Here is a picture of the wood fired oven my husband and I built two years ago. We took a class at North House Folk School in Grand Marais, MN to learn how to do it.  Using plans from Alan Scott, and directions from Derek Luchesi, 15 people built an oven in 3 days. 

But when we got back home and started building our own, we realized that the plans without pictures weren't enough.  So we photographed each step of the way as we built our oven, and then wrote an illustrated how to book to help other people like us without a lot of masonry experience.  My book is called From Brick to Bread: Building a backyard oven.  I'm putting an advertisement for it on the for-sale page of this forum.

This site is a gem !  An asbestos gas warmer from 1896,  a DIET bread with 9 eggs and 1 1/2 cups of sugar; cookies with citron - you figure out how much flour.

http://www.vintagerecipes.net/books/candy_makers_guide/asbestos_gas_batch_warmer_or_s.php

Hello everyone:

My name is Steven King and like you, I am an amateur bread baker.  I am currently working on a bread baking book (I have purlished before and have written extensivley).  A bread baking book with a twist.  I am looking for yeast bread recipes that reflect the culture, heritage and people of your state.  Additionally, the recipe must include a story - the story behined the recipe.  3 recipes will be selected from each state for publishing and the winners will receive an autographed copy of the book, their picture will be posted along with their submission.  The ingredients must be readily attainable (if obtained online, please furnish the web address).   Recipes will be judged on instruction clarity, appearance, flavor, authenticity and accompanying storyline. 

Thank you and I look forward to hearing from you.  My direct email address, should you need it, is itsgoode2bking@gmail.com

Steven King

I am extremely pleased to say that the book I've been reading this week, 52 Loaves: One Man's Relentless Pursuit of Truth, Meaning and a Perfect Crust by William Alexander is a vast improvement over the previous bread-related memoir I reported on. It's possible, even probable, that you need to be at least a little baking obsessed to enjoy it as much as I did but anyone who has baked at all or even those of you who just really appreciate a good, chewy bite of the staff of life should appreciate this chronicle of a year of bread. Alexander, author of the 2007 book on gardening The $64 Tomato in which he told of his quest for the perfect garden, seems to have a problem with obsessions. Fortunately, he's very funny about it.

In 52 Loaves, he decides that he must, absolutely, recreate the perfect flavor, crumb and crunch of a piece of bread he ate some years ago while on vacation. He reasons that if he bakes the same artisan peasant bread every week for a year, he will come to understand it down to its tiniest filament of gluten and thus be able to achieve his goal. Along the way he guides the reader through the mysteries of wheat and flour varieties, the true nature of yeast, explains in plain English the fearful calculus of the Baker's Percentage and allows us to follow him into the subterrenean kitchens of the Paris Ritz. He travels to meet bakers, scientists and like-minded enthusiasts. He even grows, harvests, threshes, winnows and grinds his own crop of wheat. Best of all, he is hilarious as he describes his attempts to make his perfect loaf. In the last section of the book, he convinces the monks at a monastery in Normandy to let him come bake bread in their ancient community. This section is weightier and clearly important to the author. He seems to finally get close to the "why" of his bread obsession.

I highly recommend this book for any novice bakers (and even for people who have more than a few loaves under their belts). I guarantee it will make your own struggles with levain and alveoli easier and much, much funnier.

Hiee :-)

Virgin at baking bread and full of apprehensions :( Guess I need to dive in and not worry much. But before that, want to arm myself completely. TFL is an intelligent resource. If everything in here is compiled well - it would be the best selling bible on bread baking - honestly.

People here have their favs - Hamelman, Leader, Lahey, Peter Reinhart, Clayton and several others. Here, I see no mention of "The Five Families of Bread by Michael Kalanty". He seems to have simplified things for a novice by classifying the dough into groups. Anyone using this book? How informative is it? Any sort of input on the same will help me decide if I should buy the book.

