Customer Reviews

Bread Matters: The State of Modern Bread and a Definitive Guide to Baking Your Own

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(16)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This author is quite simply passionate about bread! He is very openly on a mission to open the eyes of the public to the empty calories and harmful chemicals that have been masquerading as bread for decades now.

The first quarter of the book may turn some readers off since it is quite 'dry', but it is probably the most important part of the book!The author details the modern process of commercial breadmaking with all it's faults and dangers. Then he moves one to reiterate that making bread is not the mystery so many of us think it to be. The layout, while dull to look at, is chock full of excellent information on tools, methods, bread making steps and descriptions of ingredients. The explanations are clear and in a simple language that makes the book accessible to most readers.

The 50 bread making recipes in this book are scattered in chapters titled :
First bread and rolls
Simple Sourdough
Bread-a meal in itself
Of crust and crumb
Sweet breads and celebrations
Easy as pie
(and Miraculously!) Gluten Free baking!!

(on a personal note the last chapter will be a lifesaver for me since, two weeks after getting this book, I discoverd that my son is allergic to Gluten!)

I have tried out a few of the recipes in the 'first breads' chapter (Basic bread, Milk Bread) and one from the Sweet breads chapter. All turned out great although, having baked bread before, I was skeptical of the consistency of some of the doughs. What was great about the book is that the author forsees the questions that will pop up in the novice or experienced baker's mind (shouldn't I add some flour now? This is way too sticky!) and addresses them promptly in the recipe.

I especially enjoyed the section on the rubbishy instructions that some of the bread baking cookbooks include that make the whole process so complicated. On the other hand, the author is a strong believer in weighing your ingredients so, if you don't have a kitchen scale, you may want one after reading this book.

I can't help feeling that a slight change of format might have made this book appear a less intimidating to readers new to the idea of home made bread. The layout of the pages looks like a cookbook from the 50's or 60's and the color pictures are clustered in color plate sections instead of being scattered throughout the book and placed next to the relevant recipes. However, if you look beyond just the appearance of the text, this book is well worth it.

The best thing about this book is that it is an intelligent discussion of the 'how' of breadmaking. The author credits the reader with the intelligence to understand the steps without simply telling us what to and makes the entire process of breadmaking accessible and enjoyable to everyone.

Bread Matters is a punny title, the kind loved by the British, who we learn quickly now eat forty-five per cent less bread than fifty years ago. Yet they are beginning to look American. SO Mr. Whitley is writing for his people lest they cruise the American path of morbidly cheap "food". Criticisms of America are mine only. The polite Mr. Whitley has the decency to scold only his own.

Bread was good for us before we let go of it to the corporate bakers. If you are interested in corporate malpractice, this book is for you. If you want to understand, for good and for bad, bread as a nutritionist would, this book is for you. The information here is important if you imagine carbohydrates to be bad. If you worry about glycemic response there is food here for thought and for life. If you just want to make a good loaf of bread, you can use this book to learn how, but it is only half the reason to buy it at most.

Ultrafast dough, used by corporate bakers is as pernicious as every other "ultra" facet of our ultra marketed ultra miserable society. Ultra fast dough is the product of ultra fast chemicals that puts you into that ultra dirt nap.

Bread is not to be hurried. Mix ingredients and let them rest rather than jumping straight into kneading. Give your little enzymes a head start and they will help you back by developing structure while you knead later.

Go slowly to load enough water. Enjoy icky sticky by lofting your dough and kneading in the air. The dough will leggo your fingers soon enough.

Same with rising. Slow. I even take extra days to make a new starter when I move to let the local yeasties find it and add their tang. Beers used to be so local because their own yeasts had a natural radius of around 25 miles. Carlsberg had the longest lived culture last time I checked. For bread, there is a Russian colony in California; and the oldest culture I have found is in Damascus. Once I started culturing my locals, I noticed a stronger flavor and a gradual acceleration in their activity.

Mr. Whitley will keep you busy with a good assortment of recipes for at least six months. As always, I am delighted by something new, especially when it is really old. He quotes a Russian baker, explaining that you will know the right time to put a loaf in the oven if you let it proof in a pail of water, summer river temperature. When it floats toss it in the oven. I cannot wait. Besides it stops the skin from drying out, a challenge in Phoenix.

