Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day

I started my bread making adventure with the original 'Artisan bread in five minutes a day' book. That was a nice start, but for a perfectionist like me, it wasn't satisfying in the long run. I soon figured out that there was no way I could make a loaf of bread with dough that has been stored in the fridge for 2 weeks. I was never able to create a loaf of bread that came with both, oven spring and a nice tangy sour dough flavor. At best I got one of the two (a somewhat decent oven spring with new fresh dough, and better flavor with older dough), but never both. I soon figured out that dough older than 4 days doesn't hold any shape, and is best used as a pre-ferment mixed in a new batch. And I don't like volume measurements! I grew up with a cheap scale, simply dumping the ingredients into a mixing bowl on the scale, taring between measurements - so much faster and easier, and more precise, but not if the recipe doesn't come with weight measurements. I finally 'upgraded' to Peter Reinharts 'Artisan Bread Every Day' book, and have been much happier ever since. Not only does it come with measurements in grams and ounces (and volume too, if you must), I also believe that the 'stretch and fold' technique helps developing a better crumb, and thanks to the great instructions in this book I have been baking with pure sourdough starters ever since. Starting a wild yeast culture was really easy - only after baking happily with it for weeks I realized that many people online aren't quite that lucky with their 'catch' from the get go. Reinhart suggests to use pineapple juice to start the culture, or to try any acidic liquid like lemon or orange juice. I had an old organic grapefruit in the fridge that I had bought by accident, mistaking it for an orange, and used that for the initial mix, and plain orange juice on the second day. My seed culture broke all speed records in regards of foaming and bubbling from day one. I have had this first culture in my fridge for 1 1/2 years now, refeeding it on average once a week, and it still works great. In fact, it is so active and leavening that even in the recipes that call for commercial yeast on top of the pre-ferment due to eggs or fat, I get away with just the sourdough starter - I haven't bought instant yeast in a year (but if you don't want to bake with sourdough starter, there are plenty of recipes that use store bought yeast only, too). It still was a learning curve - it took me a while to ignore all the time cues and to just look at the dough. Living in an hot and humid climate like South Florida, I can easily cut all the proofing times stated in half. I ended up with tons of loaves flat and gummy simply because I always ended up over proofing the dough. Now I make sure that I proceed to the next step in the recipe after the starter doubled in size, the dough doubled in size, and the shaped loaf grew by 1 1/2 in size. If I let the shaped loaf grow any further, the yeast has nothing left to give in the oven for any oven spring. Best results always come if I stick the shaped loaves in the fridge and bake them cold the next day. But that is Florida, I might do it differently in a colder climate. All recipes I tried worked wonderful, provided I didn't end up over proofing, and I feel I was able to take my bread baking attempts to a whole new level. 'Artisan breads in Five' was great to get me into baking to begin with, but real good bread takes a little more effort, more so in managing time, temperatures and techniques than hands on work - but it is so worth it! (I uploaded a picture of crusty cheese bread, leavened with sourdough starter only, no yeast added)

I bake all my own breads, from slider rolls to sourdough rye. I was not a novice when I bought this book, and I own a decent collected library of bread books, including Reinhart's precious "Brother Juniper's Bread Book." This book has changed bread making for me. It is for beginner and baker alike. The recipes work. They are based on high hydration doughs with minimal stretch and fold kneading. Simple and fun. I've made about half the recipes now, and they all work perfectly. The pictures are beautiful and helpful. Reinhart is a master teacher who gives you the theory behind the practice. (He has a great video course that uses this book on Craftsy.com) I especially like that he has reduced the recipes to baker's formulae in an appendix in the back for people who want to learn to use baker's math. (It's worth the effort!) If you own no other bread book than this one, you will be well-resourced to make artisan breads at home.

I have been baking bread for over 50 years, my grandmother and mother taught me to cook very early and by the time i was 12, I was cooking family meals, which in my family included homemade bread. I read bread books like novels, this one has some good practical recipes I will use. The technique of making bread dough ahead, and letting it rise in the refrigerator is one i have used before, this book explains the process much Bette than some instructions I have seen. For me this method of breathtaking is attractive because I can make a smaller amount of bread at a time, and have fresh bread for myself, or if I need to make more dough, I can easily do so. Dough made with a long slow rising as in these recipes, is particularly nice and flavorful. I believe this book can improve my breathtaking skills, and teach anyone who wants to take time to study it and follow the steps,to make good tasty bread., from simple, inexpensive readily available ingredients,when something less available is called for, substitutes are suggested or it can be eliminated. The artisan bread movement had increased interest in bread making, a good thing in my opinion. This book makes good bread more accessible to those of us who can't abide spongy commercial store bread, and don't like baying high bakery prices for simple tasty bread.

