How to Bake Bread (Book Review)

There are basically two types of chefs: culinary chefs and bakers. I'm not much of a baker, and I never have been. No cakes, cookies or scones for me. I prefer the messiness and quick gratification of grill and saute, chop and mash. But bread-baking is the one exception. I love baking bread. The transformation from flour and water to the staff of life is magical to me. So I was excited to hear that a colleague of mine was publishing a bread-baking book.

Mike Kalanty, a certified Executive Pastry Chef, has been baking bread for years. Much of his formative breadmaking experience came during an apprenticeship in France, along with time in Italy and Brazil. Over the last two decades he has taught baking to hundreds of professional baking students, including those at the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco, California.

Now Kalanty has gathered his collected wisdom on making a great loaf and put it together in a comprehensive reference on bread-baking called How to Bake Bread: The Five Families of Bread. The book has received much praise and was recently named "Best Bread Book" for 2010 at the Paris Cookbook Fair.

What makes this cookbook unique is Kalanty's insight that all breads can be broken down into five families based on the composition of their dough: lean, soft, rich, slack and sweet. For illustration, he picks well known examples to represent each family: baguettes, dinner rolls, butter bread like brioche, foccacia and cinnamon buns.

This approach to categorizing breads has particular appeal for me. In culinary school, one concept was drilled into me more than any other: everything you cook is just a variation on a small number of basic cooking methods. Learn those methods, and you can make anything.

Kalanty's "Families of Bread" are similar to cooking methods for culinary students. Learn the basic dough formulas, and you can bake any of the innumerable variations bread takes.

But the book starts even before that. The first section is a comprehensive overview of bread's most basic ingredients: flour, yeast, water and salt. Kalanty gives us keen insight into the types of flour, the impact of gluten content and the different forms of yeast. He lets us know, in a straightforward, easy-to-understand format, how these ingredients interact with each other and with their environment.

The book also covers additional ingredients often added to bread, like butter, eggs and sugar, and describes how they alter the basic mix and affect the outcome.

The second part of the book goes over the how and why of all the phases of making a loaf of bread, from mixing and kneading to rising, shaping and baking.

Kalanty writes with an approachable, conversational and entertaining style throughout the book. Although the audience is primarily assumed to be someone interested in large-scale professional baking, the home baker will never feel talked over or excluded by jargon.

In fact, novices are explicitly invited into the magical world of the skilled baker, and most of the tips are applicable to the smaller setting of the home kitchen.

The book is filled with invaluable tips, sidebars and step-by-step illustrations that neatly clarify the written instructions. The collection of bread recipes, or formulas, at the back of the book are well organized and clearly written.

One curious omission from the book, especially given that the chef is based in San Francisco, is any mention of sourdough breads. I suspected that it was simply not the focus of a book based on fundamentals. I asked Chef Kalanty about it, and he confirmed that suspicion. Sourdough bread-making is an advanced method and will perhaps be covered in a future volume on artisan breads.

Apart from that, How to Bake Bread is admirable in both its breadth and the depth of its information. If you are serious about bread-baking, and want to know the "whys" as much as the "hows," I highly recommend How to Bake Bread. It will certainly be THE reference book for baking bread in my house from now on.

The book can be purchased directly from the publisher at Atlas Books. To buy the book at a blogger's 50% discount, call 1 800 BOOK LOG and use discount code RSB2010XF.

How to Bake Bread is also available for purchase from Amazon.com.