Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads: Revised and Expanded [Paperback]

Bernard Clayton (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1995

In the twenty years since the publication of The Complete Book of Breads new equipment and products have revolutionized the kitchen. With a food processor, or a heavy-duty mixer equipped with a dough hook, a home-baked loaf can be produced in a fraction of the time previously required, and with little effort as well. The easy availability of fast-acting yeasts, bread flora, and other specialty products has also broadened the possibilities.

These changes were part of the inspiration for the much-needed New Camplete Book of Breads; 200 of the recipes from the original book appear here, all revised with the modern cook, modern equipment, and marvelous products in mind. Beyond the updated recipes, master baker Bernard Clayton also includes 100 new recipes, which are the result of ongoing research, further travels, and the generosity of fans and friends. For each recipe, Clayton also gives instructions for using either the mixer or the food processor and takes into account the shorter time needed for fast-acting yeasts.

The New Complete Book of Breads offers an incredible range of variety, nearly, enough to supply a different kind of bread for a year of baking days. Here are wheat breads -- Honey-Lemon, Walnut, Buttermilk; a variety of sourdough breads; all manner of corn breads; breads flavored with herbs and spices or enriched with cheeses; and all the favorite "little" breads -- Kaiser Rolls, Mother's Biscuits, English Muffins, and Popovers. For the baker who observes the seasons and the holidays with a fresh loaf, there are Challah, Barm Brack, and Panettone; there are also delectable breads rich with nuts and fruits, such as Cherry-Pecan, Italian Olive, and Honey-Pineapple.

Here is the ultimate bread book, an indispensable reference for professional bakers and home cooks alike.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In the 1970s, Bernard Clayton's The Complete Book of Breads became the bible for bread bakers everywhere. In the years since its publication, however, new equipment such as dough-mixing attachments and food processors, and new products such as fast-acting yeast and specialty bread flour, have revolutionized the kitchen. A new era requires a new book, and Bernard Clayton has obliged with his New Complete Book of Breads. Here you'll find 200 of Clayton's original recipes from his earlier book, all revised with modern equipment and products in mind. In addition, Clayton includes 100 new recipes gathered during the course of his research and travels as well as his interactions with friends and readers. Whether you're hungry for breads, rolls, muffins, popovers, seasonal favorites, or exotic delights destined to become favorites, you'll find them all in the New Complete Book of Breads.

From Booklist

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 Breads 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 © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 752 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster; Revised edition (September 1, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 068481174X
• ISBN-13: 978-0684811741
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 7.4 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (85 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #104,901 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #58 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Cooking by Ingredient > Herbs, Spices & Condiments
  • #99 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Baking > Bread

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

107 of 108 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Lots of Easy Bread Recipes for the Rest of Us. May 25, 2004

By B. Marold HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWER

Format:Hardcover

The subject of bread baking seems to attract large, authoritative titled books, as this is the third 400 or more page book on bread which claims to be either complete or a bible. As the other two books (both entitled `The Bread Bible' by Beth Hensperger and Rose Levy Beranbaum) were published in the last five years and Mr. Clayton's first edition of his book was published thirty years ago, Bernard Clayton has a distinct claim to have commanded this cookbook niche for the longest time, thereby having ample opportunity to correct, improve, and augment. From the author's new introduction, I see he has been doing that faithfully for the last thirty years.

In a sense, Mr. Clayton is very old school, as he was in a position to consult not only with Julia Child, but also with Craig Claiborne and James Beard, both of which have left us for tables on high. The augmentation of thirty years' effort gives us a volume which weighs in at 685 pages at an exceedingly reasonable $35. Kudos to Simon and Shuster for giving the volume the price of most cookbooks which rarely exceed 300 pages.

While Mr. Clayton arose from an `old school' background, the general technique behind his bread recipes is very modern and will be very welcome to the inexperienced home baker. The heart of his technique for yeast breads is to use the newest incarnation of commercial yeast, typically called `Rapid Rise'. I believe this yeast was specifically developed to work with bread machines. The fact that `Rapid Rise' yeast can be added to dry ingredients without being proofed in warm water and sugar or flour is what distinguishes it from the older `Active Dry' yeast from producers like Red Star and Fleishmans.... Virtually every yeast based recipe in the book mixes the yeast with dry ingredients and starts with water at 120 degrees Fahrenheit rather than blooming the yeast in water at about 105 degrees Fahrenheit.

The very best thing about Mr. Clayton's book in comparison to it's closest competitor, `The Bread Bible' by Rose Levy Beranbaum is the fact that Mr. Clayton makes a point of showing you how bread baking can not only be easy, but it can be relatively easy with an incredibly wide range of historically and ethnically interesting breads made with manual kneading, bread machine, stand mixer, and food processor. After reading books by such hyper fussy bakers such as Beranbaum, Silverton, and Reinhart, this is a real revelation. The second best thing about this book is revealed in the title. This is a complete book of BREADS. Note the plural. The most important aspect of the book is that it presents, in depth, recipes for twenty-four different types of breads, including many ethnic favorites. I found, for example, a recipe for the Russian Easter bread, Kulich, a close cousin to the local Lehigh Valley favorite, Paska from the Ukraine. None of the other encyclopedic approaches to bread included this recipe. However, I did recently find it and the true Ukrainian recipe in the new book `Celebration Breads' by Betsy Oppenneer.

The great thing about this variety is that it gives pretty complete coverage to all special needs, such as those who need a gluten-free bread, those who need a yeast-free bread (and are tired of Irish Soda Bread), and those who want healthy, whole grain bread recipes. It even covers recipes for crackers and batter breads and baking for dogs, if you can believe that.

