Peter Reinhart's Artisan Bread Every Day

Released October 27, 2009

It's hard to follow The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread. It's one of my favourite cookbooks and I'm still baking my way through it! But while I'm still working on BBA, I've still anxiously awaited Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day because I'm sure I'm going to love it just as much. It seems very much like a logical progression from BBA, building on some classic recipes and introducing some new ones.

Artisan Bread Every Day brings some new and different ideas, techniques and recipes to the table that are sure to please any bread baker that loves to try new things (always in search of bread perfection! :), as well as baker's looking for a streamlined bread baking procedure. Gone are most of the poolish/sponge/biga recipes in favour of a warm-water start to get the yeast going followed by cold fermentation in the refrigerator. Instant yeast is given a new treatment in this new book as well!

Like The Bread Baker's Apprentice, Artisan Breads Every Day includes a wide variety of recipes, including yeast breads, sourdough breads, crackers, pretzels, pizza crust, english muffins, danish, stollen, hot cross buns, cinnamon rolls, crumb cake, sticky buns, bagels and croissants (to name just a few!). Reinhart also includes a nice section on "baking basics" at the beginning of the book with looks of great illustrations for things like shaping, scoring and the "stretch and fold" method (an alternative to kneading), as well as instructions for creating your own sourdough starter. Unlike BBA, which is very heavy on explanation for each recipe (we are "apprentices" after all in that book), Artisan Breads Every Day has shorter introductions but still lots are beautiful photos, so you can always see what your finished product should look like or how to shape or cut it, when needed.

Recipes that caught my eye and will be first on my "to bake" list include:

Pain a l'Ancienne Focaccia
San Francisco Sourdough Bread
Neo-Neopolitan Pizza Dough
Many-Seed Bread
Soft Rye Sandwich Bread
Soft Pretzels
Flaky, Buttery Crackers
Coffee Crumb Cake
The Best Biscuits Ever (how could any one resist trying these with that title :)
Chocolate Croissants (hello!)

So in conclusion, I know I'm going to love baking from Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day. No buyers remorse here! If you own and love The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread, you will definitely want to add Artisan Bread Every Day to your collection. It really builds on BBA and offers lots of new recipes, techniques and ideas. If you don't own Bread Baker's Apprentice, I would always recommend picking it up, as it is a great learning resource. That said though, if you can, pick up both these books together, as they really compliment each other wonderfully.