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

Hi,

I could really use some help making sense of something that just happened.  So I was attempting to experiment with one of PR's whole grain recipes.  It was his miche recipe.  I modified the recipe I though keeping the proportions the same in order to use slightly different amounts.  I was using his soaker/biga method.  The details of the experimentation may not be so important as the fact that i ended up with a very pancake battery biga and very wet soaker.  I thought I would correct for this by adding more flour when I combined the two, but what ended up happening was that as I added more flour the dough became and more sticky to the point that it became impossible to knead.  I tried to put it backin the bowl and mix it with my hands for a while and then to knead it agian, but it was just as sticky.  Then I trieed for probably 10 mintues or so to use the folding method where you slap the dough down onto the work surface and then fold i tover itself.  This also failed.  The dought remained totally sticky and at the point I was making such a mess that I just gave up.  I'm now letting the dough rise inthe bowl again and give it a fold and then let it rise again and see if I can knead it at that point.  My theory is that the dough was stick because there was less and less gluten development as I added more flour (that I in effect dilluted the gluten).  Could that be right?  Does anyone have 1) any advice about how I can save this loaf at this point and 2) what sort of things are going on here?  Why couldn't I make the dough less sticky by adding more flour so that I could knead it effectively.  As I continued to handle the dough it seemed to loose rather than gain structure...  Please help. 

Thanks, EZm

Hi Folks,

I just recently found the Fresh Loaf (and love it, I'm learning soo much!)... so I dont know if someone has posted this already,  but I just saw that Peter Reinhart is going to be at the COPIA center in Napa on July 20th.  He's going to be covering topics from the new Whole Grain book. 

I just got the BBA book this week... and coincidentally made my first ever truly edible loaves... so I'll probably be going to see what other magic might rub off on me ;-)

I also wanted to say I am so glad I found this community, you're just such a truly nice and helpful group of people- and there's so much great information here!  I love the fact that if I'm not quite understanding something by reading a post, there are usually really great photos and even videos to help me out.

Thanks!

Copia Link:

http://www.copia.org/content/node/2040

Well, now that the World Series is over, I can post...

This weekend, I made the Power Bread from PR's new book. It's the third bread I've made from that book, and I think I like it best. It's dense and heavy, with a definite sweetness and lots of crunchy bits, thanks to sunflower seeds and sesame seeds. It's like a trip back to the whole wheat 70s, if you remember that time...and if you don't, I don't want to hear about it!

My Valentine present, which had been back-ordered, showed up while I was out of town last week: the KAF Whole Grain Baking book.  My, oh my, oh my!  There is some serious baking to do!  Since our grandson is staying with us for part of his spring break and since he loves cinnamon toast for breakfast, I decided to start last evening with the honey oatmeal bread recipe, which has a cinnamon swirl option.  It contains honey and oatmeal, natch, as well as whole wheat flour, unbleached AP flour, butter and other good things.  I didn't have any nonfat dry milk on hand, but the bread do