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Nancy Silverton's Breads from the La Brea Bakery: Recipes for the Connoisseur [Hardcover]

Nancy Silverton
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (81 customer reviews)

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Book Description

March 5, 1996
The owner and chef of L.A.'s famous and successful La Brea Bakery reveals her magical recipes, adapted for home bakers. Before the baking even begins, Silverton takes the reader through the wonder of bread alchemy, then introduces readers to a wide range of recipes which range from the whimsical to the sublime. 25 photos.

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Nancy Silverton's Breads from the La Brea Bakery: Recipes for the Connoisseur + The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread
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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Silverton, who hails from the renowned Los Angeles bakery for which this book is named, goes back to square one in Breads for the La Brea Bakery: the yeast. While commercial yeast may work, using it doesn't really get to the essence of good bread or good bread making. Her book describes the two-week process required to create a starter the old-fashioned way. Once that is done, there are breads, pretzels, bagels, and a host of other good things to bake.

From Publishers Weekly

Bread is beautiful when it is made with time, care and honest ingredients; the same is true of cookbooks, and this is a beautiful cookbook. Silverton, a world-class pastry chef and owner of L.A.'s Campanile restaurant and La Brea Bakery, offers breadmaking instructions so meticulous that one gets the feeling she's divulging valuable trade secrets. Her breads are sourdough breads that depend on sourdough starter, a simple combination of flour and water left out where it can catch wild yeasts. Silverton explains the 14-day, once-in-a-lifetime process of creating the starter and the ongoing process of maintaining it. She then describes the starter and its variations and shows how they can be incorporated into a variety breads. Specialties include Walnut Bread, Rustic Olive-herb Bread, Chocolate Sour Cherry Bread and Red Pepper Scallion Bread. Lists of equipment and sources of supplies are included. Her beautifully designed book will appeal to dedicated cooks and perfectionists who are patient and brave enough to make mistakes along the way to breads, rolls, focaccia, pretzels, bagels, waffles and even-woof-dog biscuits.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

  • Hardcover: 288 pages
  • Publisher: Villard; 1st edition (March 5, 1996)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 0679409076
  • ISBN-13: 978-0679409076
  • Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 1.1 x 9.5 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (81 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #26,925 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
103 of 107 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Best Bread January 16, 2001
Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase
I have been a fan of the La Brea Bakery's bread for many years. I have tried many bread recipes at home, but none compare to Nancy Silverton's recipes from her La Brea Bakery. Many will say that this book is not for beginning bread bakers. This is probably true. I belive you should try baking with commercial "instant" or "Active" yeast before you try her methods. All her bread is made with a natural sourdough starter that takes two weeks to create, and requires daily feeding. The result is the best bread on earth. It is a lot of work. I end up baking more than I can eat, but my friends and family benefit from this. The recipes in this book take time: In most cases two days before a loaf is completed. It is worth it. Just schedule your time around the dough rising periods.
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62 of 63 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars For the hardcore, the dedicated and the driven October 23, 2000
Format:Hardcover
This is an excellent book for those who wish to pursue baking bread armed with technical and practical information in addition to their own yeast starters.

I have yet to encounter a book that provides so much information on the making of bread and using of natural yeast starters. This is not a book for those who expect to do quick breads. For the person who wants to know how to make artisan breads at home this book is for you.

The use of starter yeasts is extensive covering white, rye, and wheat. The only other book that gives you more information about "creating" starters and sourdough is _World Sourdoughs From Antiquity_ .

The design of the book is pretty simple. Description of ingredients in detail; tools used; yeasts, starters and sourdoughs; recipes which are broken down by which type of starter used. The recipes themselves are broken into multi-day sections so that the process is more clear. Example would be the challah which is a 2 day bread. The steps themselves don't take that long but you learn the value of planning.

In essence to get something close to your favorite artisan bread you must spend time and a certain amount of patience. This book is quite honest about that and does not use shortcuts at the expense of the quality.

But what about the bread? It is good. Sometimes not as picture perfect but even the "failures" have been tasty.

A must for the baker's library. A wealth of information and interesting recipes too. Not bad for a book that is 251 pages (not counting sources and index).

