Williams-Sonoma Collection: Bread [Hardcover]

Beth Hensperger (Author), Chuck Williams (Author)

Book Description

Series: Williams-Sonoma Collection | Publication Date: November 5, 2002

A warm slice of bread, fresh from the oven and spread with butter, is one of life's simple pleasures. Whether it's a traditional whole-wheat loaf, a crusty baguette, or tender blueberry muffins, the delicious taste and aroma of home-baked bread appeals to all of our senses. Best of all, delectable baked goods will delight friends and family alike.

Williams-Sonoma Collection Bread offers more than 40 delicious recipes, from traditional yeast breads to convenient quick breads, including breakfast treats such as muffins and scones. Whether you are in search of a savory sourdough loaf to serve with soup, simple dinner rolls to enhance the holiday table, or classic banana bread for an afternoon snack, this book includes recipes for every occasion. In addition, a final chapter on international breads, such as Italian focaccia or French brioche, rounds out this essential collection for the home baker.

Enticing photographs of each recipe make it easy to choose which bread to bake, and photographic side notes give insight into each recipe. Including all the techniques essential to mastering the art of making bread -- from mixing and kneading to rising and baking -- here is everything you need to bake the perfect loaf.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Even accomplished cooks sometimes shy away from baking their own breads, since the task leaves such considerable room for error. How long to knead? How long to mix? How to add fruit or nuts without turning a loaf to lead? This attractive and informative volume, part of Williams-Sonoma's series of slim cookbooks, answers questions even the most nervous baker might have, providing step-by-step instructions for classics like Popovers and Corn Bread, as well as for more complicated yeast breads such as Swedish Rye and Oatmeal-Molasses Bread. Like all Williams-Sonoma guides, this book emphasizes the practical, providing a section in the end called "Bread Basics," which clarifies the difference between quick breads and yeast breads and explains the way breads should rise. The recipes themselves, accompanied by mouth-watering photographs, offer a comprehensive tour through the wide world of bread, with stops in Wales (for a fruity Welsh Bara Brith), Italy (for a deliciously salty Onion Foccacia and a sweet Christmas Panettone), and the Middle East (for firm and chewy Pita Bread).
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Beth Hensperger is a widely acclaimed expert on the subject of bread and has written many books on baking, including Bread for Breakfast, Bread for All Seasons, The Best Quick Breads, and The Bread Bible, for which she won a James Beard Award. Her articles have also appeared in such publications as Bon Appétit and Cooking Light. Ms. Hensperger lives and works in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 120 pages
• Publisher: Free Press; First Edition edition (November 5, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0743228375
• ISBN-13: 978-0743228374
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 8.6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #86,133 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #91 in Books > Cookbooks, Food & Wine > Baking > Bread

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

25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent book!, October 4, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Bread (Paperback)

This is the first bread book I owned and the one that started a baking frenzy that still goes on! It's a beautiful book with incredible recipes. The challah is outstanding, the banana nut muffins are SOOOO good!, the orange date cake delicious, the brioche ease and delicious, the gruyere pullman loaf is amazing... I can go on and on. The only minus is the lack of sourdough breads. A book definitely worth having.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Best recipe book for bread making, ever!, October 12, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Bread (Paperback)

I have tried over a dozen of the recipes and they have all turned out fantastic! Sometimes I have substituted ingredients and still produced excellent bread. Favorite recipes include: yogurt french bread, Taos pumpkin bread, country bread with golden raisins and walnuts, and more!

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beth is the Bomb!!, August 16, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Bread (Paperback)

I bought this book in college back in 1988. A budding baker and cook, Beth inspired me to knead my arms out. Bread machines are great but nothing connects you to the bread more than hand kneading it. The magic I derived from watching a rising loaf motivated me to become a professional brewer!!

Beth's recipes are wonderful and she guides even the novice quickly through producing top notch loaves. Favorites including the Whole Wheat Basil Bread, the Olive Baguettes and the Seeded Dill Rye. Her muffin recipes are also fabulous--I've made them all. I'm especially fond of the Wild Rice and Shiitake Mushroom muffins and the Fresh Lemon muffins.

After all these years, I think I may go buy another book on bread--one of Beth's new ones!!