First things first. I have been baking bread and pizzas for more than 30 years, and within a few days of receiving this book, I learned a few things and saw some improvements. Since baking better bread is the only purpose of this book, it ranks as a success. I'd say the book is ideal for either beginners or "experts" like me, as long as you are willing to throw away (or at least forget for a while) everything you know about baking bread. In my years of baking, I learned that you can't freeze dough, yeast likes warm places, and the longer you knead dough, the better. Reinhart has a different opinion, and he seems to be correct. The Good Points * So far I have made baguettes, sourdough and pizza using recipes and techniques in the book. All turned out excellent. I can now bake "crusty" baguettes on demand, and can produce that micro-thin, slightly stretchy pizza crust in a kitchen 3000 miles from New York (although with slight additions to Peter's recipe). * I always "knew" you couldn't freeze dough, but following Peter's advice, I now regularly freeze dough for pizza, and it turns out great. Combined with premeasured bags of frozen sauce, fresh hot pizza is now a "freezer" item. Awesome, except for my diet. * I learned new techniques for working with dough, and for the most part they seem to work great. The book organizes the basic dough techniques (stretching, proofing, etc) in one section at the front of the book so you can find them easily. (More on this below). * Subject to some issues described below, the instructions are reasonably easy to follow. They are written in easy-to-understand terms, and Peter avoids the usual pedantic language often found in higher-end cookbooks. Nothing worse than needing a dictionary and a translator to make soup. * Reinhart doesn't try to convince you that you need to go out and buy $1000 worth of proofing pans, proofing boxes, special cloths, etc. Just use what is in your house already. The Bad Points (Note first paragraph in review) * The directions can get a bit carried away with themselves. Personally, quantities like 3 3/8 teaspoons of salt drive me nuts. I might breakdown and use an actual measuring spoon instead of a teaspoon, but there is no way I am not going to eyeball the last half teaspoon. * The directions are written in a narrative format rather than a list of items typical in recipes. As a result I will often end up re-reading the whole recipe numerous times just to find the next step. This can be a bit of a pain, because many of the recipes have quite a few steps. Typical will be mix for 2 minutes on low, wait 5 minutes, switch to a dough hook, mix for 3 minutes on medium, wait 5 minutes, fold and stretch dough, wait for 10 minutes in an uncovered bowl, stretch again.... You get the idea. For every step, you will end up re-reading most of the recipe. A little indenting/change of fonts/highlighting/bold/etc in the layout would do wonders for the book. * The directions can get overly detailed, but yet unclear-forcing you to interpret multiple directions to be sure you know exactly what Reinhart meant. Not a real big deal, but something one more round of proofreading should have caught. * Basic techniques such as kneading and proofing are in a separate section of the book, and then referred to by individual recipes. Except when they are not-some recipes include the details, some refer you to the front of the book. Since the directions are already somewhat bloated and poorly formatted, I'd prefer to just have references to a single section. * At least one of the recipes (sourdough mother starter) has all the quantities in cups, until you get to the final steps when everything is now in grams. I don't have a metric (or even English) scale in my kitchen. * Some of the steps are explained in agonizing detail, and them some are skipped over. It takes 5 pages to explain how to make the sourdough starter, but then the "how to refresh the starter dough process" is skipped over. List the quantities of old starter, flour and water (see above), but then makes no mention of what to do with it- proof at room temp? immediately return to the refrigerator? How long does it need to refresh? * Mom always taught me that you can't really measure flour-you have to add it to the dough as needed. The reason for this is that flour can have a vastly different moisture content, so what works once might yield overly tacky/dry dough the next time. Reinhart doesn't seem to subscribe to this theory, at least not in all his recipes. After mixing up a batch of the gooiest pizza dough on the planet, I'd say Mom was right. * Some of the baking times listed are suspect. I suspect they are worse case time for very large loafs, not typical times for baguette sized creations. Caveat baker. * None of the recipes I have tried so far are for anyone in a hurry. Every recipe so far has taken days to complete. Not a negative...yeast will be yeast. Just something to be aware of. Overall: A great guide to breadbaking-both for specific recipes and learning to update your artisan skills. I learned a lot from it, and have made a number of items, all of them unqualified successes. If you are looking to whip up a batch of bread as quickly as your bread machine, this is not your book. If you want to spend a few days working with yeast to get a baguette worthy of Paris (OK, maybe New York), this is your book.

