Brother Juniper's Bread Book by Br. Peter Reinhart (Nov 8 2005)

Let me just start by saying that I love this book. It’s well-written and gives some great stories and the recipes are fantastic. The Struan bread is a must make, the 3 pepper bread is one you’ll never forget and the stout bread is one to just slather with butter and drink a beer. I’ve got the wild rice and onion bread rising right now and it smells incredible.But you’ll notice I only gave it four stars. It’s really more four and three quarters in my mind, but I couldn’t just give five stars without pointing out a couple of egregious...not errors, but things that did NOT work for me.The first thing is the amount of yeast he uses. I’ve never seen a recipe use 2+ TABLESPOONS of yeast. Ok, it makes 3 loaves, but I knocked it down to 2.5 teaspoons and it was just fine. This is especially odd to me since this book is about slow rise bread. 1 tablespoon is usually a lot for me. And since I normally do no-knead bread, I’m used to using half a teaspoon (or less) for 2 loaves. That’s something you can adjust yourself. Not that big a deal, just odd.The other problem I had with this book is the water added to the dough is WAY off. A lot of these recipes have 8+ cups of dry material and he’s using under 2 cups of liquid. Granted, I am mostly using a mixer, but I’ve kneaded enough loaves of dough to know what a good amount of water is for bread. A 4:1 ratio isn’t dough, it’s a mess. I was often doubling the water just so the dough could be kneaded by the mixer. My arms got tired just hearing it bind as it pushed its way through the dry dough. I was thinking maybe it was the relative humidity where his bakery is/was, but Santa Rosa is about 60 miles away and we are a pretty dry climate here in California.I pity anyone who doesn’t know bread well and tried to fight their way through kneading that 4:1 mixture. They might think it’s a terrible book.So that being said, once the water issue was resolved (sort of), the breads I’ve made from this are outstanding. The “secret” ingredients of brown rice, buttermilk, and brown sugar make these loaves especially tender and toothsome. And they stay fresh longer.Since my copy is from the nineties, it’s possible these issues have been corrected in other printings. But I’m surprised this book is out of print. These are recipes you need and I’m glad I have.