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.
by Maggie Glezer
by Carol Field
