testing and reporting of recipe results, or unusual troubles that you experience, I'm sure there's a way anyone can help if you have some spare time.

That said, you can of course, donate money, or buy the published book too if you want to help support Hendrik's efforts. I heartily encourage you to do so if you're able.

I love open source software, and I love freely shared information like The Sourdough Framework so I feel I need to re-share this information wherever I can.

The book itself...

At only 150-ish pages long, (not counting the glossary, index, bibliography and such) it covers a lot of ground, and while it's not as polished as professionally published books. You'd be pretty darn knowledgeable by reading all the way to the end. It certainly has one of the best bread baking "troubleshooting" sections I've seen, so it would augment any of the other books quite well for that reason alone.

The Sourdough Framework covers a decent introduction to the science of bread, the differences you can expect between using a regular starter, a liquid starter, or "stiff" starter, and how best to use them. It discusses different styles of breads as well as their respective pros and cons. I like the fact that there's separate chapters for wheat sourdoughs, and non-wheat sourdoughs which expands further than many books for those concerned about gluten.

Most chapters are a casual 10 pages or so. However, the most complex type (wheat sourdoughs) is a healthy 40 pages. (That's roughly 30% of the entire book). There's more steps in sourdough, so they covered that, and trimmed bloat from the rest wherever they could. That makes it a much easier read overall. However, there are also a ton of related YouTube videos through "The Bread Code" channel which depicts much of that material in a multimedia format.

The cons...

Despite being circa 150 pages, there's surprisingly few actual recipes. However, if you make one from each bread type in the book.. and learn how to tweak each in the various ways discussed, you're well on the way to making any bread you want. Consequently, it's hard to hold the number of recipes against the book, given it's shared so freely, and it is a solid bread baking book.

Conclusion:

Given it's freely available, and it augments other books well. You have no reason not to grab this book, and maybe learn a bit from the associated forums. I highly recommend it.

Area of focus: Beginner oriented. Easy to read, very pretty. The wide range of overwhelmingly bread-centred recipes, is surprising, and only about 20% of the recipes are pastries. The rest, all bread.... although a few are are sweeter breads.

Total page count: 288

No. of pages before recipes: 15

Metric/imperial units? Metric

Number of recipes: 79 total. 14 basic breads, 12 sourdoughs, 13 quick breads, 12 healthy breads, 13 sweet breads, and 15 pastries/desserts.

Photos for every recipe? Most. Many have opposite page, full-page photos. Some are more distant from the recipes too. Step-by-step images are littered here and there.

Price range (new): $30-$49 (AUD) hardcover.

Price range (used): $25-$60 (AUD) for a hardcover.

Notable Features & FYI: This has some intro/theory sections, but it's very light compared to some others. The strength of this book is the high recipe count for the price, the diverse recipe range (even expensive "Pro" or advanced books rarely include teff-based breads). Another strength is the overall extremely pretty presentation and sheer simplicity for absolute beginners.

I think the recipes are good, and most of them have turned out well, (if not exactly perfectly) on the first try. Second attempts have been solid though. That has a lot of merit in building confidence.

Would I buy this as a definitive bread book? No. It's not just designed to be that way. While I do like the book for bread making, it's not just bread that it centres around. There are of course, desserts and crackers and other things you can make with similar ingredients to bread as well.

After a great deal of thought, I feel that the book caters to a wide variety of tastes, but this is a double-edged sword for three reasons:

1. The recipe number is high-but-finite, and it has spread those recipes across a range of styles and tastes. If you're eclectic in your tastes, thats fine, but most people have their preferences and fall into particular bread styles for one reason or another.... and stick to them. I'm not a big olive fan, and so the olive infused varieties are immediately "no go's" for me. Which leads to my second issue...
2. There's a number of recipes in Simply Bread that either incorporate unusual bread ingredients that we don't always have on hand... and would have little use for otherwise. So if you have a pantry with limited space, filled to the rafters, it's a bit of a gamble if you find that you don't like that style of bread. Then you're stuck with either "trying to find a use" for the left over ingredients, or they're slowly pushed to the back of those hard-to-reach shelves gathering dust and taking up space. In short, some recipes are "too specific" in taste, even if the underlying bread is amazing. Don't be afraid to keep it a bit simpler.
3. While there's almost certainly a bread for almost everyone in this book.... You might find that you only like one or two styles of bread, (or that several recipes are too involved for you to bother making) and so most of the book will be useless to you. The recipes might be simple, but that doesn't mean they can't be time-consuming to make, particularly the sourdough varieties.

That said, if you find one or more recipe that you actually love and use a lot, (like we did because Ren adores the simple white loaf for it's quick and easy process that adapts well to tweaks) then it's fair to pay for the book in order to support those who provided it.

I really like the fact that I can read the whole book in under 2 hours because there really is a high number of pictures here. If you're the kind of person who gets intimidated by wordy tomes, this is one of the better beginner books for it's relaxed learning curve, and lots of pretty/inspiring images that help compare your results with theirs. Many of the more advanced books are a bit spotty on this point, and I think it has a lot of value to home bakers who are often working alone, so any pictorial reference point is a big help.

Area of focus: Wider-than-average range of general bread baking with a hint of brioches, biscuits, and pizza. It covers more bread types than most books, and some from underrepresented countries that aren't found in other books.

Total page count: 640

No. of pages before recipes: 97. There's also chapter-specific intros for each type of bread, and extra information at the end of the book, pertaining to both ingredients and equipment that would normally be put before the recipes.

Metric/imperial units? Both

Number of recipes: 88 total. 22 simple/batter breads, 11 flat breads (two pizza doughs), 11 sandwich loaves/dinner rolls, 24 hearth breads, 6 sourdoughs, and 9 brioches.

Photos for every recipe? No. Actually this is perhaps one of the worst image arrangements I've ever seen. There are several sections in the book, each with a selection of full-page colour photos batched together, sometimes as much as 108 pages away from the recipe. (Rosemary foccacia image is on page between pages 95-96, but recipe on page 205, despite the fact there's another colour page section between page 192/193 much closer! Eeeesh!) There are also recipes with no photo at all.

Price range (new): Kindle ebook $39 (AUD). Hardcover from $45-$130 (AUD, delivered)

Price range (used): $ $33-50 (AUD, delivered).

Notable Features & FYI: There's a lot of recipes and technical data for this price, especially second hand, so it's good value. The recipes work well and are extremely tasty. Although the broad range of recipes will definitely suit a wider audience. I also like the broader-than-average range of breads, notably the potato/sweet potato/less wheaten breads. Pictures are lacking, and in woeful placements relative to the recipes they depict. The full page photos are NOT included into the page counts, they're just 5-9 double sided colour photo pages, wedged between consecutive text pages. This makes them impossible to reference from the recipe pages. Don't assume they're in the closest batch of photo pages, either.

That said, the recipes are very tasty, and work quite reliably.

Area of focus: Bread, bread, and more bread. Even the "sweet treats" are sweet buns. Oh, and "pizza Napoletana", and a couple of cheese-infused "torpedoes" (which are just big buns/small baguettes)

Total page count: 321

No. of pages before recipes: 114

Metric/imperial units? Both

Number of recipes: 46 (almost all are savoury-ish breads, maybe 4-5 are sweet buns/cinnamon infused snacks, there's also a single cracker recipe, and a pizza dough.

Photos for every recipe? No. There's a few, here and there, but many don't have any images.

Price range (new): $16-30 AUD (ebook) $46-80 (hardcover)

Price range (used): $45-75

Notable Features & FYI: This has an excellent, rather detailed bread making introduction and covers quite a bit of ground... which you'd expect with 100+ pages of knowledge and techniques before the first recipe.

Once you get into the recipes, it's actually a quite-diverse and well-rounded bread recipe collection, featuring most of the more famous breads that many will at least be familiar with at a superficial level. (That helps when comparing home baked stuff to the commercial stuff you've had before). There's sure to be something for most people. Whether that's a simple white, to sprouted rice & wheat sourdough, a braided challah, English muffin, New York bagel, Italian ciabatta, or Swedish rye.... and 30 odd others!

That said, the truly non-mainstream breads like Teff flour breads, or gluten-free options... are not heavily covered in this book. So you might need to look at other books for that stuff.

While beginners could use the recipes in this book, just know that there's not a huge amount of photos to show what each recipe should look like. That said, there's a lot of good instruction in section two, and helpful photos that will help with various techniques and processes.

If you're the kind of person who doesn't blink at spending extra on "artisan bread" at the bakery and want to "have a go" at making it at home (or know someone who does), this book will get you where you want to go, and prepare you for a wide variety of bread styles if you want to go even further.

This book has a lot of fans, and I count myself as one of them. Although I must confess that I haven't felt so obsessed that I've completed "The Reinhart Challenge" (Which means you've made every recipe in the book). Yet I can see the appeal to those trying to find "their style" in the bread baking world.

Reinhart is a serious authority, who's studied bread making in multiple countries, bakeries, and culinary institutes. He artfully paints a real picture of the trends in bread making over time (particularly with the updated 15th anniversary edition) but also connects and contrasts this to the rich history of family bakeries that have been running for generations. This book goes way beyond a simple recipe book, and that's what actually makes it readable.

Ok sure, on one hand, it is a bread baking recipe book.. and the recipes have worked for us quite well in our house. However, it's one of the few books that I've actually read "cover to cover", and actually enjoyed it.

That said...

It covers a lot more material, so don't expect it to be a short read in a lunch break or something. Unless of course, you're a prodigiously fast reader.

If you're just looking for a bread recipe book, then this will work like that. However you'll get more out of it if you read the section on the basics, and the other related bits (often linked within the recipes too). That said, it's definitely the recipes that will keep you coming back to this book and why I have it in my bread-related library.

How good/accurate are the recipes?

From the recipes we've made, they've come out very well, and they do taste great. However, you may have to develop your own interpretation that separates a "sticky dough" from a "tacky dough"... and so my advice is to accurately follow the recipe by weight measurements (not volume) if at all possible. It may take a few goes to really train your senses and skills, and that's completely expected.

If any tweaks are needed, (like adding water) start by adding minimal amounts, and doing it once, then seeing how it goes after at least 30 seconds of mixing, give it time to infuse properly. Sometimes mixing takes a while to take effect!

I find that if you're not multiplying the recipe quantities, and doing it "in the stated amounts", then a tweak is usually less than or equal to one tablespoon (or 2% by weight, whichever's smaller) of water/flour total. Obviously, if you're multiplying the quantities involved, then multiply that one tablespoon limit accordingly (and you may not need all of it). Judgement is a key skill to develop in home bread baking, and that only happens when you spend more time with doughs of various types. That said, keep the changes small from most recipes while you're developing your familiarity with dough.... that way you can't go "too far off the rails". When I started, I "tweaked it by untrained eye"... and it wasn't as good as it could be... that's for sure. :~P

From absolute beginner to seasoned baker, I just don't think you can really go wrong with this book, for any circumstance. To some, I can see why it might look like a coffee table book, but it's also one of the best general bread baking books in this list. I do wish there were more pictures for each recipe.. because many simply don't have one. The recipes are good, but without pictures, I didn't always know just "how brown" I should bake the crust, nor did I have a good answer when I asked: "Is this a low-rise bread or did I do something wrong?".

The sweet pastry section is definitely my better-half's favourite, and we adore the cinnamon buns. Meanwhile, I've been really enjoying their ciabatta and lighter sourdoughs. I've fallen into the trap of making my familiar favourites... so there's a still a number of recipes on our "to do" list.

At $45-$150 Australian for a hard cover, (and sometimes ridiculous sums like $350+ for a soft cover... I'm looking at you Amazon) I highly recommend shopping around. If you're like us and tried to borrow it from the library, we found the only copy to be booked up months in advance. That told us that it might be something worthy of purchase, and when I won a Booktopia book voucher for reviewing books (what a shock) I grabbed this one with great enthusiasm. I'm certainly not regretting it at all. :-)

Area of focus: General bread making, pizzas. Focusing on techniques which incorporate time and temperature as "ingredients"

Total page count: 263

No. of pages before recipes: 77

Metric/imperial units? Ingredients are metric, equipment imperial (go figure). Temperatures, both (thankfully).

Number of recipes: 36 in total.19 bread types, 4 pizza doughs, 3 pizza sauces, and 10 pizza/foccacia topping meal ideas.

Photos for every recipe? Most, but not all.

Price range (new): .$42-70 (AUD) typical hard cover. $12-24 (AUD) e-Book

Price range (used): Same as new pretty much, depending on source and condition.

Notable Features & FYI: Interesting side notes are worth a read. More advanced bread chapters have their own introductory knowledge/techniques/tools section prior to recipes. Chapters 2-4 are key, and really do set you up for success with most (if not all) later recipe sections. Later chapters with more advanced recipes have their own training sections becore the recipes that need to be read if you want positive and reliable results.

 Ken is yet another former IT guy (who worked for IBM) who ditched it all to chase his dream of being a baker. (What is it about IT guys and baking? Said the IT guy reviewing bread books... hehe) 

This is another extremely popular bread making book that is right up there in "beginner friendliness", "informative", and altogether useful bread baking books, even to experienced bakers. Ken is not trying to simply provide reliable recipes (which he does), but the techniques to ramp up flavour intelligently, so you can really enjoy the finished product, in a multitude of situations. All of which will hopefully convince you that squeezing in a little bread making into your life here and there... however you can manage it, is worthwhile.

Honestly, I don't think many books are quite as good at bread making "public relations" as this one. They all do it to some degree and all have their "hook" to get you to read (and buy) their book.

However, if you're looking for a truly inspirational book as a gift, a coffee table book, a general knowledge/interest piece, or help you to fit bread baking into your busy schedule with few if any compromises.. this is it. Particularly if you have pizza lovers in the household.