I am a firm believer in the slow rise method of bread making, a technique author Peter Reinhart champions in all of his books, and when this book hit shelves I quickly snapped up a copy and set to work. My observation is that Reinhart has tried to simplify the process of making slow-rise breads, and for the most part he is successful. First and foremost, Reinhart has toned down the details in this book, making it more approachable for the more casual baker. That is, he spends a lot less time going over the chemistry and the theory, concentrating more on the formulas themselves. There is certainly nothing wrong with this, and it reflects a trend of having less and less time to work in the kitchen. I personally like the details and find they make the process of baking breads much more interesting. To be sure, this is the idea behind this book - bring the slow-rise methodology to the masses that have less time and/or interest in knowing all the behind-the-scenes happenings with the dough as it proofs. There are a lot of good formulas in this book and all of them (at least the ones I have tried, anyway) yield great results. The reader does need to understand that the vast majority of these require more than a single day to make and require some planning ahead. The subtitle on the book is "Fast and Easy Recipes for World-Class Breads", and this is not exactly true. They are certainly easy and the resulting breads are indeed world-class, but there's no "fast" about it. Reinhart's most successful book to date has been the Bread Baker's Apprentice, and in that book he introduces Pain a l'Ancienne, a rustic bread that requires cold fermentation and relies on cold water to activate the yeast - very different from the standard warm water proof. He has updated the formula in Artisan Breads Every Day, and it is now easier to handle and is more flexible. Comparing them side by side, though, I believe the new version is a step back, losing something flavor-wise in the resulting loaves. The loaves do have flavor and they are quite good - don't get me wrong on that point - but I just don't believe they're as astoundingly good as what comes from following his original formula. On many of his other formulas, though, he has definitely improved his methods and even the flavor. All of Reinhart's books follow the same basic format in terms of page layout, formula breakdown and graphic design, and this book is no exception. It's a format that works very well. There are a lot of excellent photographs that support the presentation of each formula and there are sections for variations on many of the formulas that expand the collection appreciably. Finding a good idea for a special bread is easy with this book. This is another successful book on the topic of slow-rise breads and it is a little easier to follow and use than many of Reinhart's other books on the topic. This is a very good introduction to the topic and will enable the home baker to create outstanding breads without requiring a degree in chemistry. If you want to create the kinds of breads that get raves and you're willing to spend a little more time on such loaves, this is a great starting point.

There was a recipe for marble rye bread by this author in a recent issue of "Fine Cooking" magazine. I tried it, was very pleased with the results, so I sought out his books. I purchased this one and "The Bread Baker's Apprentice". I haven't tried anything from the second book yet. I started with the San Francisco sourdough recipe. Although Chef Reinhart gives detailed instructions for creating a starter (which I plan to try sometime), he says that you can use any starter you might happen to have as the "mother starter" for his recipes. I happen to have a VERY active starter that I made from a recipe on the King Arthur Flour website, so I used that where "mother starter" was called for. The resulting bread turned out great, best sourdough I've ever made. I also tried the soft sandwich rye bread. I'm a rye bread junkie, and since I was so happy with the marble rye, I was anxious to try this. This rye bread also calls for a starter (not all recipes in cookbooks do), but it was well worth it. Once again, I was very pleased with the results. Some of the bad reviews here remind me of Veruca Salt from "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory", the "I WANT IT NOW" syndrome that has become so prevalent in our society. Good artisan bread NEEDS the time to ferment and rise. Chef Reinhart has streamlined the instructions as much as possible, but you can't cut back on the fermentation. As for the time these recipes take, most of is is hands-off. You mix and knead it briefly, then put it in the fridge or on the counter to ferment, you can go do something else at this point, and come back to it when it's ready. When it's time to shape the loaves, you can opt to bake just one now, leave the other two in the fridge to bake the next day and the day after. So you can have three days worth of fresh-baked bread in not much more time that it takes to make one loaf. As for the reviewer who complained about how he goes on and on about ingredients - Chef Reinhart is a TEACHER at one of the best culinary schools in the country, Johnson & Wales. And, as a teacher, he is not just going to give readers or students a bunch of recipes, of course he is going to talk about ingredients. If you really want to learn to bake high quality bread, this is an important thing to learn. For those of you who feel that these recipes take too much time, buy yourself a bread machine and at least one of the many good cookbooks written for them. I like "The Bread Lover's Bread Machine Cookbook" by Beth Hensperger. Just know that these breads will not have the same "artisan" quality as those of Chef Reinhart and other artisan bakers. Or just go to a good bakery and buy some artisan bread that someone else spent a lot of time making. If you are willing to take the time to read and learn, I recommend this book. The instructions are clear and easy to follow, and the results are excellent. Good things come to those who wait!

