Review: The Art of Making Bread by The Editors of CakeChatter

A consortium of enthusiastic cooks have contributed to this lively look at baking just about any kind of bread you can think of, with recipes designed for real people, and a generous helping of commentary, jokes, poems, and added information, in The Art of Making Bread: An Anthology of Thirty, Down-Home Bread Baking Recipes!

Second in the Dough-Punchers eBook Series from CakeChatter, The Art of Making Bread invokes the past – both the cowboy cooks who fed the hard-working cattle herders, and Grandma, with an apron tied securely around her voluminous long skirts. Each of the thirty recipes was contributed by a different baker, and all were selected for their unique qualities, natural ingredients, and ease of preparation.

The Editors begin with guidelines on how to make and proof yeast. Each recipe opens with a brilliant, professional quality photograph of the finished product. The first is a relatively simple “5 Ingredient French Homemade Bread” by Kim Pezza, with some modifications for crispier crust, smaller loaves and added flavorings. The final offering, by Chungah, offer instructions for “No Knead Rosemary Bread,” with appended notes from those who have tried and loved this product.

In between are exotic offerings such as Garlic Cheese Focaccia and Irish Soda breads, Breadsticks, Sweet Potato Challah, and English Muffin Bread. The latter is subtitled “With All the Nooks and Crannies of an English Muffin,” and can include optional dried raisins, cranberries, or dates – details that multiply the possibilities of each recipe. The recipe requires coarsely ground cornmeal for dusting the baking pans “to get that true English muffin taste/texture.” The instructions describe a “soft, goopy dough,” and advise against using an electric mixer.

The Editors, who host the CakeChatter website, have worked diligently to present all these instructions in as simple a format as possible, while adding photos and bright graphics to make the cooking seem like fun. In addition, they have interspersed among the recipes a number of wise, inspirational or just plain hilarious sayings. The colorful how-to begins with a “Recipe for a Day” that includes water, “a little leaven of prayer,” some merriment, love, work, play and “a glance above.” Examples of short aphorisms include a note about the pilgrims’ special dinner rolls for the first Thanksgiving, made from “May-flour.” George Carlin is quoted comparing drumsticks and breadsticks. A photo of a risen yeast loaf cries out, “I need you to knead me!”

The volume also incorporates comments from CakeChatter members who have tried and enjoyed specific recipes. There is a list of contributors and a metric conversion chart at the end of the book, along with a message from the Editors, presenting their mantra: to bake from scratch and use only natural, preferably organic, ingredients. They aver that many hours were spent researching the individual recipes included in the collection to ensure that they were based around that mantra, and would be presented “in plain English,” and on that front they certainly succeed. They also added nutritional information about many of the thirty treats.

Put together, this volume is as much an ode to bread and breadmaking as it is a cookbook, and is recommended for novices and experienced bakers alike. By successfully making baking fun, natural, and easy to understand, they will undoubtedly garner fans for this book and the CakeChatter site.