In general, Mr. Whitley goes with a two day cycle. Mine are usually longer. If you like this basic approach, you can progress to Brother Juniper and Peter Reinhart. If you care nothing for all these political, economic and health topics and just want to learn how to make real breads, go right to Reinhart. I expanded to Bernard Clayton for real English Muffins, Scottish Scones and Jewish Bagels. I count eighteen volumes in my collection devoted to bread, now nineteen. And nobody has ever improved on the perfect instructions, eleven pages of them, published for basic French Baguettes by Julia.

The book is well made with a good binding that lays flat its broad pages on your counter. The layout is superior. Good job, Andrews McMeel Publishing, LLC of Kansas City.

Although this book does explain baking, and does contain recipes, it is in large part an attack on industrial bread production, and a call for everyone to eat bread baked from organically grown, whole grain, stone ground, flour; preferably baked yourself, otherwise bought from a local bakery. Parts of his argument are strong and well supported, others less well so. One thing I noticed as he builds his story is that for some parts of his chain of argument he cites studies to support his point, while other parts are argued largely by assertion. If you read the book, watch for this.

In the 1950s bread sales in Britain (from where he writes) and America began to be dominated by industrially-produced bread. Time is money, and the large bakers wanted to turn out the product quickly, not wait all day for the dough to rise. They modified the product by using additives and large amounts of single-culture yeast to speed production; in the process, they changed the nature of the bread.

Additives are a big deal to Whitley. Although all of the additives used in breads are considered safe by health authorities, he presents evidence that some additives are not necessarily good for you. But that isn't enough for him, he finds fault with every additive he identifies as used in bread. In some cases it's merely that they add no nutritional value or might be made from genetically modified plants. In these cases he fails to show that they are harmful, they just fall outside his paradigm of what is right.

Whitley discuss the various milling methods and resulting content of flour. In the case of wheat, I think it is well known that white flour is significantly deficient in nutrients compared to the original wheat. He digs deeper, noting that stone ground flour contains all of the original kernel; white flour was originally produced by sifting the flour. Modern roller milling separates the components of the grain, which can then be recombined to produce the type of flour desired. White flours can therefore be whiter (and even less nutritious). He objects to whole wheat flour produced this way because some of the oils are not blended back into the flour, the intent being to produce a flour with a longer shelf life by reducing the fats that quickly go rancid. But there is a legitimate trade off here: while a bakery may go through flour quickly enough to not worry about it spoiling, many home bakers, even if nutritionally aware, may consider a small loss in nutritional quality a reasonable cost for longer shelf life. At times the author seems so focused on his ideal bread world that he unable to evaluate real world constraints that encourage compromise.

His arguments for organically grown grain are also weak. While he mentions limited studies arguing organic wheat is more wholesome, natural products (however grown) vary in makeup, and I'm not familiar with evidence that there is a widespread difference in the quality of organically grown and non-organically grown grain.

His discussion of slow rising bread is very interesting. At one time the rising process included lactic acid bacteria. It turns out that these bacteria break down gliadin, a component of the gluten found in wheat. This is also what people with Celiac disease react to, making them unable to eat bread containing gluten. (Glutens are the proteins that provide the elasticity that allows dough to trap gas and rise.) Celiac disease became known about the time industrial bread making became common. While some sufferers are sufficiently sensitive to gliadin that they can't tolerate any exposure to wheat, there is evidence that some people with Celiac disease can tolerate sourdough breads where the lactic fermentation has broken down most of the gliadin. It is at least possible that Celiac disease is largely a product of industrial baking. (Exposure to large quantities of an irritant can trigger sensitivity that people would not otherwise have. So there may be people who would not have developed Celiac disease if not exposed to large amounts of gliadin, but who are now so sensitive that they can't tolerate it at all.)

Another advantage of long rises is that these bacteria partly digest the dough, which may make some nutrients more accessible to the human digestive system.There are parallels to how cooking makes many foods easier to digest; Richard Wrangham has recently written an excellent book on this topic.*

All in all, Whitley makes a strong case that industrial baking has produced an inferior food product, and that some changes in baking practice would lead to healthier bread. His case against all additives and for organic, stone ground, flour is weaker. Even if his ideal world of bread really does represent the best way to bake for human consumption, it is not realistic. While I can, fortunately, afford to eat such exalted bread if I choose to, not everyone can. We can't feed over six billion people with the kind of labor-intensive cultivation, processing, and baking he prefers. We may be able to do better than we currently are at a reasonable price, but the best possible bread at a price many people can't afford is not the solution. (The core plot of "Les Miserables" grows from a theft of bread. Jean Valjean didn't steal the bread because he wanted to be a criminal, he stole it because he couldn't afford it, and his family was hungry.)