I bought this as a gift for my daughter who is a beginning bread Baker and she loves it. She finds it easy to read and understand. The recipes are easy to follow and are not intimidating. She loved it so much that I bought one for myself.

I bought this book for the Chocolate-Cinnamon Babka recipe and it was worth every penny. I am yet to try the other recipes in the book but I have the Bread Bakers Apprentice (BBA) book and I love Peter Reinhart's work so I am sure I shall enjoy using the Artisan Breads Every Day book as much as I have enjoyed BBA. What I love about the methodology that is taught in this book is that you can spend a few minutes in the evening preparing your bread and you can then take it out the next day and continue. I did this with my Babka and it made a very busy Saturday morning far more manageable as my Babka was already half way there having started it on Friday night, I just had to take it out of the fridge and let it come to room temperature and then you just continue on with the recipe. The photos in the book are very helpful in illustrating the techniques in the book and often there are different methods given e.g. shaping the bagels he gives two different methods and there are three different slurry options given for the Sticky Buns. Peter Reinhart encourages creativity so after you have tried making the recipes (following the formula given) about three times feel free to put your own creative touch in there, change the ingredients, go for it and put your own variations in the formula. Many people I know tend to gloss over the text of a cook book and they just go straight to the recipes. I highly recommend reading the "Baking Basics" chapter as the title suggests it goes through all the basics and for someone like me who has been using BBA I still learned a lot from the basics chapter. If you too own BBA and are thinking to yourself but the first chapter/s in BBA were so long and dry don't worry it is far more to the point in Artisan Breads Every Day. I love this book, I would give it six stars if I could and I look forward to using this book for years to come. Thank you Peter Reinhart for such a wonderful book.

J'ai decouvert Peter Reinhart en cherchant sur internet une recette de pizza. J'ai offert ce livre à ma compagne pour la st valentin. Nous avons deja éssayé plusieurs recettes, le pain est delicieux même dans un four traditionnel. Les recettes sont détaillées et j'ai obtenu des resultats parfaits du premier coup, même pour les bagels (recette avec pochage avant le passsage au four).

I am a beginner baker and found this book really useful

Libro bello e pratico, da leggere come un libro per imparare e da sperimentare come un libro di cucina, in più, la comodità che la pianificazione delle attività è già stata fatta dall'autore. le ricette sono già prepianificate in attività da fare la prima volta e poi nel "giorno dell'infornata". Tutte le ricette mi sono riuscite. Ammetto, però che ci deve essere qualche diferenza fra le nostre e le sue farine...le nostre assorbono molta meno acqua. Ottimo regalo per avvezzi alla panificazione, poiché introduce nel mondo della lievitazione lenta e aggiunge "cultura" alle proprie doti.

I have had this book for about 2 weeks now and it is occuping my free time. It is a great resource for learning to bake yeast breads. So far I have baked the pizza dough and cinnamon raisin bagels. Both recipes worked prefect. His explainations are clear and really helpful. I am hopeful to move on to classic french bread later in the week! I highly recommend it for anyone wanting to improve and expand your baking skills!

I searched the local library for all books related to artisan breads as I am fairly new to bread baking. I borrowed and tried several top rated books. This is one I borrowed twice as there were so many easy wonderful recipes I wanted to try. After the second time I bought my own copy. If you only buy one book, this is the one that will cover it all for baking wonderful breads and pastries. Mr. Reinhart allows for much versatility and personal creativity with his recipes as long as you follow his few simple rules. Among my personal favorites are the Chocolate Cinnamon Babka, the heavenly soft white bread, and my family says the bagels are so good I should quit my day job and go into the bagel business. For the novice as well as the more experienced baker, this is a must have tool.