Wait, what has pizza got to do with it?

Pizza dough is (as quoted in Flour Water Salt Yeast):

"A natural extension for the bread baker.... Similarly, bread is a natural extension to pizza making... Read the basic instructions, then start at either end of the book and once you've mastered one, the other type is easier".

Start at either end?

Because the last quarter of the book is entirely dedicated to making great pizza. So if you've got a family so set in their ways, that anything beyond the whitest, most commercial bread ever is practically a sin.. the one thing pretty much everyone can agree on is a fierce love of pizza.

So where The Bread Baker's Apprentice, Simply Bread, and many other bread books augmented their recipes with sweets like cakes and pastries to literally "sweeten the deal", Make Ahead Bread" did a little of that, but found a niche by offering tasty butters/spreads. Ken's gone a much more savoury route which I have to say, totally worked on me.

While my focus is indeed on the bread side, being able to bake a great pizza to wow the masses either indoors on a miserable day, or outdoors on a charcoal barbecue from scratch has never disappointed anyone, and I've even been asked to "invite them over" whenever I feel like making a pizza.

Timing is everything!

I truly appreciate that Flour, Water, Salt Yeast (or "FWSY" on some bread making forums), provides various suitable timelines for every recipe so that almost anyone can find a convenient time to start baking great bread, all without compromising anything in the end result. If that's not "come to the dark side, we have great bread/pizza" ...I don't know what is!

What makes this book worthwhile?

Honestly, I like how it starts with Ken's back story, of learning to bake from several teachers, then the trials and tribulations of starting a bakery. Obviously he was ultimately successful, but people's appreciation of bread just 20 years ago was much different, and people didn't always appreciate good bread if it's not what they expected or were used to. He outlines some of his greatest criticisms, misfortunes, and mistakes, along with the successes and the help he got along the way. It's not a long-winded self-pity party for one, it's just acknowledging his shortcomings, and successes. I think that makes him far more credible as a writer, but also more relatable. Any bread baker will have ups and downs too. So I think it's good to know that even the pros struggle at times.

Chapter 2: Theory/Techniques

Ken talks about time and temperature as "ingredients". It even goes so far as mentioning that sometimes, the ingredients really are less impactful on the finished bread than the techniques used. Now, of course, that will upset some people, but that simple statement, when used intelligently, seems true enough from my experience.

FWSY isn't just "Do this and you'll be good". It takes Ken's personal preferences and findings, the rationale behind them, how they were discovered, then discusses across several key techiques/processes like:

• Using autolyse techniques,
• the pros/cons of different preferments,
• how using minimal commercial yeast but increasing the hydration levels and longer fermentation times develops stronger flavours,
• the need to manage temperatures across the whole process,
• why you might want to bake your breads "dark".
• the importance of notes/observations in improving your bake from one loaf to the next.
• How to adapt to a variety of different issues.

... amongst others.

Chapter 3 covers the equipment side of things you'll need for bread, pizza and beyond, and why you'd benefit from them.

So the first 61 pages are backstory and general theory. After that, we're into recipes. That said, there's more theory and guidance in each section as the book focusses on the specific "ins and outs" needed to make different breads.

Area of focus: Artisanal loaf breads fit for routine baking.

Total page count: 249

No. of pages before recipes: 80

Metric/imperial units? Ingredients: Metric, Equipment: Both!

Number of recipes: 21

Photos for every recipe? Yes (ish)... not always the finished product.

Price range (new): Hardcover range $46-$110 (Australian)

Price range (used): Hardcover range $36-$70 (Australian)

Notable Features & FYI: This is highly reminiscent of FWSY. The new sourdough techniques (even though Ken calls them "Levain" breads in the recipe section) are definitely a refinement from the previous books. This book is aimed at getting a higher "reward to effort" ratio, and reducing the complexities somewhat.

I particularly like the discussion on various flour types, the home milling options, and the encouragement for you to simply try mixing the flours up with a little experimentation.

There's a lot to like about this book, and there's something for everyone. It may not have the high recipe count that you might expect from such a books, but it makes up for that in detailed explanations that's thoughtfully laid out across the entire book.

The chapters explain ingredients and equipment, then methods and techniques, there's a chapter on levain/sourdough, then the rest is recipes. Although this is broken down into "same day recipes", "overnight cold proof recipes", "enriched dough recipes" and "dutch oven levain recipes".

Want to bake a rye bread?  There's a recipe for that with a detailed-but-very-readable explanation about why you don't want to more than 50% of your flour to be made with rye. The answer? It has a very weak gluten structure... so unless you like really dense flat bread.. you need some non-rye in there.

It also includes recipes that use spelt  flour, emmer/einkorn, hazelneut/pecan breads, brioche, as well as white and black bread recipes. So whether you like easy white breads, rustic einkorn sourdoughs, Japanese milk bread, or sourdough starter-based pizza bases... there's a little something for everyone. Honestly, I'm particulart excited to try the apple-cider levain breads, but I have to do that when I'm the only one left in the house.

Things that could be improved...

I'd really like to see a recipe index, or entries for each recipe to be in the index, as well as, the contents too if at all possible. The generalised same-day, overnight, sourdough chapters don't include what recipes are where.

I personally find the way some recipes are writtten painful to read. I'd like it in sections like "ingredients for the roux and instructions for making it", then "this is the ingredients and related procedure for the next bit", rinse-lather-repeat. This has all the ingredients in one section, and all the instructions in another, and you might have steps that aren't actually about making the components, but are in the overall assembly that relate to component construction/handling.

Bottom line: Read the entire recipe before starting, plan it out, but don't assume the bits are perfectly in order and complete in just one section.

The other thing that I'd like to note, that unlike Ken's other book "Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast" the flour weights are aimed at loaf pans, not 1Kg amounts. Whether this suits your particular loaf pan.. is dependant on several factors like recipe density, environmental conditions and yeast activity to say the least. I think most pans would be ok with careful handling, but if you have a big loaf pan, then you may be underwhelmed or overflowing with a smaller one. You have to keep an eye on your dough, because I had two different loaf size from the same dough. Have a look at this:

Area of focus: Definitely more of a recipe book than a textbook, but still very informative. While it does discuss various doughs as a focus of baking and how to make the most of them. I feel it's a bread making analogy of where beginner bakers might be in their journey. In stark contrast to "Sourdough Framework", "Bread Science", and most other bread books, Richard contends that you don't need to know how to rebuild a carburettor in order to drive a car, just know what good driving looks like and emulate it. This is his approach in most of his bread books. You just need to know what the basic processes and end product looks like.

All in all, it's a very pretty book that would be great as a coffee table adornment, a good example of food photography if you have camera mavens in the household, it's good as a gift, or as a reference.

Total page count: 160

No. of pages before recipes: 32

Metric/imperial units? Metric

Number of recipes: 52 total, 14 white dough recipes, 9 olive dough recipes, 11 brown dough recipes, 8 rye doughs and 9 sweet dough recipes.

Photos for every recipe? Almost all of them, 1-2 don't. Lots of useful images throughout the book though.

Price range (new 2nd ed): $25-$60 (Australian) for a paperback, although the $25 end is often part of a bundle. $45-$80 for a hardcover.

Price range (used): First edition softcover about $15-35 (AUD) and hardcovers come in at $30-$50. Second edition, $25-$50 (softcover), $35-$60 (hardcover).

Notable Features & FYI: "Dough" has been translated into 9 languages, page 16 has the best colour photo representation of just how cooked a loaf should be when made with white doughs (obviously, dark flours would be darker for each stage) and there's nine images, ranging from raw to perfectly baked, all the way to burnt. So you can compare where your bread bake is at.

Pros:

Firstly, would I be comfortable in recommending this book to a beginner? Absolutely. There's nothing here that would overwhelm anyone possessing rudimentary baking skills. All you need is to read the recipe carefully, get everything ready to go before start, measure everything out carefully, and follow the instructions. Intermediate bakers can also benefit from this book because this covers some material that's oddly missed in many of the other books listed here.

Aside from detailed descriptions of how baked/toasted bread gets in numerous stages of the cook. "Dough" features some of the most diverse range of bread loaf shaping, starting wigh fougasse, epi, lemon rolls, bread shots, and dough puffs, along with the usual loaves, boules, torpedos, baguettes and rolls. I really like that you can take most of these recipes and really "go to town" by presenting it in fancy ways. Few if any books in this list do that, so it augments other books well.

Cons:

Now, if you're expecting the correct photos for the recipe to be placed conveniently "at hand", you'll be a little disappointed. There are several "two page spreads" showing a selection of finished breads. The problem is, that they're at the start of each section. The images are clearly labeled, so you can go "ooh that looks tasty"... and flip to it. However, you get to the recipe and there's b-roll pictures of Richard scraping dough out of a mixing bowl... when the finished product shot could have been in the most logical and convenient spot.

As a stand-alone book, it's very good, but it can seem a little incomplete in a few places. It wasn't designed to be a "compendium of all things bread". As such it's a bit of a "gateway drug" to buying Richard's other books which I have reviewed below. That said, as a recipe book it's very good.

Recipes I like in this book:

I particularly like the red onion and smoke bacon bread and doughnuts for shameless comfort food. The cracker puffs are fantastic if you're hosting a party and out of biscuits, but they're only good "on the day" and I'd encourage complete consumption within a few hours for best experiences. The cider bread is also very good, but didn't make the "first time try for review purposes" seen in the recipes here.

Conclusion:

I have a very high success rate with this book, the recipes are diverse enough to keep me coming back, the instructions are clear, and for the most part, the book is clean and well-presented. Unless you're a particularly advanced bread baker, this book would offer something to everyone, and have a place in their bread baking libraries.

Area of focus: Sourdough, levain, and longer-make bread variants... with some sweets in there too. This also looks into unusual flour types (or flour replacements/amendments) such as flours made from dried, powdered cabernet grape skins. WARNING: DO NOT USE THE GRAPE FLOUR SUPPLIER LINK ON PAGE 156, IT HAS BEEN HACKED AND THE SUPPLIER SITE'S ADOBE FLASH FRAMEWORK HAS BEEN UNSUPPORTED SINCE 2020! DO NOT TRUST THIS SITE WITH YOUR MONEY! BUY IT SOMEWHERE ELSE!

Total page count: 159

No. of pages before recipes: 53

Metric/imperial units? Both

Number of recipes: 33 (including variants of first bread, and croissants, but ignoring the recipes for sauces and other additions to the primary recipes).

Photos for every recipe? Yes, but not all the variants within the recipe.

Price range (new): First edition: e-book $15 (AUD) Soft cover $30-$50. Hard cover $30-$65 (AUD) Second edition (2025): Hard cover $35-$80 (AUD)

Price range (used): Not overly different to new prices.. for the most part. At least, not at the time of writing.

Notable Features & FYI: This is the 2025 (The second, just released edition, at the time of writing). It was officially released less than 2 weeks ago.

Honestly, if you like a lot of step-by-step photos, and nice balance between pretty and useful... then you're sure to like "Crust". Another, very pretty book. Full of no-nonsense-but-simplified information and later, recipes. There's an interesting discussion on the "health of bread" in the back, as well as what to do with leftover breads... (I particularly like "Le Pudding" found on page 154).

Like almost every other book in this list, it has an introductory section. However, this one has a few things that, despite it being shorter than some of the others, involve tips that make life a lot easier.

It actually lives up to it's name and has a section dedicated to "Achieving the crust". It's only a couple of pages long, but it really helps.

Perhaps the biggest thing for me is the "What about the weather?" section. In this bit, it covers tweaks that significantly improve a recipe's reliability and adjust a recipe to cope with changing conditions. Once you figure out the proportion of those changes, you can apply that to any recipe of that type from any book. That has far-reaching benefits to me or any other serious baker.

This book goes through each of the major steps of bread making, one section at a time, and helps to refine the entire bread making procedure. Like every baker I've met, I'm better at some parts of the process than others, and this has helped improve some of my weaker areas. It also helped me to "go easier" on some of my stronger sections which helped tame my inner over-enthusiastic tendencies. More isn't always the same as better.

Outside of the basic introductory section, you'll find that it discusses autolyse in the "Slow" section which specialises in preferments/sourdough/levain breads that take longer.

I also like the "Different" section which discusses bread recipes using different grains, grape flours, even chestnut flours. Which I have to say certainly are different to most of the other bread boks.

Finally, I like the "Fact or Fiction" section which is actually quite an interesting read. It discusses how many people's issues with bread stem not just from buying the wrong type's of bread, but what we do with them. It also addresses some of the misconceptions that are so prevalent in the media.

Now for the cons:

I've already discussed the hacked site listed in the places to source ingredients. However, for a book on Crust... I'm a little... disappointed. Yes the crust section is helpful, but it's not what I would call in-depth enough for a book supposedly dedicated to the topic. I'd really have liked a more in-depth look at what makes a thin crispy crust vs a chewy one vs. a soft sponge-like one, and how to tweak from one to the other, and anything in between. Yes, there's recipes from each category, but I think Crust is just a name.. and there's just as much dough work, and crumb development in the recipes as Richard Bertinet's other bread books. If you're looking for presentation of the crust, ironically, "Crumb" (reviewed next) has as much if not more tips.

After all that's said and done...

This is still a book I've used and enjoyed reading, and it does have some really interesting ideas that aren't in other books.

Area of focus: If "Dough" was about the fundamentals of bread baking, and"Crust" focussed largely on improving flavour/colour further. "Crumb" is structure and texture centric, along with additional flavour enhancements, and further adaptations to appearance. In short, getting fancy without too much stress!

