Review by Booklist Review
No other cooking process can compete with bread baking for sensory satisfaction. The mixing of powdery flours; the living, rising yeast; the tactile pleasure of kneading; the house-filling aroma of baking; and the savor of the final loaf offer a full range of stimuli. Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads0 updates a baker's classic, and any library that missed the first edition or finds its copy in tatters will want to add this new edition. Clayton comprehensively addresses the home baker's craft, covering white, bran, whole wheat, rye, barley, oat, buckwheat, and sourdough exemplars. Festive, cheese, herb, and flat breads round out this encyclopedia. Chemically leavened quick breads, such as cornbread and biscuits, are also covered. There's even a chapter on baking for dogs! Estimated preparation times for each step of the recipes help bakers avoid sequencing errors. Both the book's breadth and the instructions for storage and troubleshooting add to its reference value. --Mark Knoblauch Copyright 2004 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Library Journal Review
Clayton's now classic The Complete Book of Breads was originally published in 1973. For the first edition of his New Complete Book of Breads, which appeared in 1987, he updated 200 of the recipes to reflect changes in both bread-making equipment and the availability of ingredients; he also added 100 new recipes. This 30th-anniversary edition is a more modest revision of the 1987 title. The recipes and the ingredients/equipment sections have been revised or reworked as necessary, but this version is perhaps most notable for its clean new design, which retains the handy "step-by-step" subheads and layout of the earlier books while giving the text a more streamlined, approachable look. For most baking collections. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A revision of a popular 1973 book by an industrious author whose taste strikes chords in a wide public. That taste is for bread with a lot of stuff put in it--herbs, spices, onion powder, dry milk, molasses, instant coffee, cheese, yogurt, raisins, fruit juice, coconut flakes A few recipes stick close to the basics of flour, water, yeast, and salt--for example, a French pain ordinaire, several versions of Jewish-style rye, a plain pizza dough. Most depend on other strong accents of flavor or texture. Among the inventive juxtapositions are basil with zucchini in muffins, fresh sweet clabber (fromage blanc) in an egg-enriched yeast bread, and Camembert baked in brioche dough. The recipes are detailed and cumbersomely designed to accommodate different equipment and yeast strains. The roving international emphasis betrays a spotty command (French pain d'Épice is baked like plain or ornamental gingerbread, not in loaves). Of far greater value are the many recipes from Slavic, German, and other ethnic cooks in Clayton's native Midwest. ""Complete"" this is not, in terms of really delving into ingredients and techniques--but it does reach as far afield as soda crackers, homemade dog-biscuits, and directions for building an adobe oven. All told: just the ticket for Clayton fans; not for Elizabeth David-style bread purists. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
Review by Library Journal Review
Review by Kirkus Book Review