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60 of 61 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Phenomenal book for the obsessed March 13, 1998
By A Customer
Format:Hardcover
This book is an unbelievable text for the already experienced bread baker who wants to take his/her skills to another level. Ms. Silverton is arguably the country's greatest baker, and it is her obsession with baking the perfect loaf of bread that permeates this text (note the 20+ pages of instructions for the first loaf in the book). She has spent an exhausting amount of time working out the minute details of each recipe, right down to the exact temperature of the ingredients, in order to create beautiful and flavorful loaves.

As a result, this book is definitely not for the beginner, nor is it for the quick baker looking for some easy recipes to make in a few hours. The quickest bread in this book takes two days to make, and many breads require three days. If you are obsessed with baking (as am I) and want to elevate your skills tremendously, then definitely buy this beautiful and easy-to-read book. If you're a beginner baker or someone just looking for some quick recipes for dinner, don't purchase this paean to the perfect loaf.

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46 of 46 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Sourdough Bread Master Class September 2, 2004
Format:Hardcover
Like Diogenes, you have been searching the four corners of the world for a book that will tell you how to make real sourdough bread at home. Well, set down your lantern and rest your weary bones, because you have finally found it. Nancy Silverton became famous for the sourdough bread that she makes at her bakery, and this book will tell you in excruciating detail how she does it.

Few things are as wonderful as good sourdough, and few things are as elusive as sourdough recipes in bread books. Few will even acknowledge the presence of sourdough; fewer still will mention words like levain, chef, starter, or poolish. The number of baking books that will give you real recipes for them can be counted on one hand.

This book is a complete tutorial on sourdough bread from start to finish. The first recipe in the book for a basic white bread takes an astonishing 30 pages: 10 to tell you how to make your own starter, and another 20 to tell you how to make the dough and bake it. The author is a stickler for detail; the thoroughness in the recipes can be irritating. It also means that your chances of success are very high; all of the breads I tried worked perfectly, even the more difficult ones based on rye. Each recipe has a rather long (and very complete) list of equipment that you will need (including, in one case, a room thermometer). No longer is sourdough dependent on random chance, magic, or even experience.

Be warned, however, that sourdough is not easy to do. You will end up throwing away a "swimming pool" of dough in order to refresh the starter. Some of the fermentation steps are 12 hours long. Some breads have to be refrigerated overnight, so you will need room in your refrigerator for several bannetons and/or sheet pans.
... Read more ›
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars Great book!
I enjoy using Nancy Silverton's book. She has lots of good ideas on how to bake sourdough breads. The recipes I have tried are excellent. Read more
Published 9 days ago by T. Dutt
3.0 out of 5 stars Disappointed
I found the book interesting as a read, but little or no value as a guide to the home baker
Published 17 days ago by Termite
4.0 out of 5 stars Good recipes but labor intensive starter
Since I love La Brea breads, I was excited to get this book. I followed her directions for making the starter but once I got to the "building the starter" stage, I started... Read more
Published 1 month ago by Striker
3.0 out of 5 stars OMG
The recipes are so complicated and time consuming I stopped using the book after a couple of tries. Originally inspired by Ms. Read more
Published 1 month ago by John Farrell aka Doggai
5.0 out of 5 stars Our daily bread
I live in Washington and can now buy La Brea Bakery's bread here. The reason I bought the cook book was this. I am a big Julia
Child fan. Read more
Published 1 month ago by SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE
4.0 out of 5 stars review of recipes
recipes require some ingredients that are not readily available. The sourdough starter recipe was easy to follow but difficult to carry out as it required 2 weeks of diligent... Read more
Published 3 months ago by Tracy E. Criscitiello
3.0 out of 5 stars bread baking
Really quite involved to make each bread type. Think beyond me. Great quality used book. Most receipes are pretty time consuming.
Published 4 months ago by dorothy chamberlin
4.0 out of 5 stars Looks promising!
Process is a bit complicated, but I'm hoping for time to try it because I love the results of thick chewy tasty bread!
Published 4 months ago by D. Clark
5.0 out of 5 stars Nancy Silverton's Breads
This is a very enjoyable book and very informative. I am looking forward to many hours of using the information and sharing the results with my family.
Published 5 months ago by Peggie Henderson
2.0 out of 5 stars No standard measures
How could anybody think of a bread baking book with no standard measures? Most recipies are using "cups" and "tablespoons" which makes it just very... Read more
Published 5 months ago by Arturo García Mogollón
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