Total page count: 224

No. of pages before recipes: 60

Metric/imperial units? Metric

Number of recipes: 50 in total. 20 breads/rolls, 1 pizza, a sourdough cracker, some tarts, cinnamon scrolls (which are really good), crumpets, blue corn pancakes, and several meal options, each more decadent than the last.. basically recipes that involve cooking with bread, or dipping it in something like gazpacho.

Photos for every recipe? Almost, there's a couple that don't... but they're very few. Lots of step-by-step "how to" series of images though!

Price range (new): e-book: $20 (AUD).Hardcover: $50-$100 (AUD)

Price range (used): Unfortunately, there are very few found at the time of writing, some more expensive than the new ones!

Notable Features & FYI: This is another very pretty book. I genuinely like how he's broken these books into differing, but interrelated themes. Honestly, I don't think you need to read "Dough" or "Crust" to benefit from this book. Again, if you're even vaguely comfortable with sourdough then I think you'll be ok! I've made some of these recipes several times (occasionally on demand) and even the fancy cinnamon scrolls really aren't that hard at all to accomplish. Just make sure your butter is nice and soft and you won't go wrong! The Miche is delightful, although I sometimes tweak the recipe to make it a little more to my tastes, and the Brioche icecream is exactly as amazing, decadent and fattening as you'd expect it to be.... because.. I know that... now. It's also excellent with a hint of cinnamon and Irish cream. So much so, I bought Ren a case of Irish cream.

Area of focus: Explicitly and perhaps exclusively limited to Italian baking. It's dominated by bread (if you include the sweet breads with the savoury bread and pizza recipes), but adds numerous Italian baked goods to augment those breads too.

Total page count: 234

No. of pages before recipes: 20

Metric/imperial units? Both.

Number of recipes: 112 Total. 45 breads/pizzas, 11 pies/tortes, 12 sweet leavened breads, 11 sweet tart-related recipes. 12 biscuits, and 8 cakes.... and 13 additional recipes.

Photos for every recipe? No. 72% do though... some a few pages away from the recipes.. and are NOT labelled. So don't be afraid to flip a few pages further to see if the pic is there.

Price range (new): $30-$50 (AUD) for the hardcover.

Price range (used): $20-40 (AUD) for the hardcover.

Notable Features & FYI: This is a slightly "off the beaten track" book here in Australia. However, if you're looking to more Italian-inspired bakery as opposed to the often-French inspired books that dominate the bread making book world, then you've come to the right place.

Gennaro's Italian Bakery: Pros and Cons:

Cons: Not much theory or technique here! Also, non-Italian palates should skip ingredients they don't like.

This is very much, a recipe book, first and foremost. Yes there's a tiny bit of theory before the recipes, but since the recipes start on page 20, and the introduction is on page 6... you have to expect very succinct introductions for each topic.

There's two pages that discuss flours, a page about yeast, and about a page on Biga (a drier-than-poolish preferment, it usually has 50-60% hydration instead of a Poolish's typical 100% hydration). There's a few pages describing mixing, resting and shaping the dough process then we're "off to the races" as far as recipes are concerned.

Perhaps the biggest con for me is that there's a lot of olive-infused this, or nut-encrusted that, and sometimes, there's strange mixes in there that as an Aussie, I'm probably not going to make. I get that it's authentic, but if you don't like olives or nuts.. then authenticity has it's limits. However, I've simply skipped or swapped out the ingredients I am not fond of, and this often works quite well.

Pros: It really does live up to the title.... and, calzones!

Firstly, if it's not baked, it's not in here. So this book skips pasta entirely, given that it's not baked. So it's clear about what it's about and you must keep your expectations in line with that.

There's some breads, tarts, and pies that are genuinely not in the other books I've got (and again, I've looked... whatever that's worth).

Honestly, the book is quite pretty, it's not gorgeous, but it's worth reading.

While there are recipes that are not to my tastes, the Tuscan sweet bread (Pan Dolce Tuscano) was a welcome change when we're inundated with citrus. We'd drowned ourselves in marmalade, and added juice to everything in sight.. a little extra zest usage for something less overtly citrusy was greatly appreciated.

The "focaccia con patate cipolle rosse e pancetta" (or Focaccia with potato, red onion and Italian bacon) is literally one of my most favourite comfort foods I've ever made. (I sometimes slip a little hot salami in, perhaps a Calabrese, or Soppressata for a little extra kick, and maybe a sprinkle of parmesan if I've got one open). If I listed all the recipes I liked... I'd waffle on. So let's just say I like the book, ok?

Any book that covers both pizza and calzone like this one, get's a special mention. Most books focus on pizza. The doughs are simple, effective, and very tasty. Calzone is an often-overlooked variation on the pizza theme and I appreciate that it's included here.

Who would this book suit?

Any Italian lover (or Italophile, if you prefer) who likes baking their own breads, pizzas, cakes, biscuits, etc) would have no qualms in reading and enjoying this book. That said, if you have a particular interest in making calzones, then this is also a great book for that.

If you're more of a "American" pizza lover, don't like olives/nuts, or any of the truly "mediterranean" flavours.. then you might want to look elsewhere. This book is not about "fusion" food styles, but true Italian recipes.

AAARGH! I've made more than a few recipes...

Hmmm, for this book's "demonstrated bake", I have to choose something I haven't made before... <cue drum roll>

Area of focus: Make ahead bread, basically making the dough when you can, then baking on demand.

Total page count: 201

No. of pages before recipes: 12 (this is largely a recipe book with a bare minimum of theory).

Metric/imperial units? Imperial only with volume as backup. Urgh!

Number of recipes: 117 total. 30 loaf breads (some sweet), 32 buns/rolls/breadsticks (again, some sweet), 16 flat breads/pizzas, 9 pastries, 14 "leftover breads", BONUS, 16 jams/spreads.

Photos for every recipe? No. There are 34 pics for 117 recipes (barely 29% of recipes). That said, there are several recipes with images and the recipe variants would be extremely similar... If that helps. This isn't true of all the recipes though. None of the "Leftover bread" or "Spreads" have dedicated images.... just so you know.

Price range (new): $30-$75 (AUD) softcover.

Price range (used): $12-$25 (AUD) softcover.

Notable Features & FYI: I wasn't kidding when I said that there are no metric measurements. So if you're in metric-loving lands, I recommend spending a rainy afternoon going through and noting the metric equivalents for each of the 117 recipes. Yes, that's going to be tedious.

This book, while usable by beginners, would probably best suit bakers who are familiar with the overall bread baking process, and only need clear instructions to get the job done. For this reason, I'm putting it at slightly less beginner friendly and more for intermediate bakers.

Now not every recipe is "pure bread" but from the recipes I've read (and remembered) the "non-bread" recipes include things that bread can be a component of, (bread pudding) or the other recipes pair well with bread.. like soup. Don't worry, there's quite a few flavoured/infused/enriched/sweet breads too!

One of the interesting things about this book is the numerous ways to make flatbreads! There's literally "Flatbreads on the grill" recipes, there's "Frying pan flat breads", even how to bake naan on a metal baking sheet in the oven. So unless you're down to "sticks over a fire"... in which case, I'd simply add a hot flattish rock to the fire, and then pull it out to bake on... chances are, you can use at least one recipe with whatever you've got.

Honestly, there's a huge range of recipes, many with various means to make them, and they do it by easing the time requirements to make the breads in question. That's got to help right?

So for the less visusal folks, those with a bit of bread making experience behind them. then this book is really quite a good book to get. If you're looking for detailed knowledge and instruction with lots of pretty pictures... this isn't for you.

I have to say the "Whole wheat and parmesan pizza crust" is not only convenient for a cheese/bread making hobbyist for myself, it's absolutely divine with a less pungent 4 year aged Parmesan (I intentionally dropped the lipase, which often gives Parmesan that pungency), and it worked so well with a home grown tomato passata! If you buy your ingredients, I'm sure it'll still be an excellent recipe.

This book prioritizes bread making speed and efficiency over extracting the best possible flavour from your ingredients. It makes no secret of this fact, and is the fundamental point of this book. However, this is one of those 80% of the gains for 20% of the effort... and that 80% is still very tasty! I honestly the benefits do outweigh the drawbacks by a hefty margin. Other reviewers have criticised the book with lower scores because they've forgotten this fact, and I personally think that's unfair.

The point of this book is to get people who would otherwise never have time to bake bread, be able to squeeze it in to their busy lives and get them baking. From there, we can worry about the "honing of the craft" later. Viewed in this light, Donna has done an exceptional job. Even I as a guy who uses preferments all the time, and will bake for half a day, appreciate the fact that last-minute situations can be solved using these techniques. This isn't an either/or thing, it's a "This can help in difficult situations, as well as everyday use... " thing.

Of the recipes I've tried, I have noticed that the breads don't always rise as much as the more-involved recipes, but when I say "not as much" it's either a little bit less.... or quite a bit more. Maybe I have stronger yeast than Donna, maybe I left it in a warm spot.... in any case.. there's a bit of variability and I'm ok with that. If it gets me hot crusty dinner rolls, or freshly made burger buns for my next barbecue in spontaneous situations, then I'm happy. I don't want to sell this book short though.... The results I've had are often still more than enough to rival many the better examples of store bought bread, by the simple virtue that it's as fresh as it gets, and even a simple 2 minute tweak or added ingredient can take it from "very good" to "wow". That's a great "cost-to-benefit" ratio. Even if the original recipes seem a little "ho-hum" on first glance... or if you're of a much younger/younger persuasion... I guess that would be "meh" and "blah" respectively. :-) (See, I'm hip with oldies and newbies alike.... or not. Hehe). I urge you to give the recipes a try because they've pleasantly surprised us at most turns.

Make Ahead Bread Pros:

One of the things I like most about this book is it's efficiency wherever I turn. Want to start a sourdough starter without committing to rigid feeding schedules and tossing out half or even 80% of your starter on a regular basis? Then here's the instructions for adding ounces or fractions of an ounce each day where other books describe cups or fractions thereof. Whatever units used, this book starts small and maintains the starter with far less waste and "chucking out" starter on a daily basis. For metric lovers, that's 28g for an ounce... which is perfect for bakers who aren't baking every day.

I tested their "making sourdough starter" process and it worked pretty well. In a weird way, starting small and adding a tiny amount each day to feed it is far less wasteful. Also, simply stating "just stir your starter whenever you're in the kitchen or happen to be nearby" makes me far more likely to do it, and it really made a difference. Sometimes I've taken weeks to get a starter going... and I was pleasantly surprised to start seeing bubbles on day 4, more bubbles by day 5, and I was pretty much ready to bake by day 6. The small feedings really do work with my once/twice a week bread baking routine.

Make Ahead Bread Cons:

When you read a "loaf pan" recipe and it says spray the pan with oil, cooking spray, or smear it with butter.. that is not a suggestion. Do it, do it lots, and do it comprehensively. These recipes stick so well at times, even silicone loaf trays are prone to sticking more than I'm used to. That said, the higher hydration loaves are worth it... because they taste much better.

Area of focus: A general bread and bakery book, specialising in recipes that can be made in bulk easily then baked as needed.

Total page count: 381

No. of pages before recipes: 53

Metric/imperial units? Both with volume measurements as backup.

Number of recipes: 115 total. 11 variations from the master recipe, 46 "peasant loaves", 23 flatbreads/pizzas, 8 gluten-free breads, & 27 enriched breads/pastries.

Photos for every recipe? No, there's a selection in the "colour photo pages" but they are not necessarily near the recipe in question. That said, the photos are labelled with the page numbers of the appropriate recipe.

Price range (new): $40-75 (Australian) for the hard cover.

Price range (used): $45-$105 (be careful with shipping.. it really adds up here, but if you're in the US/Europe.. then things are much better. Australians are likely best served with buying new, and taking advantage of any sales as they arise. There's also an original edition called "Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day" (Note the lack of "The New..." in the title, which can be as low as $5 second hand. It doesn't have the updates of this edition, but if you're on a budget, maybe it's worth looking into. Just keep those shipping costs in mind when you order it. It's not always the best deal.

Notable Features & FYI: This book has a wide range recipes. From Wurzelbrot, to Limpa, "Tapenade bread" to "Vermont Cheddar Bread". In short, it's all over the map, including many of the popular well known breads around the world. So that's a huge plus.

My greatest complaint is the publishing style....

There are three clusters of glossy photo pages, at roughly 25%, 50%, and 75% through the book. However, while these photos are very beautiful... there's only 34 images (none of which are actually on a numbered page themselves, they're just "wedged in there". 34 represents a mere third of the recipes. Now the astute die-hard fans/readers will point out that there's a single image showing "the loaf breads" (6th image of the first cluster of photo pages) However, these are not labelled to identify which recipe corresponds to which loaf in the image. So in my view, they don't have an identifiable image.

Personally, I detest this bizarre placement of photo pages together. I'm sure it makes the books cheaper to produce, but I find it hugely inconvenient. You have to look at the picture first, then use it's label to find the recipe. If you're looking at the recipe, you have to flip through each and every image in the book until you find it, and just hope one is there (the photo pages are not numbered). You see, I work from the recipe, not the pictures... so this is a pain in the neck. Honestly, I think in the 2020s and beyond.. a half page image in or next to the recipe isn't hard. If a picture is worth a thousand words, and you're books all about saving time.... skipping most of the recipe images... is ironic at best... crazy at worst. The problem seems to be across all the "...5 minutes a day" books.

Overall, the range of recipes and price point make it a compelling choice on its own, regardless of the time-saving focus of the recipes. As the first (and most generalised) book in the "Bread in 5" series, busy hobbyist bread bakers will truly appreciate this book. Although for visual learners... I honestly think there must be more compelling options in the "make bread quickly" category... I just haven't found them... because they all given about a third of the recipes an actual picture.

Area of focus: Make ahead/time saving bread baking, specialising in the gluten-free breads.

