Local Breads: Sourdough and Whole-Grain Recipes from Europe's Best Artisan Bakers [Hardcover]

Daniel Leader (Author), Lauren Chattman (Contributor)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 17, 2007

Recipes from the back rooms and basement bakeries that produce Europe's best breads.

When Daniel Leader opened his Catskills bakery, Bread Alone, twenty years ago, he was determined to duplicate the whole-grain and sourdough breads he had learned to make in the bakeries of Paris. The bakery was an instant success, and his first book, Bread Alone, brought Leader's breads to home kitchens. In this, his second book, Leader shares his experiences traveling throughout Europe in search of the best artisan breads. He learned how to make new-wave sourdough baguettes with spelt, flaxseed, and soy at an organic bakery in Alsace; and in Genzano, outside of Rome, he worked with the bakers who make the enormous country loaves so unique that they have earned the Indicazione Geografica Protetta (IGP), a government mark reserved for the most prized foods and wines. Leader's detailed recipes describe every step that it takes to reproduce these rare loaves, which until now were available strictly locally. 32 pages of color illustrations

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Leader's new bread-baking book is distinguished from his earlier classic Bread Alone by its focus on regional specialties, from the Alsatian classic pain au levain to Tuscan black olive puccia, from German laugenbrezeln or pretzels to the dark Silesian rye of the Czech Republic. The book opens with 50 pages of well-written and thorough instructions on everything from ingredients to equipment. The most helpful part is the explanation of the basic steps of any bread-making process, which serves as a primer on the procedural elements that are universal across the various European traditions. Leader, who founded the heralded Bread Alone bakery in Woodstock, N.Y., is most interested in teaching holistically, so that his readers will feel comfortable becoming apprentices and then experts themselves. One can't help imagining, however, that bread baking is best learned in the flesh. Leader advises that the only way to figure out if the dough is ready is through experience, and a hapless home baker might agree. Still, the book is an excellent primer on the best breads of Europe, and the traveler who has returned home with a longing for the Roman specialty pane di altamura might be satisfied with a mouth-watering trip down memory lane. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

After perusing the remarkable recipes in Leader's compilation of the best of Europe's artisanal breads, only the most resolutely self-controlled baker will be able to resist marching to the kitchen to reproduce one of these captivating loaves. Leader explains how to create a sourdough from airborne yeasts, and he uses that starter for many of these breads to yield superior, deep flavor and thick, crunchy crusts. Ranging from baguettes to chocolate croissants, from Italian ciabatta to dark Silesian rye, and from Czech country bread to potato pizza, these recipes give access to bread bakers' highest art. For those lacking the courage and patience to ferment a real sourdough starter, Leader offers several different shortcuts to success. Line drawings guide the novice, and full-color photographs render ideals for Leader's students to emulate. Question-and-answer sections throughout the book succinctly clarify potential problem areas. Leader's Auvergnat blue cheese rye rolls alone make this book a must for devotees of the baker's art. Knoblauch, Mark

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 368 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; First Edition edition (August 17, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393050556
• ISBN-13: 978-0393050554
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 1.2 x 10.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (59 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #152,079 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #38 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Special Diet > Whole Foods

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

106 of 114 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Good addition to the home bread-baking library August 18, 2007

By D. Smith

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Local Breads is a good addition to the bread bakers library. There are probably three types of people who would be interested in this book:

1) die-hard artisan bread-baking fanatics (or perhaps not quite fanatic). If you say "hmmm... this describes me pretty accurately, as you pick dried dough off of your forearms), you definitely need this book. No sense having an incomplete home artisan-bread-baking library. It also contains recipes I have not encountered in other books. There is bound to be at least one or two recipes that will enter into your rotation.

2) Arm-chair bread-bakers. If you don't bake bread everyday, but enjoy eating it (or perhaps you used to be a fanatic and no longer have time), this book is still for you. In addition to numerous recipes, the descriptions of bakeries, bakers, bread, and other experiences makes for a very good read (if you enjoyed American Pie or any of Maggie Glezer's books, you will probably like this one as well). Likewise, if you are interested in travel or the slow food movement, this book could be of interest to you.

3) Beginning bakers. This could be an acceptable first book for people just getting introduced to the world of artisan bread baking-- I would probably recommend Peter Reinhart's books instead of or, if you want as much knowledge as possible, in addition to Leader's. It probably makes more sense to have fundamental baking knowledge before diving into a multi-step sourdough recipe, for example. If you are prepared for some trial and error, the recipes themselves are very clear... there are just some things that cannot be understood perfectly without a little bit of prior experience. Leader does have a very helpful introduction with basic techniques and equipment. So, it could be appropriate for novices (although perhaps slightly overwhelming).

