Artisan Baking

By Maggie Glezer

List Price: $22.95

Price: $15.61

& eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25.

Average customer review:

Product Description
It’s a crunch and aroma you can savor in your mind before you even take a bite: that perfect crust and that perfect crumb you can get only in bread baked with craft and care. Artisan Baking puts that bread within reach of every home baker; even the beginner now deftly will be able to turn out sourdoughs, pizzas, corn breads, and baguettes that are truly out of this world. Step-by-step instructions explain the best professional methods, and mail-order sources for ingredients and equipment simplify the baking experience. This is a book to bake from, to learn from, to read from for the sheer pleasure of encountering the generosity of spirit of the country’s finest bakers as they share their abundant expertise.

First published five years ago to glowing praise and awards, Artisan Baking is “a rare combination of clear writing, meticulous recipes, and abundant expertise” (Fine Cooking) and the cookbook that “those who live for and on bread have been waiting for” (The New York Times). It was picked by the editor of Cookbook Digest as the one book she would choose if she could have only one bread-baking book in her life. Reprinted twice in hardcover, Artisan Baking is now, at last, in an affordable paperback format with a new, easier-to-handle trim size.

Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #19716 in Books
- Published on: 2005-10-01
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Paperback
- 248 pages

Editorial Reviews
Review :
The New York Times : "A landmark book. Those of us who live for and on bread have been waiting for Maggie Glezer's Artisan Baking"—The New York Times

From the Back Cover
Winner of the James Beard Foundation Award for Best Baking Book of the Year

A book to bake from and learn from, and to read for the sheer pleasure of meeting the amazing men and women who dedicate themselves to furthering the bread-baking craft.

First published in hardcover as Artisan Baking Across America (Artisan, 2001 )

About the Author
Maggie Glezer is an American Institute of Baking-certified baker whose first book, Artisan Baking Across America: The Breads, the Bakers, the Best Recipes won a James Beard Foundation award. She specializes in teaching and writing about bread baking for amateurs and professionals and contributes to publications such as Fine Cooking, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the newsletter of the Bread Bakers Guild of America, and King Arthur Flour's The Baking Sheet. She lives in Atlanta with her husband and two children.

Customer Reviews

Good and useful
I was new to artisan baking. I found the book to be very good, a good book for beginning baking. I did not give 5 stars because I purchased another book at the same time, Crust, from Richard Bertinet and prefer his book. I find that Crust has better pictures detailing the steps, also I much prefer his kneading technique and he has a few recipes that I really like. So if I was to buy only one book I would get the Crust book but if I was to buy 2 I would also get this one because they compliment each other in terms of information and don't get me wrong this book is very nice. In any case, even after reading both, I still had to research the web to properly understand the difference between starters, biga, poolish, fermented dough and how yeast works.

Excellent book on proper bread baking
I have had this book for a few months and it has become one of my very favorite books on bread. I spend a lot of time working on bread and I am always looking for good books on the subject, so when I found this book I was quite taken with it. The more I use it, the more I like it.

Ever since picking up a copy of Reinhart's "Bread Baker's Apprentice" I have been sold on the idea of slower rise times and the use of starters (biga, poolish, etc.) to make bread, and the result has been a very significant improvement in the quality of the bread I make. Glezer's collection of formulas very much subscribe to this mindset and as a result my portfolio of breads has expanded. In my personal opinion, Glezer's writing style is somewhat more personal and warm than that of Reinhart, though it is a matter of personal preference. Both are excellent. The point is simply that Glezer's collection relies heavily on slow rise, starter-based breads.

There are no failures in this collection. Each formula is concise, clear, and makes a beautiful resulting loaf that is guaranteed to impress even the most discerning of bread critics, both visually and on the palate.

In addition to a fabulous collection of formulas, Glezer includes quite a bit of history and storytelling in her book. There is enough in here that the book might easily be considered more of a coffee-table tome than something to be used in the kitchen. Furthermore, there are pictures and lots of them. This book is beautiful in its layout and structure, becoming glamorous in its presentation without being pretentious.

For excellent loaves that require some time to make, good reading and a better appreciation for superb bread and bread baking, this book is a must-have.

Finally - a baker tells it like it is!
Yippee, ciabatta that is actually ciabatta! As a retired chef and long-time pastry/bread artisan, I was astounded by my irremediable inability to create decent ciabatta. Equally amazed to learn that it appears everyone (and I have all of the well-known ones) is copying everyone else's recipe/technique without ever bothering to try it. Maggie Glezer's was perfect the first time (and the second...) If you buy just one artisinal bread book, this really should be it. Everything works - she's just terrific.