Total page count: 291

No. of pages before recipes: 63

Metric/imperial units? Both for quantities, with US volume measurements as a backup. Unfortunately, all temperatures are in Fahrenheit. Ironic for a book aimed at saving time that's sold internationally.

Number of recipes: 72 total. 10 variations from the master recipe, 26 "peasant loaves", 12 flatbreads/pizzas, & 22 enriched breads/pastries.

Photos for every recipe? No, 36 colour images (roughly 50% of recipes represented). They've done the exact same thing as the original "The New Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day"... and placed the images in three separate clusters of glossy photo pages at roughly 55%, 66%, and 85% of the way through the book. Again, these pages with the photos are not numbered or part of the page count. So you have to look at the pictures first, use their label to find the recipe... but the reverse is not possible. Please read my slight rant about this layout in the equivalent section of "The New Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day" above.

Price range (new): $50-$85 (Australian) for the hard cover.

Price range (used): $35-$100 (Australian) for the hard cover. Please be careful with shipping.. it really adds up here, but if you're in the US/Europe.. then things are much better. Australians are likely best served with buying new, and taking advantage of any sales as they arise.

Notable Features & FYI: If you've read "The New Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day"... you might be forgiven for thinking you're reading that book.

In "Gluten-Free Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day" they've obviously culled the "Gluten free" chapter (since every recipe in this book is already gluten free) and basically used exactly the same layout, chapter titles, and even the recipes are named the same. The only distinction is that they're written with instructions and ingredients to make a gluten free alternatives.

I can see how this might be dangerous if you own both books (as I do) and aren't paying attention. Which I've been known to do... Or if you've jotted the recipes down in your notes in your baking log/journal... and may have omitted the "Gluten Free" bit since the recipes in this book assume that without specifying it.

At first glance, the 72 recipes (as opposed to the 115 of the original book) might seem quite the drop. I mean it is 38% fewer recipes. However, some recipes just aren't designed for gluten-free breads... so it's quite understandable from this perspective.

72 recipes is still more than many of the books listed here, and given the extra dietary constraint, Jeff and Zoë have done a commendable job.

That said, I'd like a 1:1 ratio of photos to recipes, and for the pictures to be placed with the recipe. Again, ditching the pictures that convey so much information in a book aimed at saving time... <cue melodramatic slap to the forehead here>

So what is "Gluten Free Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes a Day" like to bake with?

I should start out by saying that gluten-free bread is a very different experience to the gluten-rich bakes seen pretty much everywhere else on this page. If you're coming from an existing glutenous (not gluttonous) baking background, you're definitely going to be tempted to knead your dough. Restrain that urge.... there's no gluten to "beef up" through kneading.

Like the non-gluten-free version of this book, this gluten-free book has a "master dough" recipe, that you can make quickly then store in the fridge until you're ready to bake. From that dough, many recipes listed in the book can be made (except those in chapter 6). Considering how "key" the master dough really is in this book, I really couldn't "skip it" this time. However, my first attempt did not go to plan.

From the outset, this was much more like cake batter than an actual dough. The fact that Gluten Free Artisan Bread in 5 Mins a Day say to use a stand mixer paddle instead of the usual dough hook, is quite telling, but the full impact of it's meaning wasn't clear to me until the time it came to "shape" my dough. You see, as soon as I poured the dough from the mixer bowl after a 2 hour rest/proove (where it did rise noticeably)... it literally poured out like the batter that it had been. There was no structure, just a bubbly-unholy-mix between the liquid Plaster of Paris mix, and the sticky somewhat-meringue-like-goop before being whipped to stiff peaks... or even soft peaks for that matter.

Forget any "shaping" capability, it was literally flowing off my cutting board/baking paper, slowly for sure, but way too fast for actual dough shaping. It was a nightmare to get off the suggested baking paper... I ended up losing about 15-20% of the overall mix because my dough scraper tore up the paper more than merely scraped the fluid dough off.

Got batter instead of dough? Time to improvise the heck out of the recipe... just to recover something.

So I tried two things:

1. Scrape as much into my loaf pans as possible, allowing for some room for the baking rise.
2. Use the remaining part still in the mixing bowl to make a flat bread.

Area of focus: A "less nerdy" intro into sourdough baking than "The Sourdough Framework" so I think it will appeal to a wider audience. It's an easier read, with lots of pictures, and nearly 10x the recipe count!

Total page count: 232

No. of pages before recipes: 76

Metric/imperial units? Metric only

Number of recipes: 30 total. 10 basic sourdoughs, 10 wheat-free sourdoughs, 5 savoury sourdoughs, & 5 celebratory sourdoughs.

Photos for every recipe? Yes! Big honkin' double page spreads.. although there's blocks of text over bits of them sometimes... not over the loaf.

Price range (new): $30 AUD for the softcover

Price range (used): none found at the time of writing.

Notable Features & FYI: Not available on Amazon (Although Yoke's other books can be) so you're best bet is Yoke's direct web site:

https://wildsourdough.com.au

It's written by someone who bakes at home, as part of her daily routine.

Yoke Mardewi is a sourdough veteran based in Western Australia, and she travels around the country doing sourdough workshops... and obviously writes books too. I've actually had the pleasure of exchanging emails with her about bread making after buying her book direct from her. She was very helpful, and to the point... not surprising, she's a mother!

What I really like about this book is it teaches you a variety of ways to make great sourdough on a budget.

You don't need fancy $700+ (Australian, delivered) cast iron "Challenger" loaf pans, or fancy pizza stones (although that's great if you have them) she talks about buying stone tiles to use as baking stones, or simple plate steel from a metalworking supply shop for a baking base. The rest of the gear you can probably buy from a $2 shop.

2026 Update for Australian bakers: I recently bought two baking steels from Vevor of all places, at $73 Australian dollars each, delivered. A comparable piece of mild steel from a local metal supplier was quoted at $170-$200 each, and you can forget delivery, that plate has to be picked up from the store. So, always do you research before you drop that cash! In that regard, this book is starting to show it's age.

That said... most of the advice in the book is still relevant, years after publication. It's Yoke's "out of the box" and "beginner friendly" thinking that can save you a lot of money, all while elevating your baking capabilities. If you end up making a mistake, you can clean the cheap gear up, or simply replace it.

Let's talk about the recipes:

I really like how the recipes are completely "no nonsense" and this book has one of my highest "first time I've tried this recipe" success rate of any book here. The faster/easier loaves are definitely the more attractive recipes to Ren if she's cooking, but the sweet potato and cheddar sourdough loaf is her "go to" when she's all about the eating but not making... Meanwhile, I still prefer the more savoury, signature "Wild sourdough" and sourdough hot cross buns were pretty good.

I think the recipe section is quite well arranged. There's some wheat free (but not necessarily gluten free) recipes, but also recipes that incorporate kamut, spelt, wholemeal as well as typical bread flours. Sometimes a hybrid mix of multiple types. This is a big help when it comes to blazing your own trail once you've made these a few times. Just one piece of advice though:

No matter which recipe you're making, just make absolutely sure that your starter is in the frothy, active state before use. This is critical!

Don't let the title fool you!

While this is labelled "Book One - By Hand", it's actually not the first book Yoke has written. Also, despite the "by hand" label, you can absolutely use a stand mixer if you have one. Although, with that said, you don't get a literal "feel" for the dough if you do so. That tactile sense from the dough is sometimes very helpful. If you intend to use a mixer, Yoke's Book "Wild Sourdough for the Thermomix" might also suit. Although that's not the book I'm reviewing here. She also has e-books for those outside of Australia and even a sourdough app, which from what I understand, augments her e-books too.

From this book, I've gained a lot of meaningful sourdough-related guidance, especially when talking about gluten free variations or ones using unusual flours/seeds as a base. I love classic flour sourdoughs, but mixing it up with spelt, and other ingredients adds a great deal of flexibility.

The cons:

This is a simplified book that is not going to give you the "science" or much detail on "why" things work the way they do. Sure you can experiment (and you're encouraged to do so) but you're not going to consciously adapt to changing situations, or fix things when they go awry without a great deal of experience. It's for this reason, I put "The Sourdough Framework" first. Which complements this book beautifully.

So I shouldn't get this book?

It's not inferior, at all... it's just "not free", and it's aimed at practical folks who are more likely to simply want a quick introduction to sourdough breads. That's a slightly different audience to "The Sourdough Framework's" tech-heads. Having said that, I think this book would become less useful to intermediate bakers once they've found their way... but still recommend periodically looking at these base recipes and/or ingredients to branch out from.

Wild Sourdough is not free. (Nor am I implying that it should be). That said, it's still very affordable, and pays itself off by teaching you how to set yourself up without spending much money. If you bought the e-book for $16.90 (Australian) and saved $20 or more from the advice provided... which is easy to do, this book pays you to read it and act upon the information.

To contrast this with "The Sourdough Framework"... and others.:

Some of the links for The Bread Code (affiliated with The Sourdough Framework above) are for premium baking tools that are nice, but completely overkill for those starting out (or just doing it casually). Honestly, you just don't need all that to make a great sourdough. Please stick to the basics, and put your money where it's most useful.... buying ingredients so you can gain skills and experience, not gear. Perhaps most importantly, there's a sense of frivolity and family in "Wild Sourdough" instead of "The Sourdough Framework's" more... technical/historical delivery of the material. If you're looking for a wider range of recipes in a book, then this crushes Framework.

Form vs Function...

I don't want to devalue the contents of this book. It's a great book from a content point of view. The presentation is certainly not going to be for everyone's taste if you're looking for a gorgeous coffee table book with pretty rustic kitchen scenes or cloth-covered fine-dining aesthetics. (Which almost every modern cook book does to some degree, have you noticed that?)

If you're looking for the pretty modern bread books. I feel "Wild Sourdough" isn't ideal. Honestly, it's closer to a colour coded school textbook from the 90s, with pages from each chapter given tones of bright greens, oranges, pinks, and deeper purple, and if they didn't have a double page spread image for each recipe, I'd have described it as "cluttered" or "unnecessarily busy". (That's just my view point.. your tastes will almost certainly vary from my own). None of this rustic/down-to-Earth bread making theme is matched by the overall layout of the book itself. So if you're looking for "classy cookbook gifts", I'd lean more to "Homemade Sourdough" (below), "Tartine" (below that), or a more generalised book with that specific "Food fashion" look.

That said...

For the scruffy sourdough battler's out there... this book is worth reading, and you'll absolutely make a fine sourdough from this book, that anyone would be privileged to eat. :-)

Let's see how I go with a couple of first-attempt recipes, shall we?

Area of focus: General sourdough baking, mostly bread but with a few sweet breads up the back. Incidentally, it seems also focused on general psychological warfare with this particular wayward Ham.

Total page count: 160

No. of pages before recipes: 24

Metric/imperial units? Metric (with volume measurements as backup)

Number of recipes: 42 Total. 5 batter breads, 9 rye sourdoughs, 14 plain wheat sourdough, 8 flavoured sourdoughs, and 6 sweet breads.

Photos for every recipe? Almost, but there are few doubled-up recipes without their opposite page photos.

Price range (new): $23-$55 (AUD) for a hardcover.

Price range (used): None found that weren't more expensive.

Notable Features & FYI: This is a clean, very pretty bread book aimed at beginners. The sourdough theory section is basic but should absolutely work. Although in colder climates, it may take a bit longer than indicated to get a sourdough starter going from scratch. If you live in the tropics... that might be different too. :-)

"Homemade Sourdough" certainly has a wider range of bread recipes than "The Sourdough Framework" or "Bread Science", so there's a much greater diversity to learn from this book as is. There's Shaobing (also known as "Beijing Sesame Buns"), Bagels, English Muffins, Kamut, Raisin Rye, as well as the sourdough varieties of the usual suspects like French Baguettes, Ciabatta, Pumpernickel, & "Everyday loaf".

I particularly like the batter breads which are about as easy and forgiving as you can get, and vary in finished products from "flapjacks" to "fruit bread". That's pretty diverse!

I'm not the biggest sweet tooth in the household (but let's be honest and say the cinnamon rolls are amazing, by the way... and work just as well with home made jam or any sweet pie filling you care to name..... if it's made with fresh cherry pie filling, made from freshly picked, luscious, almost-black home grown cherries... you're in for a real treat!) That said, Ren is a huge fan of the waffles... and it doesn't seem to matter which recipe she used. :-)

Pros:

I really like the layout of the book, it's clean, modern and laden with photographs right where you need them. No flipping through pages to find what the finished bread should look like, and I really appreciate that. The hard cover sits open without closing on me, which is also very handy when hands are covered in flour/dough.

The troubleshooting section has actual photos of each example, so you know which problem you're facing. Not all books do that!

If you're a Rye fan, then this is an excellent book for that. However it also includes the usual wheat breads, and the occasional hybrid mixture as well.

I think the price-recipe value is there, and while it's definitely aimed at beginners, I like the extra details of creating a rye starter as well as the usual wheat version. That's not covered in many other books.

Cons:

Sometimes, the photos of the bread are so coated in flour that you can't really see the bread, that makes the photos somewhat less useful. Also, no cut slices! So it's hard to see what the crumb should look like. That said, most other books fail on this point too.

This is not an advanced book by any means. It'll give you some recipes to try rye bread baking, which needs to be made differently from wheat breads, but beyond any troubleshooting suggestions, it's not going to help you to adapt to every situation. Think of this as more a "recipe book" than "bread science" lesson.

That said, "Homemade Sourdough" dabbles in the gluten-free and heirloom "cousins" of wheat grains like Emmer and Kamut, and how Rye doesn't normally need as much kneading. However, this book does not go into much detail on those topics. So it alludes to some more advanced topics, but doesn't do it in any significant degree of depth.

That's ok, it's aimed at beginners!