Beyond the polemic, the book does cover baking. It has the typical, and decently done, sections on ingredients, techniques, and tools, as well as a recipes. The number of recipes for wheat bread is modest compared to many baking books. What will appeal to some people is his discussion of gluten-free flours and a good selection of recipes for gluten-free bread.

I struggled between three and four stars. I chose three because I think this could have been a solid four-star, possibly even a five-star, book if the author had managed more balance.

For more extensive collections of recipes consider:

The King Arthur Flour Baker's Companion: The All-Purpose Baking Cookbook

King Arthur Flour Whole Grain Baking: Delicious Recipes Using Nutritious Whole Grains

For another take on baking, consider:

No Need to Knead: Handmade Italian Breads in 90 Minutes


*Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human

This book is an excellent sourcebook for 2 types of people:

1. the advanced breadmaker who wants to learn more about the origins of breadmaking and to perfect their craft.

2. the type of person who approaches a new skill with obsession, and wants to learn absolutely everything there is to know about a subject.

I really appreciated the first chapters of the book that delve into the history of breadmaking and discuss the problems that surround breakmaking on an industrial level. Breadmaking is inherently a slow art, and when you try to use cheap ingredients and efficient methods, you're giving something up, and a big part of this is nutrition.

I would encourage beginning breadmakers to seek other books. The level of detail in Whitley's book is exciting for someone with a good foundation of knowledge, but I would think that it would send the beginners mind reeling. Plus it creates the feeling that you need to follow all of these detailed steps precisely or you won't get good bread, which just isn't true! Whitley, however, approaches his subject with passion and with love, and he wants to share his quest for perfection with his reader!

In sum, this book isn't for everyone, but it IS an excellent book. My wife and I have been making bread for years, and have enjoyed learning from Whitley's extensive experience!

I am so happy with this book it is unbelievable! I feel like it was written just for me! I have been baking my own bread (no bread maker) for years now & it has always been hit or miss. I always wonder what I did wrong or right for that matter! I bake a loaf of bread or two a week. Some very lovely, others not so. Why does my bread turn out this way?
This book comes to the rescue! I cannot believe how much information is packed in! First the author starts out by explaining exactly why we should all each and every single one of us, make our own bread & stop forever from buying "bread" in the store. He provides a whole host of reasons for doing so & I totally agree...why else would I be baking all this bread every week?
Anyway from there he goes into the basics of bread making & starts with basic loaf recipes. He covers it all! He explains sourdough breads, making them from yeast or wild yeast's. Sweet breads & pies are even included! AND for you GLUTEN suffers, he provides a lot of reason why he feels so many of us can no longer digest wheat AND gives plenty of recipes for GLUTEN FREE home baking!!!
There are full color picture sections showing off the various baked wonders that are the recipes in the book.
I have read several bread books & non compare to this one. I have already baked yummy breads from his recipes & feel that after all these years I am finally on my way to doing this bread thing the right way! This book is bread making for everybody! It is simply fantastic! I love it love it love it! I highly recommend to all! And yes, this would make a great gift!

This book is, "Part manifesto, part manual."

The author, Andrew Whitley, started the Village Bakery in Melmerby, England in 1976 in a day when making whole wheat bread did not go over real well but Whitley persevered.

Whitley gives you the tools you need to take control of baking your own bread. He begins with the ingredients used in commercially baked breads and explains their reason for being and their problems for being. For example: Reducing Agent- L-cysteine hydrochloride (E920) Cysteine is a naturally occurring amino acid. Used in baking to create stretchier doughs, especially for burger buns and baguettes. (So far, so good) What's the problem? No intended nutritional benefit, though also sold as a supplement. May be derived from animal hair and feathers!!

It doesn't take many ingredients to make good bread and feathers shouldn't be one of them!

Simply put, Whitley tells us there is only a handful of basic breadmaking methods with small variations on a theme.