This book is probably best described as a hybrid between Hammelman's Bread and Glezer's Artisan Baking Across America. It definitely has enough unique qualities to justify its purchase and it may even end up earning a permanent spot in your kitchen (sending your previous favorite to the living room shelf)

Unfortunately (and Leader's book is not the only one suffering from this problem) the book could have benefited from more attentive editing. There are many typographical errors and other mistakes in this book, which is perhaps excusable for a first edition (e.g. he describes a pizza al pomodori. This should be either al pomodoro or ai pomodori. These types of mistakes should be corrected in a second printing.

84 of 96 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Interesting read but inaccurate recipes March 10, 2009

By CassieJWJ

Format:Hardcover

After reading all the other reviews about this product, I decided to check out a copy at the library before buying. I began reading the book and was enthralled. This book has everything that should make it a success: knowledgable author, adventurous storyline, details on the how-tos of breadmaking, unusual recipes, and great photos. EXCEPT: when you dig deeper you see that the great recipes are flawed! What a disappointment!

For example:
How much does 1-1/2 cups of water weigh? Answer: In this book, it depends on which recipe you are making.

On pg 67 & pg.144, 1-1/2 cups weighs: 340grams/12oz.
On pg. 96 & pg.126, 1-1/2cups water weighs 350g or 12.3 oz.
Move on to pg. 170 and 1-1/2 cups water now weighs 375g/13.2 oz.

Why does the weight of water matter when all these pages call for 1-1/2 cups water? Easy. The author, Daniel Leader has clearly stated on several website/boards that he gave the original recipes in Metric measurements only. He didn't even want to add volume measures (cups, teaspoons,etc.) but his editor insisted. Someone other than the Daniel Leader also did all the U.S. weight and volume conversions. Too bad that someone had no basic understanding of arithmetic principles!

I could spend a lot of time listing all the measurement inconsistencies in this book. Still, that wouldn't leave enough time to mention the blatent errors---for example, pg. 283 has a recipe that calls for 22 cups of water (yes, twenty-two). The weight of 22 cups of water is: 300g/10.6 oz.

After a browse through this book, I began to develop a real love/distrust relationship. The book is very attractive--and very flawed.

Other reviewers have suggested that maybe you could just use the metric table for the recipes. I have two issues with that:

1) I don't currently own a scale that is extremely accurate at measuring small amounts of items such as yeast, salt, etc.

2) I am not convinced that the metric measurements are correct/dependable either. In his book, Daniel Leader always provides a "Baker's Percentage' of which the total weight of the flour is, of course, 100 percent. Everything else is a percentage of that total flour weight. So, it is feasible to *prove* that the metric weights are indeed mathematically correct per the baker's perecentages given. But, honestly, who has to the time to spend working out the ratios for every recipe just to verify that the gram weight of each recipe ingredient is correct? Without doing that, however, I have no way of knowing if the recipe flaws extend to the metric measurement. Given the rampant errors/typos in the this text, what are the odds that there are NO typos in the metric measurements?

My advice: check this book out at the library, read the storyline and breadmaking parts, play with a recipe or two (if you are daring), and then REFUSE to spend your money supporting an author and editor who never actually cared enough to EDIT the final version of the book.

I plan to spend my limited dollars on a bread book that won't make me wring my hands in frustation!

28 of 30 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Just Plain Wrong May 11, 2009

By J. Kauffman

Format:Hardcover

After reading all the others (Rienhardt, Hammelman, etc.) I finally got a copy of Leader's book. He does the BEST job of describing how bread is made in a style that finally makes it clear. He does the WORST job of providing recipes, Leader's numbers simply do not work.

It is a crime to get people to buy a book and invest all the time and energy it takes to create the recipes and have them be just plain wrong.

Leader and his publisher should be ashamed, doubly so for not correcting the errors and communicating them. On the Blog: The Fresh Loaf (www.freshloaf.com) Leader himself (and his wife) somewhat acknowledges these errors, promises to fix them, then never follows through.

What could have been a great book delivers a consistently lousy result. If readers wanted lousy results, they would not need a book to create them.

Leader has failed an author's basic responsibility, "proof your work!" In writing, as in baking, "proofing" is an essential step toward providing a satisfying end product. Leader gets two stars for effort, but no stars for providing a baking book that is half baked.