The most amazing thing about the subject of bread baking is that in spite of the great size of this book, it simply does not cover everything, and, what it does cover is done from what is not the only or even the best point of view. While this book does touch on breads made from starters, the book does not deal with this subject in any detail. The book does not even include the words sponge, poolish, or biga in the index. It is on this subject where Ms. Beranbaum really shines. Unlike Mr. Clayton who gives a relatively cursory introduction to the techniques of yeast bread baking, Ms. Beranbaum gives about 90 very detailed pages to the intricacies of artisinal baking with both natural and commercial yeasts. I have already noted Mr. Clayton's focus on `Rapid Rise' yeast and it's techniques. Other writers prefer either `Active Dry' or even moist, `live' yeast that must be refrigerated. Other baking experts such as Peter Reinhart also make compelling arguments for very long rise times, which, in the interest of appealing to the amateur, Clayton does not discuss in depth.

If you want an exceedingly rich source of baking recipes for a very reasonable price with a very friendly voice which will make you confident that you will do well when you bake bread, this is the book for you! If you have no interest in a deep understanding of bread baking or in natural yeast techniques, you will need no other book. If your interest in baking is more professional or more in need of deeper understanding, check out Beranbaum or Reinhart's books.

Highly recommended. Makes bread baking inviting. Read more ›

71 of 73 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars The "bread bible" in my kitchen, but not my favorite September 13, 2002

By Joanna Daneman #1 HALL OF FAMETOP 10 REVIEWERVINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

I should have a kind of loyalty to Bernard Clayton, Jr.'s bread book. It's big, it's complete and it has just about any bread including crackers. (Like author Clayton, I love crackers.) But recent bread books,especially those artisan books, surpass The "New Complete Book of Breads" for getting that European effect, especially for free-form wheat breads like ciabatta and Tuscan bread.

However, this book shines for the American kitchen, in which you might not be using all the latest gadgets or have re-created a stone hearth. The recipes work well with the flours available in the grocery store and health food store, whereas you might need to mail order high-ash French-style flours from catalogs if you are working towards artisan breads.

The section on holiday breads like Panettone, Pandoro, challah and stollen are especially good. There is a Finnish bread that I especially admire.

So I find I still pull this book off the shelf when I want to make good bread, but don't want to agonize over getting crackly crusts, gel-like crumb or other artisan features of specialty breads. Easy, reliable and plenty of variety here.

55 of 56 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The ultimate cookbook for from-scratch bread bakers October 28, 1996

By A Customer

Format:Hardcover

I recently told someone I bake all our bread from scratch--no bread machine for me. He looked at me in amazement and asked, "Then how do you do it?!" "Just the way your grandmother did," I told him. With Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads, anyone can bake flawless loaves of bread. Clayton has thought of everything, from explaining the many different types of flours and their differing attributes to formatting every recipe for hand mixing, electric mixer and food processor. I was given a recipe for Irish soda bread that listed the ingredients by weight, not volume, and Clayton even has a conversion table. I have made his recipe for Rudi's stone-ground wheat bread every week since I bought the book; the bread is so wonderful, my husband and I are addicted to it. But I have made perhaps ten other bread recipes, and without exception they have been delicious and professional looking. Clayton doesn't resort to tricks but uses techniques that are guaranteed to produce perfect results. I find the process of bread baking exhilarating: by mixing a few simple ingredients together I produce a living, changing dough that appeals to every sense: the resilience of the dough as I knead it, the excitement of seeing the dough rising in the bowl, the irresistible smell of the loaves as they bake, the crunch of the crust--and the taste of a fresh chunk of bread, hot from the oven, that makes me weak-kneed with pleasure every time.

From flat breads to quick breads to pizza doughs to every variety of yeast bread, Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads will never let you down. How could it? Your spirits will rise along with your bread.

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A very helpful BIBLE of Bread Making. August 16, 1999

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

I have baked primarily the mixed grain and whole grain wheat breads from this book with success each time. Good explanations with directions for utilzing stand mixers, food processors or the old fashioned "by hand" methods of mixing and kneading. Packed full of information and recipes. Color pictures would be nice, but it's such a great source for such a variety of breads, I don't hold that lack against it. A must for the home breadbaker from the very father of bread making.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A carb lovers dream November 3, 2005

By Jamie R. Vislocky

Format:Paperback

At first glance, one might think this book is a bit excessive. I mean, it's enormous and it's all bread. And coming from someone who hadn't made a ton of bread before, it was a little intimidating. But the reveiws don't lie - this is an excellent book that will seriously turn ANYONE into a bread making master.
The book is divided up into sections - White Breads, Little Breads, Festive Breads, et cetera. And while it may seem like, with so many recipes, a lot of these breads are going to be very specific and not everyday useful, that's very much not the case.
The recipes are presented in the clearest, most concise, straighfoward and thorough method of ANY cookbook I've ever owned. Each recipe is broken down, step by step (and even in minutes) for hand, mixer or processor. There are hints and ideas at the beginning of each recipe and along the way. Even someone who has never made bread before would be baking a delicious loaf in no time.
I have made at least one recipe a week from this book since I purchased it a year ago and - no kidding - I've only had two that didn't turn out perfect (and in those cases, I knew what I had done wrong). And to be fair, even the ones I messed up were still very edible!
Some of my favorites are the Buttery Rowies, all the muffin recipes, and the Pepper Cheese Loaf. I recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in learning to make bread, or is already a proficient baker and wants to learn even MORE delicious recipes!