Ever gone a bit nuts on the baking book front?

Hi All,

I hope you're all well. I recently got the... err....let's say...  "impetus" to read large swaths of my unread (or at least, not recently read) bread baking library. So for the last couple of months, I've been reading, baking, tinkering, and baking some more. 

Now, I'm a firm believer that bread bakers (like many food mavens) have certain "book collecting"... or dare I say "hoarding" tendencies. It's understandable, I mean, I'm always hoping for some nugget of bread baking wisdom will be found to justify buying another book. At the beginning, that works to at least some degree then inevitably, the rewards start dropping off... until you start buying more advanced books... which are much more expensive.

I was chatting with a local bread-baking friend and I asked them how much of their bread library has been read, used, and was found to be particularly useful in some way....

She made some non-committal noises.. then said.... 

"I have about 60 books or so... I've actively read maybe 2-3 in the last few years, and referenced maybe another 4-5". 

When I thought about how I'd answer the question... I realised that I'd read half of my 22 book "bread library" from cover to cover, and the rest really were recipe books that I'd peruse occasionally. 

I didn't like that realisation. It seems so wasteful, and I don't want to see myself as some sort of poser who merely holds books on the shelf for looks... or a narrow minded baker who's stuck in a rut of the same recipe over and over. 

How did this happen?

In fairness, many books rehash the same information, since they're aimed at beginners... or at least, a wide audience which of course, includes the aforementioned beginners. That said, there really are different styles, percentages, temps, warm proofing vs cool (retard) proofing, milling your own flours vs. store bought, glutenous vs gluten-free, and it really is interesting to compare and contrast them.

But that needed a lot of baking...

So I did. I think I've baked more bread in the past 3 months than I have in the past year before it. The image above is just a select few of them. 

So while I'm doing this, what is your "go to" bread baking book, and why do you think you keep coming back to it instead of any of the others you may have?

Kind Regards,

Ham.