Bread Baking for Beginners: The Essential Guide to Baking Kneaded Breads, No-Knead Breads, and Enriched Breads

Great book easy to follow
Writer is really good at explaining the process of bread making! I had already tried other Videos and books and recipes were not clear! I m finally making amazing bread by just following her amazing simple recipes! My family loves the bread!!!

Promising, but ultimately disappointing
Bread Baking for Beginners. Paperback edition. Bonnie OharaWhen I was about 13 my grandmother taught me how to bake bread. It was a whole wheat bread with molasses. I loved it. I made it at home a few times as a youth, and a few times as a young adult. Then I forgot about baking bread. Recently I got interested in it again. I read what the Betty Crocker cook book said about it. I searched the internet and found some recipes for white bread and tried them. I decided to get a bread cook book – this one.My favorite recipe books are ones that tell some of the author’s life story, how they came to know something about cooking. This is one of those books. It says it is for beginners, and it is, in the sense that it explains many very basic things. But it doesn’t start or end with how to bake a loaf of white bread. There are 32 recipes and I would consider most of them a bit exotic. They have names like foccacia, ficelles, baguettes, fougasse, boule, batard, brioche, challah, and babka. Well, growing up on white Wonder bread, almost anything else is exotic. It starts with How Bread Is Formed and Preparing to Bake. It explains terminology, the process of making bread, and different types of bread, including pre-ferments. I had to look up “baguettes,” she doesn’t explain that and a few other words in the book, it is assumed that the reader knows what they mean.One surprise is that all recipes are specified by weight, not volume. But it is a really good idea. It is easier, more accurate and more precise. The weights are given in grams: 8 grams yeast, 375 grams water, 500 grams all-purpose flour, 10 grams salt. I read all of the book reviews on Amazon. Quite a few complained about recipes in grams. They seem to say, I will never, ever spend $6 on a kitchen scale that measures ingredients in grams. Okay, if that is how you feel, I am not going to be able to change your mind.Yes, most of the recipes call for all-purpose flour, not bread flour. High protein content is good for bread. Bread flour has a little higher protein content than all-purpose flour, but I will follow directions starting out.Page 16 lists and explains the equipment you need. A lot of the items are probably already in your kitchen. We had a nice scale that measures in ounces or grams at the click of a switch. But there are two items that we didn’t have and cost more than Bonnie’s book. A Dutch oven and a banneton. First she says cast iron Dutch oven, then she says cast iron or ceramic. 50% of the recipes call for using a Dutch oven and a banneton. A banneton is a cane basket. You put the dough in it for the final proof (rise), so that air can circulate. On Amazon you can buy a kit that includes a Dutch oven, a banneton, and some of the other items on her list. I bought a used ceramic Dutch oven at a thrift store for $8. It says it is oven safe, microwave safe, and dishwasher safe. It is only three quarts. Most of the Dutch ovens on Amazon are twice that big. Three quarts is just barely big enough. My Dutch oven has a lip around the top, which makes the top slightly smaller in diameter than the rest, making it hard to get the loaf out of the Dutch oven. I lined a colander with a towel and call it a banneton.Bonnie designed the book so that you would do all of the recipes in the order presented. First are no-knead breads, followed by kneaded breads, enriched breads, and breads with pre-ferments and sourdough starter. The first recipe requires a Dutch oven and a banneton. This recipe is called no-knead, but it is not “no work.” Instead of kneading, the dough is folded. She calls it “letter fold,” I don’t know why.The directions for the first recipe were not 100% clear to me. If you do an internet search on “no knead bread by Bonnie Ohara” you will find a nice Youtube starring Bonnie Ohara, and everything will be clear. I recommend that you watch Bonnie’s Youtube.I baked the No-Knead Bread. If it was my book, I wouldn’t put this one first, I would do a plain white kneaded loaf first. It would be baked in a pan, not a Dutch oven. The recipe says put the Dutch oven in the oven set to 475 degrees, and when the dough has risen enough, take the Dutch oven out of the oven and lower the dough into it. I was real worried about getting burned. Then I watched the Youtube video (previous paragraph.) The video says to tip the dough from the banneton onto parchment paper, then use the parchment paper to lower it into the Dutch oven, and put the lid on the Dutch oven. Great idea, but not in the book. After I finished baking and it cooled for 40 minutes I cut it and ate a piece. The crust was very tough and the taste was not very good, reflecting the fact that it has no sugar in it. I won’t be baking any more of her recipes that don’t have sugar or honey.Most of the recipes do not have any oil, shortening, or butter. I wonder what that does to the bread. Maybe that is why my bread had a thick, tough crust, I don’t know.I was surprised that Bonnie doesn’t use a stand mixer. She does a lot of the mixing with her hands, and says that you can use a wooden spoon if you don’t want to get your hands that messy. Today’s stand mixers come with a kneading hook that is made for bread dough. I would like to have instructions on how to use it correctly, like how long to run it on knead or how to tell that it has been kneaded enough.Bonnie’s writing style is very good, the book is nicely illustrated, and the paperback is made of sturdy paper that should hold up well under kitchen abuse.My complaints with the book are 1) too many recipes require a Dutch oven and banetton; 2) only 9 of the 32 recipes have any sugar or honey in them. The one I baked did not taste good. 3) it doesn’t say anything about how to use a stand mixer. 4) It doesn’t tell you to use parchment paper to lower the dough into the very hot Dutch oven.Here are some notes I have made.When adding water to sourdough starter, set it out the night before so that the chlorine evaporates. P 2.Use instant yeast, P 3.Place a roasting pan full of water on the bottom rack to make the oven humid (when not using a Dutch oven.) P 7.Calculate what the water temperature should be. The dough should be 75 F or above. If the air and flour temperature are 70 F, the water should be 80 F. I have always used water at about 110 F, just cool enough to be sure it doesn’t kill the yeast. P 21.I thought you had to find someone who had sourdough starter and get them to give you some. No, you just mix flour and water in a container with a lid, put the lid on loosely, and wait for yeast in the air to start growing in the mix. P 131.

Great starter book
I had never baked bread from scratch before, this book is for beginners. She starts by telling you all the equipment you will need, she explains the terminology and techniques used. There are pictures to show what each process looks, it starts with a simple bread . I am looking forward to baking my way through the recipes.

Recipes are in grams.
All ingredients are measured in grams. I don’t have time to do that. It is very aggravating. The book does have some very good info in it.

Perfect book for beginners. I have baking experience but I love the detailed descriptions and photos

very good recepies