Honestly, this has been the "playful problem child" book of this list.

Flatbreads? No problem. Waffles? No issues. Risen breads.... Well, I like to phrase it as "a learning experience"...

All the breads are tasty... but weird stuff happens whenever I try a new recipe from this book, and in the rare event I'm not otherwise disturbed by family drama, crazed neighbours, unexpected heat waves/cold snaps, last minute emergency work calls, and cats knocking my bannetons on the floor.. The finished loaves just seem to fight me on the consistency front.

I'm taking some of the responsibility here...

Now, in some ways, my frustrations are circumstances that occurred during my bakes, in unstable conditions. Sourdough simply takes longer time to get from start to finish. Yes, there's plenty of times that I'm not expected to do anything... but if unexpected situations happen on day three of a multi-day process... (heat wave, cold snap, weird spontaneous work trips to fix a hacked data centre). Every time I bake raised breads with previously-untried recipes from this bread book for this review page... something happens.

Usually, when things don't turn out as planned, I've got a pretty good idea where I went wrong (and adapt the procedure for next time). However, there are other times that I just don't know why or how things have changed enough to cause significant differences in result. Same times, temperatures, batches of dough, baked at the same time in the same oven even on the same shelf! Yet different results!

It's sad, because I do keep getting somewhat different results, even when I nail a lot of the variables down. No recipes from the other books seem to trouble me so. Even when everything is double, and even quadruple-checked by two people armed with scales, thermometers, proofers, etc.

It's maddening, but the bread is always tasty! Sometimes in different ways too!

So if you like an always-tasty adventure, surprise results, and perhaps tempting your baking fates, then this is the book for you! If you want precision, and you get it from this book, you're doing better than I am. I believe it's possible, I just haven't experienced it yet.

I'm sorry Jane/Ed et al... if you're reading this, my copy has some mild PTSD attached, but also offers some of the tastiest bread to make up for it. I think other bakers will take this challenge on.

Want to see how I went with an actual bake? (or three)

No matter how much I folded/kneaded, it just refused to firm up. I think too much gluten had been eaten at this point. Consequently, I should have poured this into a loaf pan, instead of using a stone as indicated. It basically became a really big, pizza-sized sourdough cookie that rose maybe 5cm/2" high while baking.

I don't think the recipe is wrong... but it needs to be monitored more closely than I did. Still very tasty though. It works particularly well when buttered with cinnamon sugar (for the full sourdough applie pie experience) or for a more savoury option, it works well with a light cream cheese with some berries. I don't have any berries in this shot... I was hungry and the toaster took too long. :~)

You can see the apple chunks, which the cream cheese has been strategically spread around. Yet it's very filling, even without the nuts.

Honestly, I think this particular bake could have been done at a lower temp for longer, and that would have helped a bit to make it a bit more airy and consistently baked throughout the crumb without burning the crust.

Area of focus: Sourdough/Levain breads, and pastries taught by one of the most famous sourdough professionals in the world, but the recipes are designed with the home baker in mind.

Total page count: 304

No. of pages before recipes: 41.. although the first recipe has a ton of extra information, as it's the basis for many recipes in the book.

Metric/imperial units? Metric only in the ingredients section...(surprising for a baker in San Francisco)... but Fahrenheit is used exclusively in the method/procedure section. That, I found quite frustrating.

Number of recipes: 58 total. However, there are variations and semi-separated recipes for component foodstuffs (meat patties for hamburgers for example) so that number is on the conservative side. In the main chapters, there's 1 country bread dough (although there are 6 variations), 4 semolina/whole wheat breads, 9 baguettes/enriched breads, 42 recipes to use "days old breads"

Photos for every recipe? All the ones that matter.

Price range (new): ebook (kindle) $32 Australian. Hardcover $45-$65

Price range (used): Few genuinely worth considering, as they're often more expensive.

Notable Features & FYI: Tartine is actually the original book in the "Tartine Series". The other two books are: "Tartine: A Revised Edition, A Classic Revisited: 68 All New Recipes and 55 Updated Favourites", and finally, "Tartine No. 3: Modern, Ancient, Classic, Whole".

Far be it from me to complain about long-winded and/or vague passages, but the titles are a mouthful. From here out, I'm calling them book 2 and 3 respectively.

Honestly, I think I like the much shorter titles like "Tartine Bread" more. However, book 2 probably offers a better value, given that it has more recipes, and revised favourites. That said, I just had to include this book in the list.

"Tartine Bread" is an amazing book, it's full of beautiful (albeit matte finished) photographs, and my hard cover is padded which feels odd in my hands. The only other book in my library that feels so upholstered is my "Temples of Barbecue"...(maybe it's an american foodie thing?) but I digress.

The layout of "Tartine Bread" is reminiscent of Ken Forkish's "Flour Water Salt Yeast", with the back story/introduction called "Bread in Time", and then moves into the various chapters that each have different recipes. Honestly, this is like many of the less textbook/technical books.

The overall book layout:

Chapter 1 has the core recipe "the country bread dough" which is the keystone recipe which the book centres itself around. Chapter 2 covers the recipes for "Semolina and Whole-Wheat Breads". Chapter 3 focuses on "Baguettes and Enriched Breads", then the fourth and final chapter "Days-old bread" is what you can do with bread (new or old). It's more recipes that use bread up, than specifically make it, but there are a few more bread recipes in there as part of more complex concoctions.

The recipe selection:

Honestly, from a "purely bread" perspective, this is a very mainstream Western European bread book. Once you get past the core recipe. The most exotic bread recipe is Kugelhopf (a German brioche).. but you're not going to find much in the way of flatbreads outside of pizza, nothing of the nordic breads, and the Middle East/Africa/Central or South America... forget it. This book is about what Tartine makes and serves, so you have to keep that in mind.

That said, once you leave the bread section and read the "Days old bread" chapter, things do get more interesting. There's a recipe for Banh Mi (although the bread recipe isn't explicitly outlined.. I'd just choose a baguette recipe from earlier in the book) and surprisingly, there's no paté in their Banh Mi recipe. Sacrilege! Although the "Baker's Foie" toward the end of the book in the condiment section would fix that.

Side note: The "green aioli" found in the banh mi recipe goes exceptionally well on steak sandwiches/steak burgers, even roast chicken/potatoes... if you're feeling a little decadent and are in the mood for an Asian twist.

To sum up...

I think Tartine has a lot to offer for beginner bread makers, sourdough enthusiasts, and bread bakers who don't know what to do with any leftover breads. In this regard, it's fantastic. For those discovering general cookery, Tartine also makes a compelling addition to anyone's food library. If you're looking for exotic bread types outside what Tartine sells, then it probably best to find a more suitable book.

Aside from the bread recipes, there's a wide range of general meal ideas that augment the breads well or offer entertaining variety to use them up. Recipes range from leavened waffles, meatball sandwiches and burgers, to porchetta, "bread salads", sauces and jams, and of course, puddings/desserts as well.

Area of focus: Incorporating freshly milled flours into home made bread/pastry cooking.... Generally using your own grain mill or milling attachment for a stand mixer.

Total page count: 255

No. of pages before recipes: 76

Metric/imperial units? Metric only, no volume measurements at all.

Number of recipes: 36 main recipes total, but including the "add ons" 63. The break down is:

8 in "Making Bread" (add 1 for honey butter), 7 in "Making Pasta" (and 10 pasta fillings/sauces, and meal recipes), 9 in "Making Pizza" (add 16 topping recipes), 12 in "Pastry, Cookies & Cakes"

Photos for every recipe? Yes for the main recipes, no for the add ons. Glossy, often full-page photos and lots dotted throughout the book to shop key steps.

Price range (new): $20-$140 (Australian) for the hard cover. I don't recommend Amazon's $140 when Book Grocer in Australia sells it for just $20. Which is exactly the same price as the e-book.

Price range (used): N/A (none found)

Notable Features & FYI: This book is full of useful information in a practical, no nonsense guide. It's we'll illustrated, and the recipes easy to understand. That said, it's not without some issues.

Let's start with the white elephant-shaped con in the room.

Warning: This is a "gateway" guide. Most people looking into buying this particular book will want several new things to equip them for the fresh flour mission, most notably:

• A source of freshly milled flour at an absolute minimum... Or if milling flour at home...
• Probably need some wheat berries (and/or other grains) to grind up. That needs contacts (at least here in Australia) and/or a willingness to pay a premium for exotic/heirloom varieties.
• Naturally, a mill or milling attachment for a stand mixer to make this all happen.
• A cool, dry place for storage. Failing that, more space in the freezer to store the fresh flour, even some unmilled grains, and enough air-tight containers to handle that.

I'm not saying it can't be done affordably, but you need to go into this with open eyes. My mill attachment was bought on sale for $149 Australian (delivered) but the wheat berries added another $110 (for 20Kg or about 44lb). To order less berries would have tripled my shipping rate per kilo, making the transport fees over 80% of the price... so I didn't have much choice.

Back to the book!

I'm so glad the first recipe in the book starts with 1Kg of flour (that's a big loaf, even by my standard recipe which only needed 400g)... otherwise my 20Kg purchase might have been a "bit much".

Let's talk pros:

Now Flour Lab isn't unique in the grains-to-flour thing. However, while it's U.S. centred, and you can definitely look up their grain and flour references and use what you have. It's not trying to emulate other countries in either wheat varieties or milling techniques. It's letting regional recipes be true to the region they come from and maximising the results.

Other books on the subject (Most notably The Taste of Bread by Raymond Calvel et al, also reviewed here) is perhaps a little more French-bread centric, and discusses that through a "this is how we do it in our country" perspective. It's also far less pretty as a book, it's a harder read, and covers more technical baking knowledge than Flour Labs. Both are aimed at extracting the best results from the ingredients, but the presentation, and let's face it, price puts Flour Lab as a more modern, more affordable, and easier-to-understand bread baking book.

Conversely, comparing Flour Lab to The Miller's Daughter (review below) is a bit problematic because The Miller's Daughter is more about using unusual or heritage grains/grits/pulses and beyond in general cookery rather than specialising in bread itself. So while there's some overlap, the books serve two very different objectives. Both books can help you to improve your bread game though. So please keep that in mind.

Flour Lab is very handy if you're interested in figuring out how different species of wheat and other grains impact the bake itself, or how the coarseness of your flour impacts hydration levels. This will help you to use fresh flours much more confidently. In this regard, it links to similar topics covered in the slightly more technical, Sourdough Framework discussed above.

Of course, Flour Lab discusses how fresh flour enhances the flavour of the bread and the outlines the health benefits. For me this led to a variety of questions about:

"Where do I get these precious wheat berries?"

"Why is good wheat so expensive and hard to find?"

Personally, what makes the book an interesting read for me, isn't just the recipes and tips, it is the "broader perspective".

Flour Lab discusses the state of the flour industry as a whole (I like the one-word summation, "broken"... although I do feel that's a little unfair given how reductive one word is, despite the obvious problems with the industry). Yet Flour Lab does helpfully provide context including a slight jaunt into the rich history of wheat and other grains, their various impacts on societies across the globe.. and potential directions current wheat/agricultural/food science research is heading. Perhaps most intriguing is how farmers are responding and collaborating with artisanal bakers across the globe to address numerous industry and societal issues.

That's all great.. but how does that help everyday home bread bakers?

For me, it helped by providing ways to avoid problems I would definitely have had if I was "winging it", and helped me to tweak my online searches while looking for grains to mill. Ultimately, I was led to farmers who've partnered with bakers in Victoria.. not exactly local to me, but I'll take it. Australia, for it's many strengths, has a small population, and consequently, smaller conclaves of fresh flour communities. They exist, but if you live in a country like Australia, expect to reach out further than others in more populated countries.

The other huge pro of this book is the full colour, glossy step-by-step photos on key steps. For anyone who has battled various hand-drawn images, and the fuzzy black and white photos of yore... rejoice! You're no longer trying to decypher (or "decipher" if you're a millenial/American) a doctor's chicken-scratches that could be interpretive dance manoeuvres, or squinting at some detail that may (or may not) be there in the image. Fold it like this, let the dough tell you when it doesn't want to stretch any more, and then shape it like that. Easy peasy!

You can apply this information just as well to any recipe in all the other books or online videos too!

The everyday cons (not the white elephant):

Let's talk about ingredients for a moment...

Many "Flour Lab" recipes assume you can find the appropriate grains to make your own exotic flours using U.S. varieties as suggested examples. ("Kansas Turkey" or "Blue Beard" are a couple of instances). Other ingredients such as potatoes (for potato gnocci) often suggest U.S. varieties too, like "Idaho" and "Yukon Gold", and while they may be readily available in the U.S., this certainly is not the case here in Australia and other countries. Honestly, if you're in doubt, skip the supermarket for a week and ask your fruit and veggie shop friends for their advice for local equivalents. While you're there, ask what the equivalents might be in different seasons, so you're ready "year round".

I'm rustic, not pompous/Bourgeoisie!

If you ask yourself, "What on Earth is Muscovado Sugar and why is it special?!"

If your pantry is a little basic, you probably have white sugar, maybe a brown for porridge, and a castor sugar for cakes. If that describes your pantry, never fear, you're not alone!

Unfortunately, in "Flour Lab", there's a lot of unusual ingredients, like "Muscovado sugar" which is just a deep brown sugar with a slightly stronger molasses-ish? flavour.... and you can totally use that, or plain sugar with a couple of teaspoons of molasses, or skip the molasses all together and use brown sugar.. or whatever sugar you have. Muscovado sugar is now widely available in Australian supermarkets,(that wasn't the case 20 years ago) but it is a little pricier. Use whatever you have.

Back to the wheat....