A simple yet thorough explanation of your tools for bread baking and the ingredients necessary are helpful. For example: Baking Sheets- Try to get sheets that fit exactly (either alone or two side-by-side) your oven shelf dimensiions. Go for the thickest-gauge metal available. Thin steel or aluminum sheets may be cheap but they have an annoying habit of buckling as they heat, and sudden movement can cause the collapse of rolls or loaves whose structure has not yet "set."

He includes very helpful information on what to do when things go wrong, "The loaf collapses during or after baking and has a sad-looking rumpled crust; usually a result of over-proof or possibly a symptom of weak flour, i.e. one with low protein and low-strength gluten.

And also very helpful are his Eight Illogical Instructions to avoid: "Make a well in the center of the flour and add wet ingredients- is pointless" Or "Tap the loaf on the bottom; if it sounds hollow, it is done- most loaves sound hollow done or not."

Then he solves the problem later in the book to replace the useless "tap for hollow sound" instructions, although a gentle pat on the bottom is a most satisfying gesture of intimacy and approval it is not effective rather; Does it look done? How long has it been in the oven? How do the shoulders look and feel? Know your oven.

Finally after you really understand what you are doing, what you are using for ingredients and tools, and what is going on with your ingredients, finally Whitley gives you his first basic recipes to be treated as templates to further success with different ingredients.

Also, there are some lovely color photos in the book that encourage you to want to make those breads right now!

This would be a great book for the beginner baker to ensure success and for the advanced bread baker to revel in all the chemistry going on in the bread baking process.

Beyond all that is the recipes of simplicity he gives like Hot Cross Buns and Basic Bread but also the very complicated Pains au Chocolat, Croissants, Schiacciata di Uva (Tuscan Harvest Bread)

I was very excited to receive this book because I wanted to add more to my collection. I have been making my own for 15 years and although I feel comfortable doing it, I am always up to learn more.

This book starts with a multiple-chapter exhortation of why you should bake your own bread and what is wrong with the industrial kind. Basically, he says, the wheat has been bred to grow in adverse condition and give maximum yield, not maximum nutrition or flavor. The millers have come up with ways of maximizing their yield and actually remove most of the nutrition there is in their efforts to maximize shelf life. I could go on, but you the gist. He recommends making your own, and buying only stone ground whole wheat flour, or at least unbleached flour. I never thought about any of this (other than the additives in store bought bread) and he seems to have a point.

Then he gets to the recipes. So far I have tried three of them and had three failures. I have followed the recipes as written rather than relying on my previous knowledge so that I could more accurately review this book. Some of the instructions he gives make no sense, like that you can make the dough and immediately refrigerate it for up to 16 hours before proceeding (brioche recipe). (According to a different author (I cannot remember which one), you should instead let it rise some so that the yeast have a chance to get a decent meal before you slow them down by refrigerating the dough.) Not surprising, the brioche dough never did rise properly once I took it out of the fridge.

Anyway, I am disappointed that the recipes just do not work as written. The taste is good but they don't rise properly and I cannot recommend the book. Try Hammelman's Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes (not too many white bread recipes, but fantastic explanation of how to get good results, and good recipes) or Silverton's Bread from the La Brea Bread Bakery (really good explanation and excellent recipes).

I want to start baking bread but work full time so a bread baking book that has slow rise instructions seemed like the perfect thing. Unfortunately, this book wasn't as helpful as I had hoped.

The first two chapters ("What's the Matter With Modern Bread" and "Does It Really Matter What Bread We Eat"), nearly 50 pages, are the author's diatribe against modern bakery bread. Besides taking up a lot of space in the book, it seems a lot like preaching to the choir. People reading this book are already interested in baking bread at home so it seems unnecessary to annoy them with stuff unrelated to learning how to make good, healthy bread.

If this were the only place the author included this kind of material, I'd simply advise skipping those two chapters unless you are really interested in reading about the rise of commercial baking and how that affected the nutritional content of bread. But the author keeps going through later chapters. I was really sick of reading long before I got to the chapters that were meant to teach bread baking techniques.

Chapters 3 & 4 are about tools and ingredients and, at 40 pages, are much wordier than necessary.