This is a nice place to be. Will post my experiences as soon as I plunge in :P

Thankyou TFL,
Nepakshi..

Hello all.

I wanted to ask you guys if you could recommend a good book for cakes and pastries that is amateur-friendly, with some coverage of technique or tips that could help improve my baking experience.

The reason I ask is that I have tried, on several occasions, to bake cakes from scratch following recipes from a generic baking book that I bought from Borders, but each time have been disapointed with the results. Each time the cakes come out flat and dense (I had much better luck with the croissants I baked). I thought that this could be the result of my poor technique/knowledge, the quality of the available equipment in my kitchen, the quality of the ingredients I have at my dispossal, or all of the above. Or (it occured to me) it could also be the result of a poorly written book (?).

In any case, if anyone could recommend a book to help an amateur, I'd appreciate it very much. :)

I decided to order two english bread books to my uncle's home, who will come and visit us in a couple weeks. Books are probably everywhere cheaper than in Switzerland, this way I will be able to save around 30 Dollars, which is a lot for a student like me.

Now, question: which books? I decided to order for at least 25 $, because otherwise I'd have to pay for the shipping anyway. I rather spend my money for books only. ;)

I've already got Reinhart's BBA and Hamelman's Bread.

I was thinking about one Whole Grain book, either Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads or Laurel's Kitchen Bread book. I'm not sure which one I should take. I'm looking for a good book with interesting formulas. not only american style pan loaves. I do like hearth breads as well. It seems to me that Laurel's Book includes more formulae, but I don't know what kind of bread they are. I don't mind a couple enriched, sandwich style loaves, but I'd like to have some lean doughs as well. Do I find this in Laurel's book? Reinhart's on the other hand seems to have less theory and less formulae, but a section with hearth breads. is it worth it?

Secondly, I'd like to buy a book which includes formulae which consist out of a variety of grains, not only white flour, some sourdough . . . They can be time consuming, but please, not only! I don't want to have three day-projects all the time. A preferment - fine, sourdough - fine, but to fussy recipes don't fit into my schedule. I was thinking about Leader's Local Breads. I know about the errors in the recipes, but I think it wouldn't matter to much for me as I mostly use weight measurements? And I've already got quite some experience with baking, so I hope that I'd be able to correct errors if I find some?

Any other propositions?

I'd be very happy about some help to make my decision. And I promise to post about my baking which will result out of these books. ;)

Salome

Having just finished reading the chapters pertaining to bread in Advanced Bread and Pastry by Michel Suas, I have to say that this book has already become my favorite from among all the bread books in my collection. 

While those who bake by 'feel' might not appreciate the detail into which the book delves, I believe those who take a 'scientific' approach to bread baking will find the book invaluable.  The discussion of short, improved and intensive mixing protocols and their relationship to bulk fermentation times and yeast quantities is, in itself, worth the price of the book.  

The book is not so much a collection of recipes (although it does contain a large number of them) as it is a complete education in bread and pastry baking, thus providing a jumping-off point for the baker to create his/her own recipes.  It almost seems as if the book was written to serve as the text for the Bread and Pastry Professional Training Program taught at the SFBI, of which Suas is the founder.  Although the book seems to be written with the professional baker in mind, I think that home bakers, like myself, will find a wealth of information which will serve them well in the family kitchen.

I stumbled upon the following article in the NY Times on a new book called, Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day.

From the looks of it, it seems that the author takes a master recipe in which a wet dough is mixed, but not kneaded, and then popped in the fridge overnight, and then adds a lot of variations to create different breads.

Here are a few books I'd like to recommend.  I'd love to see some of your favorites - or just anything that's a good read.  Browndog and weavershouse, you started this idea, but I hope others can name a few also.

any of Anne McCaffrey's books

The Man Who Used the Universe
  by Alan Dean Foster

The Furies of Calderon (beginning of a series)
  by Jim Butcher

One For the Money (beginning of a series)
  by Janet Evanovich