Just know that most of these wheat varieties are often described below the name with some phrase like:

"a hard winter wheat", or a "durum", or a "spelt".... etc. Just get whatever you can in your area that meets the broader description. It does not have to be the precise species they list, ok?

Now that I've tried some of the recipes, is milling your own flour worth it?

It's difficult to describe what the first and simplest recipe does, let alone the more complex ones. But here goes....

Think of a good bread flavour (no, not your commercial white bread in a plastic bag... a proper artisan loaf, fresh from the bakery)... then amplify the smell, the taste, and consequently, the overall flavour. You can smell the difference before you even start baking the dough. During baking freshly milled doughs lends a "baked bread aroma" that is even stronger than home-made breads with commercial flours. Later, when eating it.. the flavour is significantly more pronouced.... so bread becomes more than a mere transport for spreads and toppings, it has a flavour that makes you far more aware of it's presence.

Now, for those with families (and particularly, children of all ages... some of you will know what I'm talking about) will find that there are plenty of people who will find it disconcerting that bread can have such a flavour, while others will be absolutely delighted. Die-hard white bread fans probably won't like such breads overnight. If that's the case, starting with 5% freshly milled flour to a 95% commercial flour mix, and ramping it up slowly in successive batches to a 20:80% or even 30:70% (fresh milled : commercial respectively) mix will help family members to adjust.

However, for all those people paying $7-20 for bread loaves at the fancy bakeries.... particularly the ryes, the rustics, the grainy and/or sourdough breads will adore fresh milled flour breads. Doing it yourself will save you an absolute fortune..... If you do it regularly. Given the start-up costs, if you're a "I bake once in a blue moon" kind of person, just stick to commercial flours, and buy just enough to accomplish the bake, that way you're forced to use the freshest flour available to you.

In conclusion:

A useful, attractive, to-the-point, easy-to-understand hardcover book that not only made home milling seem more approachable, but immediately made a notable improvement to my bread knowledge and skills one I implemented the recipes. All this for just $20 Australian... it's totally worth it for bread mavens out there. I don't think it's ideal for beginners because it needs equipment that most would not have. However, once you're established in the hobby, and looking to get healthier or just want to make better bread in general, it's hard to criticise anything about the book itself.

Two dough-covered thumbs up! :~)

Area of focus: Heritage grains, unsual flours, and using them not only in general baking, but general meal preparation as well.

Total page count: 225

No. of pages before recipes: 51

Metric/imperial units? Both, although some are purely volume based, rather than weight. Which can be less precise.

Number of recipes: 87. Only 5 bread/bread-like offerings like bao buns, flat breads and rye loaves. Actually there's more cakes, muffins, biscottis, pancakes, cobblers, and even a parfait. This is more a general "heirloom grain" cook book, than bread book.

Photos for every recipe? 62 images for 87 recipes= 71.26% So let's just say 70% for simplicity.

Price range (new): $30-$57 (Australian) for the hard cover. $15-25 Australian for the e-book.

Price range (used): N/A (none found)

Notable Features & FYI: Ok, this is not a great bread book per se. Yet please, "hear/read me out". It is a great bread resource book.

Not only is this good for finding out about different grains, it puts them to work in breads, salads, cakes, muffins, pasta, mains, sides, even crackers. If you'd like a little break from making bread, but have a pantry full of exotic grains, then this is great choice to have in your bread and "bread-adjacent" cooking.

Page 221 is of particular interest to me, as a number of heirloom wheat providers are listed across the U.S., Canada, United Kingdom, New Zealand, and here in Australia! Thanks Emma, I've been struggling with this!

That's something that Flour Lab didn't help me with, since it centred on U.S. heirloom grain/milling companies.

The restoration of heirloom grains is discussed in several books in this list. However, it's seldom from the view of the miller. It's nice to read about real people in their roles, trying something new and learning something worth sharing.

This book is somewhat unusually arranged by heirloom grain type, with various recipes to use White Sonora, Heritage Bread Wheats, Barley, Einkorn, Corn, Durum, Chickpeas (is that a grain or more a lentil?) Oats, and finally Rye. Lets just say it made counting recipe types across the grain sections much more complicated than it had to be.

It really isn't various shades of brown foodstuffs with these recipes!

Grape Focaccia?! Tibetan Purple Barley Berries & eggs for breakfast? Rainbow Einkorn Berry Slaw? How often are you offered such meals? I don't think it's unreasonable that with this kaleidoscope of colour.... you might be wondering "What on Earth are you slipping into the meals beside heirloom grains?!"

I think for the price of this book, it's good if you approach it like a general recipe book. If you're looking for a pure bread book, then this is not the book for you. That said, it's hard to deny that it has more bread recipes as "The Sourdough Framework" and "Bread Science".. thus, it's has made the grade of "bread book" by that virtue alone. It'd also make a good present for a foodie with a taste for biographies/autobiographies/investigative journalism.

Area of focus:The food science behind bread making. The interwoven roles of biology, physics and chemistry during fermentation/respiration, oxidation and baking. It discusses where flavours and colours come from, the diversity and potential pathways for flavour compound development. It also discusses the physical changes done during mixing, resting, kneading and of course baking too.

Total page count: 254

No. of pages before recipes: 203

Metric/imperial units? Both (and volume measurements for "in a pinch" moments).

Number of recipes: 4

Photos for every recipe? No. Black and white photocopy-grade images, shrunk to 5cm x 3cm (2 square inches)… the rest of the images are largely hand drawn… like really-meticulously drawn class notes.

Price range (new): New edition kindle: $10.64 (AUD), Softcover $40-$80 (AUD)

Price range (used): Old edition softcover, $8-25

Notable Features & FYI: All the bread science you'd need without paying the "Modernist Cuisine's" eye watering $900-$1500 for the five volume "Modernist Bread" set, or even the stripped down "Modernist Bread at Home" single volume, which still commands a $350 sum, and over $250 used!

Ok, "Bread Science" isn't directly competing with such weighty tomes, but it is definitely an extension on "The Sourdough Framework", and with cheaper print editions, and more in-depth research.

This book is almost entirely bread science, with over 80% of the entire book dedicated to theory and technical knowledge, and how to apply it in a general manner. That extends the theory of most of the books in this list. As such, it fits a particular niche in my library, and apparently, many other bread libraries as well.

Area of focus: What makes a good bread. Specific to French bakery (mostly bread)

Total page count: 207

No. of pages before recipes: 90 (lots more technical data at the beginning of each recipe chapter, and for each style of recipe).

Metric/imperial units? Both

Number of recipes: 37 bread types (not including variants), 24 sweet breads/brioche/croissant etc.

Photos for every recipe? No, some black and white images but few recipes have any images.

Price range (new): $143 for an ebook?! Are you high Amazon?! $150-$240 (Australian) for the soft cover, and hard cover...

Price range (used): $380-$445 in hardcover USED! (I've never seen a hardcover one though, and I'm not sure it's translated into English or in French). Used soft covers seem to be very few and far between. If they are locatable, they're sometimes more expensive than the new ones.

Notable Features & FYI: Literally written by the man who coined the term "autolyse". Raymond insipired a whole generation of French bakers and was a key influence in restoring the quality of French baking... that had eroded due to "profit-driven" modern industrial baking methods. This downward trend in French bakeries occurred between WW2 and the late 70s, when he started his research into "what makes a good bread?". He used modern science and applied that to rediscovering traditional baking methods and ingredients, all while incorporating modern techniques intelligently into the finished recipes. This is a book that I read periodically. You can't expect to remember most of what it teaches you in one hit, and I learn something different each time. While it centres on French baking, many of the techniques will work for other styles of bread and pastries too.

The Pros:

The authors really know their stuff. Raymond and his "crew" has given you the tools to make a range of authentic French-styled breads, and improve your other varieties as well.

When Raymond wrote this with his co-authors, he was one of France's foremost professors working on "what makes good bread". Through his work, he is often attributed to inspiring a whole generation of french bread bakers. It's a shame he died in 2005.. at the ripe age of 92.

However, you do not have to learn French to read this book, it was translated into English into what is the most fundamentally expensive bread baking book I own.

Technically, my 207 page edition is a softcover, and at well over $150 USD ($255 Australian, delivered) it's a very expensive book that I frankly debated for months before buying. In short, it was cheaper than doing the 5 week "Boulangerie" course at the Sydney campus of "Le Cordon Bleu" which would have cost me $8000 after including course fees, accommodation, living expenses and course-related expenses). Unfortunately, this book doesn't give me the shiny certificate of completion or access to live instruction along the way. Not that it was ever meant to.

However, The Taste of Bread covers a range of in-depth topics from a uniquely French viewpoint. It's somewhat technical in nature because it covers topics from the effects of the wheat type and milling processes, the characteristics of "bread flour" (as opposed to "All purpose" varieties), dough composition, the role of oxidation during mixing, leavening and fermentation, the effect of dough division and shaping, as well as the basic (and industrial) equipment used in bread baking, and finally the storage of bread.

I'd say it extends on both Sourdough Framework, and Flour Lab (reviewed here too) in terms of technical detail. Flour Lab and Sourdough Framework are aimed at hobbyists... while The Taste of Bread is probably amongst the text books of several french culinary institutes... and carries the higher price tag to prove it. :~(

Most of the content is fundamentals and with smatterings of bread science here and there. Yet combined, this is getting fairly technical. It's not that the beginner couldn't understand it, but it's just that there's a lot of stuff you don't necessarily need to know if you're running from recipes.

However, if you want to extract every scrap of flavour from your breads, and want the softest crumb or flakiest crust while paving your own path, then this book will be extremely helpful.

If French bread is your goal, this is essential reading.

Cons:

While this was published in 2013, roughly 8 years after Raymond's death and translated into english, it's not without some linguistic quirks like sentences that could be clearer, and others phrased in oddly-roundabout ways using unnecessarily fancy wording.

Furthermore, this is not going to have the pretty pictures of more modern/stylish/coffee table books. Most recipes do not have any images of any kind.

It's quite a dense read, with little to break up the text. So expect it to take some time if reading from start to finish.

It has recipes (good ones at that) but I find that if you have a more powerful stand mixer, the times need to be somewhat reduced to avoid "over kneading/mixing", depending on the mixing speed of course.

If "French" bread is less important, and simply good bread is your goal... that $150 USD price tag for a soft-cover... will not appeal.

To put that price in perspective, that's roughly... five times more expensive than many of my other books on this list. You have to consider that investment carefully. You could buy a Kitchen Aid grain milling attachment, ($149), Flour Lab ($20 at a discount book seller), and still have $86 Australian dollars to buy 20Kg of hard winter wheat berries... Doable if you pick up from the store. You can probably buy some nice seeds to add on top!

That is the choice between advanced theory and getting a jump-start in practical. Both can render tasty results, just in entirely different ways.

Conclusion:

With all that said, if you:

• are considering becoming an apprentice/professional baker,
• are a "bread nerd" in the making,
• have a bread maven/francophile in the household, or...
• just want to be knowledgeable enough/empowered to chart your own course in your bread making journey by strategic recipe adaptations

...then this is an essential read. For everyone else.. a cheaper more practical book is likely a better choice.

Area of focus: French/European breads, (130 odd pages), French/European pastries and cakes (110 pages), 15 pages of "snacks" (sandwiches, pizza, quiches & muffins). Decent intro/theory too!

Total page count: 319

No. of pages before recipes: 59

Metric/imperial units? Metric

Number of recipes: 80

Photos for every recipe? Yes, but sometimes two or more recipes are depicted in the one image (unlabeled unfortunately), sometimes arranged in pleasing patterns, not necessarily with instructive details in mind. Lots of step-by-step series of images in method areas though.

Price range (new): $55-$120 (AUD)

Price range (used): $50-$100 (AUD)

Notable Features & FYI: This is truly a beginner-friendly text book. While it doesn't have the author's backstory, or anecdotes about where the grains come from, or reminiscences of "the good old days", it combines the goals of traditional bread baking with modern methods. It's a very detailed, but practical (no fluff) book. It's not as advanced as the "Advanced Bread and Pastry" or "The Taste of Bread", or even "Bread Science", but it still has a respectable intro/theory section that is more than enough to get going.

I really like the sheer number of step-by-step photos and the images of the finished products, but sometimes, those finished product images are combined with the finished photos of other recipes in images sometimes 2, or even seven pages away. That I don't like so much, considering they're not labelled. So unless is obvious, I can't say for certain which of five baguettes corresponds with which recipe.

Area of focus: An actual text book on "bakery"/"viennoiserie", "pastry", & cakes.

Total page count: 1041

No. of pages before recipes: 186

Metric/imperial units? BOTH

Number of recipes: Almost 300

Photos for every recipe? No.

Price range (new): $195-240 (AUD)

Price range (used): $120-270 (AUD)

Notable Features & FYI: This suits serious baking enthusiasts, baking apprentices, and professionals.

The recipe break down is incredibly hard to identify as there's a lot of cross-referencing in the five full pages of separate recipe index. There's definitely over 30 recipes for bread, easily over 100 of cakes and pastries, including detailed separate recipes for fillings, icings, and accompaniments.

There's the highest number of graphs I've seen in a bread book to date, and much more applied science in the 170+ pages of theory.

Area of focus: General baking book specialising in the wide variety of baked goods that are made across northern Europe, Iceland & Greenland.

Total page count: 575

No. of pages before recipes: 99

Metric/imperial units? Both

Number of recipes: 481 total. 32 wheat breads, 17 rye breads, 28 flat breads, 13 rusks/crackers, 10 sandwiches/filled pasties, 1 nordic pizza dough, 25 pancakes/waffles, 28 porridge & grain soups, 37 sweet levened pastries, 6 sweet kringles (pretzel), 11 doughnuts/fried pastries, 62 short pastries and cookies, 22 muffins/individual pastries, 10 sweets & chocolates, 46 soft cakes, 34 layered cakes/tortes, 7 crumbles/pies, 27 desserts, 12 jams/jellies/cordials, 18 sweet soups/compotes, and 35 basic recipes (that usually augment the other recipes). Phew! That took a while! I bet few reviewers went to this much trouble!

