"A bread baker, like any true artisan or craftsman, must have the power to control outcomes," says Peter Reinhart, author of The Bread Baker's Apprentice. "Mastery comes with practice." As in many arts, you must know and understand the rules before you can break them. Reinhart encourages you to learn the science of bread making, but to never forget that vision and experimentation, not formulas, make transcendent loaves. The Bread Baker's Apprentice is broken into three sections. The first is an amusing tale of Reinhart's visit to France and his discovery of pain à l'ancienne, a cold-fermented baguette. The second section comprises a tutorial of bread-making basics and Reinhart's "Twelve Stages of Bread." And finally, the recipes: Ciabatta, Pane Siciliano, Potato Rosemary Bread, New York Deli Rye, Kaiser Rolls, and Brioche, to name a few. All recipes include bread profiles and ingredient percentages. Reimagined for modern bakers, these mouthwatering classic recipes are bound to inspire. --Dana Van Nest

From Library Journal
Author of the well-respected Brother Juniper's Bread Book and Crust & Crumb, baker-turned-culinary instructor Reinhart draws on his baking and teaching experience to provide an authoritative but unintimidating guide to baking professional-quality loaves of all sorts. He begins with an account of a recent tour of specialty bakeries in Paris, including Gosselin, where he learned to make the young baker's unique pain l'ancienne which, Reinhart says, would be better called pain moderne, as it uses a modern invention (the refrigerator) to produce a "cold-dough delayed-fermentation" baguette, the best he has ever tasted. He found this technique revolutionary, and he includes the recipe here, along with a wide variety of other artisan and classic breads, from Ciabatta to Poilene-Style Miche to Tuscan Bread. The recipes are preceded by a 50-page primer on the "twelve stages of bread," and there are dozens of photographs, including particularly helpful ones of shaping different loaves. Valuable for both the professional and the novice, this is highly recommended for all baking collections. Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
The staff of life, homemade bread satisfies many a craving. In The Bread Baker's Apprentice, Peter Reinhart, noted bakery operator and author, has written a thorough, well-organized, and helpful introduction to bread baking that nearly everyone can profit from. Classifying the types of breads and presenting ingredients in tables helps the baker understand relationships and commonalities among seemingly dissimilar breads. Reinhart covers only yeast breads except for a single recipe for a triumphal cornbread full of fresh corn and topped with bacon. If a cook can do the math, Reinhart's tables of bakers' "percentages" allow for adjusting the recipes to any model bread machine, and the truly expert may use the numbers to create wholly new breads. A bibliography, a directory of ingredient sources, and a comprehensive list of bread-baking Web sites make this book a fount of practical, valuable baking lore. Mark Knoblauch
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Book Description
Co-founder of the legendary Brother Juniper’s Bakery in Sonoma, California, author of the landmark books Brother Juniper’s Bread Book and Crust & Crumb, and distinguished instructor at the world’s largest culinary school, Peter Reinhart has been a leader in America’s artisanal bread movement for over fifteen years. Never one to be content with yesterday’s baking triumph, however, Peter continues to refine his recipes and techniques in his never-ending quest for perfect bread. In THE BREAD BAKER’S APPRENTICE, Peter shares his latest bread breakthroughs, arising from his recent pilgrimage to study in several of France’s famed boulangeries and the always-enlightening time spent in the culinary academy kitchen with his students. First you’ll peer over Peter’s shoulder as he learns from Paris’s most esteemed bakers, people like the brothers Poilâne and Phillippe Gosselin, whose pain ancienne has revolutionized the art of baguette making. Peter then walks readers through the twelve steps of building great bread, his clear instructions accompanied by over 100 step-by-step photographs. Then it’s on to over 50 new master formulas for such classic breads as rustic, chewy ciabatta, hearty pain de campagna, old-school New York bagels, and the book’s Holy Grail—Peter’s version of the famed pain ancienne. En route, Peter distills hard science, advanced techniques, and food history down into a remarkably accessible and engaging resource that is as rich and multitextured as the loaves you’ll turn out. This is original food writing at it most captivating, teaching at its most inspired and inspiring—and the rewards are some of the best breads under the sun.

About the Author
PETER REINHART is a full-time baking instructor at Johnson & Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island. He is the author of the acclaimed Brother Juniper’s Bread Book: Slow Rise as Method and Metaphor, Sacramental Magic in a Small-Town Café, and CRUST & CRUMB, the winner of the James Beard/Kitchen Aid Cookbook Award in 1998.

FROM OUR EDITORS

The Barnes & Noble Review
Bread-heads, rejoice! Now you can dramatically improve your bread-baking skills by apprenticing yourself to Peter Reinhart, a leader in America's artisanal bread movement for the past few decades.

At Johnson & Wales University, the world's largest culinary school, Reinhart presides over a 22-day bread lab that teaches students the classic stages of bread baking, from mise en place fermentation, degassing, shaping, and panning to storing and eating. His cumulative knowledge, visits to the Parisian bread shrines of Poilâne and Gosselin, and recent set of technical breakthroughs are all in this book. Step-by-step color photographs clearly illustrate the techniques.

This is a book that succeeds on many different levels -- as a beautiful art-style cookbook, a well-illustrated teaching manual, and a gracefully written reflection on the art of bread making. Reinhart's passion for making artisanal bread is contagious.

"My goal is not to make you into a dogmatically doctrinaire baker, what I call a letter-of-the-law baker," writes Reinhart. "Instead, I want to help you become a spirit-of-the-law baker...one who has a sense of what the options are and thus is free to choose the options that will bring about the desired outcomes."

Reinhart provides 50 new master formulas for rustic ciabatta, New York bagels, cinnamon rolls, sticky buns, classic rye, miches, boules, and his award-winning version of the famous pain à l'ancienne. The chapter on sourdough breads alone is probably worth the price of admission for any serious home baker.

A final chapter on resources leads you to many excellent bread books, baking and culinary web sites, schools and training programs, and grain suppliers across the country. (Ginger Curwen)

FROM THE PUBLISHER

Co-founder of the legendary Brother Juniper's Bakery, author of the landmark books Brother Juniper's Bread Book and Crust & Crumb, and distinguished instructor at the world's largest culinary academy, Peter Reinhart has been a leader in America's artisanal bread movement for over fifteen years. Never one to be content with yesterday's baking triumph, however, Peter continues to refine his recipes and techniques in his never-ending quest for extraordinary bread.

In The Bread Baker's Apprentice, Peter shares his latest bread breakthroughs, arising from his study in several of France's famed boulangeries and the always-enlightening time spent in the culinary academy kitchen with his students. Peer over Peter's shoulder as he learns from Paris's most esteemed bakers, like Lionel Poilane and Phillippe Gosselin, whose pain a l'ancienne has revolutionized the art of baguette making. Then stand alongside his students in the kitchen as Peter teaches the classic twelve stages of building bread, his clear instructions accompanied by over 100 step-by-step photographs.

You'll put newfound knowledge into practice with 50 new master formulas for such classic breads as rustic ciabatta, hearty pain de campagne, old-school New York bagels, and the book's Holy Grail -- Peter's version of the famed pain a l'ancienne. En route, Peter distills hard science, advanced techniques, and food history into a remarkably accessible and engaging resource that is as rich and multitextured as the loaves you'll turn out. This is original food writing at its most captivating, teaching at its most inspired and inspiring -- and the rewards are some of the best breads under the sun.

FROM THE CRITICS

Library Journal