Bread Made Easy: A Baker's First Bread Book [Paperback]

Beth Hensperger (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If you bake, but making bread intimidates you, Beth Hensperger's Bread Made Easy is the perfect choice for expanding your skills. It gives all the basics a beginner needs about technique, equipment, and ingredients, in the clearest, most reassuring way.

Hensperger certainly knows about baking bread--this is her eighth book on the subject. This time, she starts with "Baking School," a comprehensive section covering what pans to use, why bottled water is best, and how to use various kinds of yeast. She describes 12 types of wheat flour as well as flour made from 8 other grains. Then Hensperger explains proper techniques for kneading, rising, and forming loaves, including more than 65 color photos. The eight master recipes start beginners off making a simple unkneaded Batter Bread, then go on to progressively more demanding white bread, egg doughs, whole wheat bread, flatbread, rustic country loaves, and yeasted coffee cakes. Each recipe is broken into five key steps, including cooling and storage. To encourage you, Hensperger gives variations on each master recipe, suggesting you make them all before moving on to the next type of bread. Progressing from challah to a cinnamon-sugar-filled egg-dough spiral loaf, hamburger buns, elegantly twisted dinner rolls, and a flat, foccacia-like Stuffed Onion Pretzel topped with poppy seeds makes this a rewarding exercise. Anyone who bakes will appreciate the clear, easy-to-use format of this book, and find it a reasonably complete and compact reference work as well as a source for seemingly foolproof recipes. --Dana Jacobi

From Library Journal

Hensperger's (The Bread Bible) latest bread book is in essence a mini-bread baking course, starting with "Baking School," which covers the basicsAingredients and equipment, techniques, troubleshooting, and moreAand moving on to her favorite time-tested recipes. These begin from the simplest, an easy batter bread, and progress to the more complex, a yeasted coffee cake; each section has a master recipe, followed by variations and spin-offs, and there are step-by-step photographs and technique shots throughout. A fine introduction for novice bakers, this is recommended for most collections.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 132 pages
• Publisher: Ten Speed Press (December 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1580081126
• ISBN-13: 978-1580081122
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 8.8 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #859,320 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Beth Hensperger, a New Jersey-born who now considers herself a California native, has been educating, writing, and demo-lecturing about the art of baking bread and cooking for thirty years. In the last few years, she has shifted focus from baking bread to countertop appliance-driven cookbooks that embrace the use of seasonal ingredients, merge convenience with cooking from scratch, and modernizing the home kitchen: the bread machine, the rice cooker, the microwave oven, and now a four-volume compilation specifically for use with the electric slow cooker, stressing care in preparation and personal creativity.

Hensperger's writing career began when she was chosen as the guest cooking instructor for the March 1985 issue of Bon Appétit. Now she is the author of over twenty cookbooks, including the best-selling Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook series, which includes Not Your Mother's Recipes for Entertaining, Not Your Mother's Family Favorites, Not Your Mother's Weeknight Suppers, and NYMSC Recipes for Two along with the blockbuster first volume, Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cookbook. Also from The Harvard Common Press are The Bread Lover's Bread Machine Cookbook, The Ultimate Rice Cooker Cookbook, and The Best Quick Breads. She is also the author of The Bread Bible, winner of the 2000 James Beard Book Award in Baking, and nominated twice for an IACP Cookbook Award.

Hensperger wrote a food column, "Baking with the Seasons," for the San Jose Mercury News (which was nominated for a James Beard Award in newspaper journalism) for over 12 years until the newspaper downsized.

She is a contributor to dozens of national and online cooking & lifestyle magazines, such as Food and Wine, Rachel Ray Magazine, Prevention, Veggie Life, Working Woman, Family Circle, and Cooking.com, as well as being a sought after radio interviewee speaking on cooking, baking, and entertaining. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area.

Visit Beth's website at BethHensperger.com and her weekly blog at notyourmotherscookbooks.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

33 of 33 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A solid first bread book for the novice, April 23, 2002

By 

shacke "shacke" - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Bread Made Easy: A Baker's First Bread Book (Paperback)

I finally got up the nerve to begin the task of bread baking about six months ago. After some research, I decided on this book because it is for beginners and the book methodically moves from easiest to more difficult. Each master recipe in a chapter is accompanied by variations on the same theme so if you make the master and a variation, then you probably have the skills to move on. The directions are simple, there is a chapter on basic bread knowledge and they the breads taste great. As of this writing, I have baked pretty much all the master recipes and a variant. I have not tried the sweet dough chapters (of which there are 2 or 3 I think). I thought these chapters are more special occasion breads rather than everyday so I skipped them. IMHO, one sweet dough chapter would have been fine and this is why I didnt give it 5 stars. Im sure they are excellent recipes. I have graduated to Peter Reinhart's Bread Baker's Apprentice which is a more serious treatise and also geared to novices. Look for my review on that when I have baked through it a bit. Bread Made Easy is not expensive and I recommend it as a first timer's book. Hope this helps someone.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent instructional book!, March 4, 2004

By 

Terri (Clymer, PA United States) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Bread Made Easy: A Baker's First Bread Book (Paperback)

This book exceeded my expectations. It explains everything you need to know to bake all types of bread, including ingredients, supplies, techniques and tips. The author is very knowledgable and takes you through the book from basic to more advanced breads. I HIGHLY recommend this book for anyone who wants to learn the art of baking breads!!!

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good book for starters..., January 3, 2002

By 

T. Butler "tjb" (Houston, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bread Made Easy: A Baker's First Bread Book (Paperback)

I am a beginning bread baker. I was attracted to this book because it is targeted to beginning bread bakers and has helped me learn and reinforce the basics, and it introduced me to a handful of basic bread types. I liked the small size of it and I approached it as a course that I could finish and get through, therefore giving me a good sense of accomplishment. One of the things I especially like is that she gives variations of the different basic bread types at the end of each chapter.

There are a few relatively minor inconsistencies in it but they are not major.
I recommend it as an intro to bread baking.