Nearly 100 pages into the book, the information on baking bread finally starts (Chapter 5 "Starting From Scratch"). It too lacks the conciseness that would make it really helpful. And when I got to the timetables for making bread, I was really disappointed. There were 3 different time tables for making bread. Two of them involved baking the bread mid- or late morning, which only works on the weekends for working people. The third one, which did allow for baking the bread in the evening, resulted in bread coming out of the oven after 10 p.m. I wish the author had spent more time trying to find a way for working people to start the bread one evening and get it based earlier the next evening.

I also would have appreciated illustrations or photographs showing what the various stages of mixing, rising, forming, etc. should look like. If a picture is worth a thousand words, several well placed illustrations would have enhanced and decreased the wordiness of the instructions.

For a lengthy cookbook, it doesn't have mabny recipes. Chapter 6, "First Bread and Rolls," has only 5 recipes. Chapter 7, "Simple Sourdough," has 12 recipes. The most interesting chapters, "Bread -- A Meal in Itself" and "Of Crust and Crumb," have 7 recipes for flavored breads and 5 recipes for breads like Ciabatta, Brioche and Crumpets. Chapter 10 has 6 recipes for sweet and celebration breads and Chapter 11 has 8 recipes for pastries. Chapter 12 is for gluten-free baking. This is really only useful for bakers who want to have a recipe in case they have a guest who can't eat gluten. The cooks in a family with celiac disease wouldn't want to buy a cookbook with such a limited gluten-free section when there are entire cookbooks dedicated to gluten-free baking. The book ends with a chapter on things to make with stale bread.

On the plus side, the recipes contain measurements in cups for bakers who don't have a good scale as well as ounces and grams.

If you want a bread baking book, I would recommend checking out one of the following instead of this book: Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Discovery That Revolutionizes Home Baking, Healthy Bread in Five Minutes a Day: 100 New Recipes Featuring Whole Grains, Fruits, Vegetables, and Gluten-Free Ingredients, Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day or Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads: New Techniques, Extraordinary Flavor.

There have been many books on 'artisinal' breadmaking that have been published in the last 5-10 years. Having read through a great chunk of the more important ones, most of them look pretty similar. They start off with a bit of bread history, a description of grain types, flour types, basics of mixing, fermentation, shaping, baking, etc. Then you get a bunch of recipes (or 'formulas'), where most of the books gain some distinction. Most books have formulas that tend to be heavily based on white flour, with a few whole grain wheat, rye, whatever thrown in for variety. White flour dough made with commercial yeast is the easiest to deal with, so it's no surprise that most general beginner books tend to utilize those. Some have a greater use of wild yeast, others deal better with whole grains and fringe flours (buckwheat, barley, chickpea), etc.

So if you're considering 'Bread Matters', this is what I feel differentiates this book from the rest:

- Whitley has a pretty detailed analysis of the state of industrial bread and why you should be baking your own. He lists and describes many of the chemicals and enzymes that are present in much commercial bread that's never listed under the ingredients. He makes arguments for why homemade bread is healthier, especially if you utilize the slow fermentation from using wild yeast (sourdough).

- Volumetric, Imperial and Metric measurements. Why can't all bread books be more inclusive like this? However, Whitley does not use baker's percentages! In fact, he explicitly states that he dislikes it because it doesn't factor in the flour of the preferment as part of the total flour. While I somewhat agree with this logic, I think he could have easily devised an alternate method of notation. The exclusion is annoying, but not a deal-breaker.

- A decent section on rye sourdough breads. Most books avoid rye sourdoughs, especially loaves with a high percentage of rye. Whitley includes Russian rye, Borodinsky (which made my Russian friends very happy), and a few others. I think Leader's Local Breads might be better for rye (as well as for using fringe flours), but that book has so many errors that I can't recommend it without reservations.

-A chapter on gluten-free baking. I think this is pretty unique for a book that's not really about gluten-free baking. Whitley lists a description with good/bad qualities and nutritional info for gluten-free flours. He provides details for making a rice sourdough starter which is used to leaven these breads. I don't have issues with gluten, but some of the recipes look interesting enough for me to want to try.

Overall, I think Bread Matters is a good book for filling a niche that most other books don't reach. While you will certainly make good loaves by using just this book, I really don't recommend it as a first or second breadmaking book.