Photos for every recipe? No.

Price range (new): $48-$145 (Australian, hardcover).

Price range (used): $46-$70 (Australian, hardcover)

Notable Features & FYI: You really can't expect many pictures with this one. With an extensive history/theory section accounting for 17% of the page count, that puts 481 recipes on just 476 pages. Some recipes are so involved or require enough ingredients to warrant multiple pages, and at other times, there's as many as 4 recipes per page. Forget step-by-step images here. There's not enough real estate for anything else.

It's for this reason, that I want to put it in the intermediate section. You're not going to have your hand held through these recipes. They're not hard, just not always glaringly obvious either. I've found it helpful to look at similar online videos/recipes, then applied those observations and techniques to these recipes.

Area of focus: Part bread book, part travel book, part lifestyle book that hops from one country to another, and culinary experiences (many based on breads and pastries of the area) and ends up in San Francisco with a recipe for Rugbrod (Tartine Danish-style rye bread... see "Tartine" review on this page).

Total page count: 239

No. of pages before recipes: 35

Metric/imperial units? Metric, with occasional imperial units thrown in.

Number of recipes: 46 total. 10 breads/pastries/cakes/waffles/pancakes. but many not bread related, there's soups, even cocktails, a burger, home made condiments, and even museli.

Photos for every recipe? Err. lots of photos about the travel/journey where she's making bread.. but which bread amongst the sea of very pretty images of places and culture... but not a whole lot of images directly linked to the bread recipes themselves.

Price range (new): E-book $20 (AUD) Hard cover $45-70

Price range (used): $35-70 (AUD) for a hardcover

Notable Features & FYI: Honestly, this book stands alone in the "hey I bartered my way across the world making bread for people". It's a fun read which gives a much-needed reprieve from looking at the rest of the world through the lens of "the news" which of course is a seemingly non-stop torrent of depressing information with glimpses of almost-normalish everyday life thrown in occasionally.

How good is this book, from a recipe standpoint? Let's see how I went.

Area of focus: An in-depth guide to bread with one of the largest recipe counts I've seen. The recipes are split into loaves, flatbread/unleavened breads, specialty breads/sides, pizza/calzones, pies, and finishes with sweet breads and tarts.

Total page count: 841

No. of pages before recipes: 64 (although this recipe is somewhat illustrative, rather than part of the recipe section)

Metric/imperial units? Imperial only with volume measurements for backup. Sorry metric lovers, 300+ recipes will need conversion... or merely switch your digital scale to imperial and work from that.

Number of recipes: 319 total. 83 loaves, 19 flat/unleavened breads, 66 specialty breads/sides, 48 pizzas/calzones (check out the sweet fillings in the dessert pizza), 61 pies (mostly the sweet kind), and 42 sweet breads/tarts.

Photos for every recipe? There are a lot of recipes with full-page or partial page images. However, there are just as many without any imageswhatsoever. 121/319 38% (or conversely, 62% with images).

Price range (new): $31-78 (Australian) for the hardcover.

Price range (used): None cheaper (delivered) for less than the new ones.

Notable Features & FYI: One one hand, this is a high-density recipe book. So if you're looking for one of those, then you're in luck. On the other side, the theory sections are some of the most in-depth I've seen so far, in any book. It may not go into "Bread Science" levels of proteins, but it does discuss a lot of factors that most other books fail to do.

Pros:

You get a lot of value here. Both in recipes and information.

Barbra has gone "all out" in many ways where she's included recipes like Injera which is an African bread rarely seen in other books.

Not only does it discuss water as an ingredient, but various factors of water like "water hardness", the pH, along with the more usual water temperature... a lot of books just don't cover all that.

I particularly like the section "Encyclopedia of Grains and Pulses" which, along with descriptions of various wheats, oats, ryes, barleys, rices, corns, buckwheats, millets, quinoa, sorghum, numerous seeds, but even tubers, beans, legumes and coconuts. There's oftean a drawn diagram and brief synopsis about each variant of each type too.

Don't skip the biographies!

Throughout the recipe section there's a lot professional baker biographies. It also discusses their respective bakeries, pizzerias, boulangeries and baking schools across the world and it's really interesting to see how they got started, why they bake, and their particular interpretations of recipes. It's not a travel book but it is one of the most interesting range of recipes from across the globe, all in one handy book. Want to compare a Detroit pizza to a New York one, and a true Italian one from Naples... or perhaps even an Australian one? You can do that!

Cons:

Honestly, I have never liked bold claims like "The Ultimate....." or "The best..." or "The most...." anything. Because it's easy to get unfounded expectations... and even if such claims might have been true at the time of writing. Things change.. but books don't!

Now, I don't want to devalue Barbara's work here. It's an excellent book to be sure. However, every book has limitations.

To me the limitations are that this isn't going to suit everyone despite it's encyclopedic nature.

I mentioned the Injera recipes above, it's is great that the recipes were included.... although none of those recipes have actual pictures. :-(

If certain pictures had to be culled, I persionally think we could have skipped the pictures of some of the baguettes or uncovered pizza bases or unfilled pie crusts (we've all seen baguettes, pizza and pie bases) and focused on the ones most readers would not know what they look like. Perhaps this is what the second edition fixed... but I don't know.

The one thing I felt this book didn't have, is a savoury pie crust. You know for meat pies, shepherd's pie, that sort of thing. There are many sweet crusts, in the book though. Unfortunately, I've long sought a short crust that has little if any sweetness to it, but for some reason, they end up with a weird sweetness that doesn't match the the slow roasted lamb, chicken & leek, or pepper steak filling. That said, despite this trivial disappointment, I've gotten a lot of great results from this book.

Conclusion:

This is an excellent book for bakers who have a little bit of experience already. You can use it as a beginner, but you're probably not going to have the hand-holding instructions that some other books offer. I particularly like the sheer number of recipes for the money, and it is ultimately, a very pretty book. It's not the glossy coffee table books that you might expect, but it's very good and I think it'd be a great addition to any baker's library.

Area of focus: General bread making, including loaves, rolls/buns, flat breads, pizzas, focaccias, even some muffins/scones.

Total page count: 799

No. of pages before recipes: 72

Metric/imperial units? Ingredients are both, but temperatures, only in Fahrenheit

Number of recipes: 307 in total. 102 Loaf recipes, 42 Rolls/buns/bagels, 7 muffins. 11 pizza dough recipes, 47 pizza topping combination recipes. 4 focaccia dough recipes and 46 focaccia topping ideas. The focaccia blends with the pizza series somewhat (doesn't change the count though). 16 additional flat breads after that. 25 sweet and/or quick breads, then 14 additional "miscellaneous" recipes like sauces, spreads, icings, and syrups.

Photos for every recipe? Most, but not all.

Price range (new): .$25-70 (AUD) typical hard cover. $24-35 (AUD) e-Book

Price range (used): Same as new pretty much, depending on source and condition. Postage often pushes the price above new with free delivery though.

Notable Features & FYI: This book actually shares some of the content with the previous book. The "Encyclopedia of Grains and Pulses" is identical, there's some shared recipes between the books as well. Even a couple of the featured bakers/bakeries and pizzerias are featured in both, sometimes using identical photographs..  There's some new stuff in there too. Some of them, are in the recipe section and they are delicious. 

From a purely bread/pizza/focaccia perspective, there's some truly exotic recipes that are only seen in the "Nordic Baking Book" like Tunnbröd, some odd ball pizzas like "Argentinian thick crust pizza". I don't see Arepas much either, at least, not here in Australian and main stream international bread books.

The recipe quantities are in both imperial (and bracketed metric measurements afterwards), but the Fahrenheit-only temperatures is quite irritating to me.  I have the 2023, 800 page edition, rather than the 2025 one which seems to have culled 40 odd pages to 760 (at least, according to Amazon).

There's no author, so I suspect the publishers have just taken elements from the other books in this series and smashed them together, which would account for the shameless rehashing of material. I am a little disappointed, this isn't the only book reviewed on this site that has used significant amounts of other book's material, and marketed it as a whole new book. This phenomenon seems to be growing in frequency... particularly with books released after 2020.

Curiously, where "Crusts" had the biographies and featured bakeries/pizzerias inside the recipe section (usually near the recipes they're known for). "Bread" separated the biographies, and put them up the back in a dedicated section for the last 130 odd pages. Some new folks are introduced, but others are basically copy/pasted from Crusts.

Who does this book suit?

Honestly? I think that if you have either the Crusts or Bread "Ultimate Cookbooks".. it's not worth getting another. It also makes me less likely to buy other books in the series, because I have to wonder how much rehashed material will I be buying... even if it's ostensibly a very different subject. I'd definitely be looking for an author's name before I buy, that's for sure.

Having said all that...

If you're looking for high recipe-count-to-price value, you can't go wrong with this book. Particularly if you're more about breads/pizza, and less about sweet pies/tarts. If you want "general baking" then Crusts will be better suited.

In many ways this is like an extended version of Ken Forkish's "Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast" (FWSY) which also happens to focus on bread and pizza. However, Ken's recipes are far more detailed. So I think FWSY is more beginner friendly.. and this one is definitely better described as:

"Here's the recipe, good luck!"

So I think this one is aimed at self-reliant beginners and intermediate bakers. Advanced bakers would also get a great library of recipes to base a bake on, and adjust to tastes and situations to forge their own path. So I don't think you'd actually grow out of this book, no matter what your baking level might be.

So what is this book like to actually cook with?

Key Stats:

Area of focus: Wood fired oven food stuffs, that includes pizzas, calzones, pretzels, and bread... then goes into the barbecue side of roasts, steaks and other babecue treats.

Total page count: 128

No. of pages before recipes: 23 (although the theory section is exclusively about using a wood fired oven).

Metric/imperial units? Largely metric (with volume amounts as backup). Temperatures in both Fahrenheit and Celsius.

Number of recipes: 5 bread/pizza/calzone recipes, 20 more meals fit for a barbecue/oven.

Photos for every recipe? Yes! (and extras along the method way at times)

Price range (new): $12-$22 (AUD) typical hard cover.

Price range (used): $8.64-$34 (not including postage).

Notable Features & FYI:

It's a small book of just 25 recipes, each aimed at teaching a wood fired oven user a new skill set... or to show what an outdoor oven could do. Given the 128 page count and 25 recipes, it means each recipe gets 4 pages each! 

As a bread making book, there are 3 different pizza/calzone recipes, a pretzel recipe and a bread recipe to finish the section. However, that's on par with other bread books in this list, hence it's place here. 

There are three other sections, "fish and poultry", "meats", and "sides and veggies". So it's actually quite well rounded. Perhaps most notable, is that they're all meals that people in my household would willingly eat. That's a lot more rare than you might imagine. I'm less enthused with the quail because they're just not worth the trouble/expense in my view, but the recipe would easily transfer over to other poultry pretty easily. So I don't call that a loss. Interestingly, most of the non-bread recipes pair well with the "basic loaf bread"... which I've made in to a series of odd-ball sized bread rolls...

Key Stats:

Area of focus: General baking recipe book, not limited to bread, but includes cakes, tarts, biscuits, etc too!

Total page count: 192

No. of pages before recipes: 11. Normally, this is an indicator of a theory section. However, since this is a compendium of various baking recipes from multiple sources, this isn't really as helpful as it might be for other books in this list.

Metric/imperial units? Mostly metric weights with the occasional volume such as tsp/tbs/cup thrown in. Temperatures are in both imperial/metric. However, some recipes (pages 72 and 84 come to mind) have a small error. The Celsius and Fahrenheit are written like this:

"160C (325C)"

Yes, that second "C" should be an "F"! (in the book, this was just an example of the typo) So make sure you're reading the correct numbers!

Number of recipes: Total 65 recipes: 17 bread recipes, 8 "savory bakes", 9 "sweet doughs", 17 "cakes", 8 "cookies/biscuits", 6 "pies & tarts" (which are sweet pies and desserts, not meat pies which are more savoury in nature).

Photos for every recipe? 21 recipes are completely without images. So 67.7% do have images. That said, of the recipes with images, many have small images that are indicative but not detailed. Meanwhile others get full page images. There's no rhyme or reason to it, so make of it what you will.

Price range (new): .$11-65 (AUD) typical hard cover. $18.20-$26.30 (AUD) e-Book

Price range (used): N/A (none found)

Notable Features & FYI:

Any rural-dwelling Australian could tell you about the collaborative recipe books made by the "Country Women's Association". There have literally been whole volumes of them made over the last 100+ years or so, sold to fund numerous initiatives. This book works in the same way, only a bunch of professional/celebrity bakers have donated their recipes/images and Andrew Green has created this book so that some of the proceeds can go to non-military causes aimed at helping the people of war-torn Ukraine.

That said, this book's "recipe contributors" is a veritable "who's who" of the bread baking world. Richard Bertinet (of Dough/Crust/Crumb, reviewed above), Kevin Hart who was head baker at Tartine (reviewed above) who went on to write his own books and run his own bakery. He's quite famous for his book "Kevin Hart: Bread" (one I haven't reviewed, but read parts of some years ago). Ben Lippett, a celebrity chef in the UK, Dee Rettali (of Fortitude Bakery, and "Baking with Fortitude" authorhood fame).

If they aren't a celebrity chef, popular YouTuber, or the editor of the book they teach in culinary institutes, run a renowned bakery, and/or written a respected book in the field....probably after learning the craft in another renowned bakery or two. You get the idea.

Ham's first attempt at "Olive bread rolls".... Let's see how this one goes:

Key Stats:

Area of focus: Official textbook for professional baking courses, including boulangerie (mostly bread focus), viennoiserie (hybrid bread/pastries), and pâtisserie (mostly pastries/cakes). In short, it's a wholesale "baking" textbook. 

Total page count: 791 (804 with padding at either end)

No. of pages before recipes: 125 (not all of it specifically related to bread but is excellent and in-depth nonetheless.

Metric/imperial units? Both, with some volume measurements as a backup. Temperature is in both Celsius and Fahrenheit.

Number of recipes: Please know that I'm just counting the actual bread recipes here.

Bread Only: 117 bread recipes! (but that's just a tiny fraction of this book).

31 "Straight dough" bread recipes, 24 prefermented/sponges/sourdough recipes, 34 "rich yeast doughs" (and variants involving diffferent fillings), 28 "quick breads" (I've excluded biscuits and cakes, tarts, and most pastry stuff).

Could you use the pastry recipes in bread making?

Of course you could. Although, the day someone decorates a bread loaf the way most extreme cake decorations go, I have to ask:

Is it really bread anymore?

So how many recipes are actually in this book?

Lots. There's over 70 different sauces/fillings for your delectable sweet treat of choice. There are sections bigger than most books here, on just the pies and tarts. So let's do a bit of a rough calculation here:

Warning: Maths ahead (don't worry, I've done it for you)

Since the recipe index spans 9.1 pages, each page has 3 columns of entries, and each column up to 65 lines. That puts the total at 1600+ However, many of these recipes are for making the fillings, the bases, and the toppings for a variety of desserts that will ultimately go into the master recipes of cakes, pastries, etc. Breads seldom need all this.

Photos for every recipe? No. Some do, but with huge amounts of theory, and insane numbers of recipes, there simply isn't the space to give every recipe a photo.

Price range (new): $210-$255 (AUD) typical hard cover.

Price range (used): $6-$220 (not including postage).

Notable Features & FYI: After some considerable thought, I feel that "Professional Baking, 7th Edition" is aimed more at people just starting their training. So it actually suits the beginner in many ways. Once you've done this one, feel free to advance to "Advanced Bread and Pastry", because that's a bit more technical/scientific and this is more practical/vocational. That said, it is one of the textbooks for the Australian Certificate II/Certificate III Bakery courses.

There's nothing hard in this book, but it's a text book and it covers a lot of ground. Yes, there's some science in here, but only in so far that it helps you bake a better product. There's far fewer graphs in this book than "Advanced Bread and Pastry", and more recipes. It is, afterall, teaching bakers how to bake a professional-grade repertoire of delicious and well presented foods after all.

Are you a cheese maker that's starting your bread making journey (or vice versa)? Fermented foods share a hefty degree of common ground...

If you're coming to this from the cheese making side, there's a lot of similarity between this book and some of the more advanced industrial cheese making books, such as "Dairy Science and Technology", most notably because the dairy product makers have to consider the manufacture, storage, transportation and use of their products. Since the professional baker uses many dairy products as ingredients and has overlapping interests/concerns, much of the same food safety, preparation, and presentation have to be considered.

Of course, if you're a baker dabbling in the cheese making side, this has some overlap too.

Key Stats:

Area of focus: Breads, pizzas, and pastries. Some emphasis on the use of ancient/heirloom/unusual grains and flours, milling flour at home, and some "Tips and techniques" along the way to make improvements over more basic breads, but we're not going that far off the beginner reservation.

Total page count: 176 (although some sites list 192.... I don't know why).

No. of pages before recipes: 39 of introductory theory, equipment, grains/flours, general techniques etc.

Metric/imperial units? Largely metric (with volume amounts as backup). Temperatures in both Fahrenheit and Celsius.

Number of recipes: 10 breads involving ancient/classic grains, 7 specialty breads, 6 enriched breads, 6 rye breads/pan loaves, 8 pizza/focaccia recipes (with some sundries in there like tomato sauces, and of course, the pizza/focaccia doughs, and 6 pastries. Total recipe count is about 45.

Photos for every recipe? Yes! (and extras along the method way at times)

Price range (new): $32-$49.81 (AUD) typical hard cover. $19.36 for e-book.

Price range (used):$16-31 (AUD) typical hard cover

Notable Features & FYI: Daniele used to have a web site called https://breadcrumb.recipes however, that site seems to have died. That said, he does (at the time of writing in 2026) have a working Instagram account/site/blog thing found at:

https://www.instagram.com/_breadcrumb/?hl=en

This is one of the many bread books written during the Covid pandemic in 2020. However, Daniele is a professional chef, and honestly, it shows in the fact that it gets to the point, and is fundamentally, more of a recipe book than text book.

However, what drew me to this book was the fact that the breads are so photogenic. As soon as I saw the marbled purple sweet potato sourdough, I knew three things:

1. Ren's obsession with sweet potato would push me into making it sooner, rather than later.
2. Purple is Ren's favourite colour, increasing my pressure to make it.
3. Ren's desire to photograph pretty food images certainly doesn't hurt this site at all..

Of course, getting a purple sweet potato, not one with a purple skin, but a purple flesh, was not going to be easy. Simply going to the supermarket was not going to work here.

So I made a special trip to the local fruit market specifically for this ingredient. Whether it has purple flesh... we don't know so stay tuned for that event!

This is a work in progress. Check back soon!

Key Stats:

Area of focus: A reasonably diverse range of breads, aimed at making newbie bread bakers, but it certainly wouldn't be wasted on more experienced home bread makers either.

Total page count: 464 (physical copy) 399 (Kindle)

No. of pages before recipes: 98 (on my e-book edition)

Metric/imperial units? Metric weights (grams), but imperial volumes (cups, tablespoons/teaspoons) for backup. Oddly, temperatures are only in Fahrenheit. Meanwhile, lengths and diameters of pans are entirely in inches. Make of this... what you will.

Number of recipes: Ummm, I count 124 in my ebook version, not the "125+" claimed on the cover. I've gone through the book three times and I keep getting the same count. Maybe they've included some recipe variations in there... a couple of recipes do have them. There's a recipe on how to make home made ghee in the Naan section, and the cracker version of the Gateâu Voyage Bread that's actually been converted into crackers instead.... The "loaded baked potato bread" and ciabatta also has both loaf and roll variations. The Baguettes have a yeast and levain version, maybe that's the difference.

Let me break that down....

21 flatbreads, 23 pan breads, 21 hearth breads, 21 "buns, bagels & rolls", 15 fancy breads (which includes a cake or two?) 23 "things you can make with bread".

Photos for every recipe? The candied citrus peel doesn't, but the rest do. Not all of them are full page images on the opposite page as some might expect. (Although that's the overwhelming majority of them). For the "Swirl Breads", four separate versions are depiced in one image, in the middle of the swirl bread recipes. A similar layout is in the Pan De Cristal section. The Challah and Brioche sections are a bit different again. The dough recipe doesn't have a picture, but the variation you make with it, do.

Price range (new): ebook $25-31.66 (AUD), hard cover $38.95-$71.58 (AUD), spiral bound $65.97 on Amazon.

Price range (used): $34.90-$54.70 (delivered, but this greatly depends on location and condition of the book)

Notable Features & FYI: Few people reviewing a book, will start with the back of the book. However, sometimes working backwards is a huge help.

After all the recipes in the book, is a rather useful "Flour Primer". Normally, such discussions/topics would be somewhere late-ish in the introductory theory section. I don't know why they put it "up the back".

appendices, but they are quite notable in that you can choose a recipe for your given situation:

Appendix A arranges all the bread recipes by time taken to make. The categories are 1-3 hours, 3-5 hours, 5-6 hours, two-day breads, and three day breads.

Appendix B arranges the recipe by the degree of leavening or whether they're yeast-based.

In the recipes, there's handy descriptions of recipe-specific procedures.... like braiding a 4 strand Challah, or how to customise your concha cookie topping, or even step-by-step photos on how to shape rose flower-like doughs for "Olive and Feta Poğaça" (I still have no ideal how to pronounce that last word). There's literally gems of tips and techniques throughout the recipe section, and I have to say that I like it. The section on "Understanding Rye" under the "Tourte Au Seigle" recipe, has key information about why lowering the pH (adding acidity) to the rye dough helps to prevent Amylase enzymes from leaving your bread with a gummy unpleasant texture. I've dealt with Rye in some differing ways (like using a hybrid wheat/rye mix) so that's a new tool at my disposal.

I like the "storing bread" advice in the loaf pan section of the recipe area. It's practical, and definitely will save people both time and money by avoiding spoilage. As someone who's been baking a while, I won't say it's saying anything new to me... but it'd definitely help new bakers.

In select parts of recipe area, as well as the sections preceding the recipe (the theory section) there are QR codes that link to videos should the description/imagery not be enough. Other books in this list like the Sourdough Framework, and "The Perfect Loaf" (when I add that one) have YouTube channels that augment their books in similar ways to this one, but it's nice to have the option. This is a huge boon to new bakers.

Take the blurb/description of this book with a "grain of salt"....

I've read a lot of books, and one of the things that immediately makes me suspicious, skeptical, if not outright distrusting are bold sweeping claims involving words like "best" or "most". I always ask "best in what way?" and "is it really the most?". Because if the claims are in any way false, the credibility of the publisher/marketer/author (perhaps all three, and by association my faith in the book) takes a major hit. That said, if it were proven as fact in some reasonable way... I'd be impressed.

I found this statement on several sites selling this book (Including Amazon, and several Australian sellers)

"At the heart of The King Arthur Baking Company Big Book of Bread is the most expansive and inclusive [recipe] list of any bread-baking book..."

Is it diverse? Sure! Is it an impressive list of breads? Absolutely! Would I bake most of these recipes willingly? Why not? (because I probably have already).

However, "... most expansive and inclusive recipe list of any bread book?......" I can name several bread books (from this page alone) with more recipes. I can also name scores of bread recipes (even whole countries with cuisines and bread contributions of their own) from the Middle-East, Asia, Australia and many others that aren't "included" in this list. I'm sure it's inclusive from an American perspective, but there's lots of room for improvement. However, doing this would make the book intimidating, not to mention more expensive... and it's better to run a few good recipes than try to cover all the oddball varieties and do a bad job.

I don't besmirch this book at all, just any unfounded claims that might falsely raise expectations.

Is the range of recipes a good general overview of popular breads from major bread centres across the globe? No question, but it's far from the most... anything really. If I were forced to state what it's best used for, I would say it's one of the most well thought-out ranges of recipes that would appeal to a western-style palate, with just enough breads from India/Turkey/Bolivia, etc to "dip your toe in". Don't get me wrong, that has a lot of appeal... and it's a great book. The most expansive and/or inclusive.... it's a very bold claim that I just don't think holds up to scrutiny.

Conclusion:

So ignore the blurb, and you'll be absolutely fine with this book. In fact, I really have no problem recommending it. It even has a very nice recipe-to-price ratio, and every recipe of consequence has a photo showing what it looks like. Very few books do this at this price point and number of recipes. It's also extremely nice to have step-by-step photos, then add videos and practical addendums with the thought and care the people behind this book have clearly put in. It's just really odd that they don't have Celsius temperatures, or imperial weights, or metric lengths/diameters... If they did that this book would be nigh-on perfect at what it does... it's just.... there's a few repetitive, and counter-intuitive quirks here and there.

All in all, this book does deserve the high praise it gets world wide. Beginner or established bread bakers would benefit from this book.

Ham's first attempt at one of the recipes...

Key Stats:

Area of focus: Hamburgers, as a stand alone snack or combined as a meal. This book aims to elevate home-made burgers to that of a "luscious" meal and debunk the oft-present association with junk food. That said, yes you can make healthier burgers, but I think it's pretty safe to say that this is aimed a flavour over health benefits. Just saying....

Total page count: 140

No. of pages before recipes: 0. It's a recipe book. Not much theory to speak of outside of the preface, and it starts with the two recipes for bread.

Metric/imperial units? Both, for all quantities and temperatures.

Number of recipes: 70 total, with the following break down:

Just 2 bread recipes, although each has about 6 variations... not including various toppings like seeds, egg washes, etc. After that, there's 6 sauces, 8 side dishes, 12 beef-centred burger recipes, 19 "chicken, lamb, etc" burger recipes, 8 "fish & vegetable" burger recipes, 13 "hot dog and bagel" recipes. Then 2 "sweet burgers".

Photos for every recipe? Yes, each recipe has a two-ish page format, except the breads and sauces, where all the various breads and sauces are depicted on a separate two-page photo. Each of them are clearly (and nicely) photographed, as well as labelled. The recipe section is usually just over the page from there.

Price range (new): $26-$57.93 Australian (hardcover). Note: no e-book or soft cover has been found so far.

Price range (used): $19.95-$38.90 Australian (hard cover). This may or may not include shipping.

Notable Features & FYI: This is a pure recipe book, so there's no theory or introductory material to speak of. That said, in such simplicity with the book layout, it's a quick read, and even when using a recipe from this book, there is a time-saving aspect that can't be ignored. Sure, you could buy your bread instead of making it, and it even has some recommendations on how to do that, but it gives you that choice.

Honestly, I think it's an excellent gift to the burger/barbecue mavens or budding chefs. It's well presented, and the recipes both diverse as well as attractive. Usually there's a lot of recipes that don't suit everyone in the household.... yet both Ren and I would probably eat most if not all of the recipes listed in the book.... even if we have to dial the spice back a bit here and there.

Let's see how I go with two different loaf types...

This is work in progress. While I have owned many of these books for years, I just want to make sure I finish a refresher reading before I comment here. Check back soon.. However, I have a lot going on right now, so this is "spare time" dependent.