When I was a kid my sister and I baked all the time. That is we baked when weren't running all over Kingdom Come. We were latch key children being raised by a single mother. It was the 60s and 70s in small town California and it was safe to run all over K.C. with abandon, without worry. When we were old enough to care for ourselves my mother gave us house keys which we wore around our necks next to our skate keys on those metal ball chains like soldiers use to wear their dog tags. Running all over K.C. was pretty much a full-time activity but on those days when the weather was inclement, where we had to stay indoors, my mother often came home at five o'clock to two dozen chocolate chip cookies that we'd spent the wet afternoon baking. We simply followed the directions on the back of the Toll House chocolate chips package (still one of the best recipes for chocolate chip cookies ever!) and voila! Fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies. Even though my mother could barely keep up with it all she did manage to always have flour, white and brown sugar, baking soda and powder, oil, butter and Crisco on hand. If we were running low on a precious baking necessity Traci or I added it to the grocery list on the refrigerator. If we weren't making cookies it was cupcakes, or full on cakes from those Betty Crocker and Duncan Hines boxed mixes. We had no fear, we pretty much baked anything. Our solo forays did stop at yeast baking however but I do know that on more than one occasion we made bread with my mother. I have fond memories of slicing the still hot loaves and slathering butter all over them, and gobbling them down. Those were kitchen events where we all baked together as a family.

And then for some reason as an adult I did a whole lot less baking. I did bake massive amounts of sourdough bread at my first restaurant job as a cook which was both a challenge and a lot of fun. The place was called Sourdough Jack's and fresh-baked sourdough loaves were the first item put on a diner's table. But after that both personally and professionally I moved over to savory cooking; cooking the first courses, main courses, and sides. My culinary interests solidified. I didn't actually find the time for yeast baking and it sadly fell by the wayside. So when I received 'Bread Matters' to review from Andrews McMeel Publishing I was excited. I looked forward to reading it and to trying the recipes. 'Bread Matters' is not just a book about baking -- it's a book about a lifestyle. Author-baker Andrew Whitley has owned an award-winning bakery near Cumbria, England since 1976. He has devoted over twenty-five years to perfecting the craft of baking bread. In 2002 he founded Bread Matters, an organization devoted to improving the state of bread. He is also a founder of the Real Bread Campaign in Great Britain which started in 2003 and aims to encourage the increased consumption and local consumption of 'real bread' in Great Britain.

The first three chapters of 'Bread Matters' are devoted to the issues surrounding the production of commercial bread. Whitley believes that store-bought bread has little nutritional value and unnecessary additives, and that it is made too quickly. He advocates that slowing down the process makes for better tasting, more nutritional bread. Chapter Three - Taking Control is a call to action: leave the store-bought, commercial stuff behind and buy or bake your own organic bread. The rest of the book tells you how with over fifty recipes. The book is for all levels of baker from beginner to expert. The first recipe I tried was from Chapter Six - First Bread and Rolls and is titled 'Basic Bread.' For not having made a yeast bread in a very long time it was just like getting back on the proverbial bicycle. It took several hours but they were relaxing hours; once I set the dough to rise on the back of my stove there was a giddy anticipation of will it rise properly, will it work? And it did, my basic bread loaf was a beautiful sight and tasted even better. Whitley's recipe and explanations were clear and straightforward. To have a complete experience I kneaded the dough with my hands vs. a mixer or Cuisinart and I am glad I did. It put me in closer touch with the process and it was fun!

What I like about the book is the detail to which Whitely goes to explain all the technical aspects of yeast cookery. Types of flour, water, yeast, baking equipment, essential ingredients, temperature, ovens, nutritional value, troubleshooting -- he even includes a section on gluten-free baking. While making my basic loaf I had a question about the process and quickly found the answer in another section of the book. I tried several other recipes including Baps (Small Rolls) and a recipe for calzoni; all worked beautifully. Next on my list of attempts will be something with sourdough and possibly croissants. The book is thorough, well-organized and full of great information on baking and yeast cookery. Whitley walks readers through the baking process with chapters like Starting From Scratch, Bread-A Meal in Itself, and Easy As Pie. If you don't already own one of the many yeast cookery books out there, or are looking for a good primer, I highly recommend Bread Matters. If you already have one or more of the others out there, this will make a perfect addition to your library. It's always good to have more than one source, isn't it? Andrew Whitley absolutely knows what he's talking about.