Crust & Crumb: Master Formulas for Serious Bread Bakers

Posted on June 22, 2008 - Filed Under Paperback |

Binding: Paperback
ASIN: 1580088023
Manufacturer: Ten Speed Press
Average Customer Review: (From 38 total reviews)
List Price: ~~$19.95~~
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Editorial Reviews

Book Description:
Discover the true heart and soul of bread in CRUST & CRUMB, from whole-wheat, sourdough, and rye to pita, focaccia, and naan. In this classic cookbook, expert baker Peter Reinhart shows how to produce phenomenal bread, explaining each step of the process in detail and giving you knowledge and confidence to create countless variations of your own.

Customer Reviews

The good bits make it worth buying, but… by M. Lax
The good:

- a few excellent and adaptable formulas

- some very good tips on process obviously born of great experience

The bad:

- piss poor binding quality; pages dropping out after 3 reads

- nearly useless photos of no supporting aid whatsoever to the text

The ugly:

- vacuous and often grating pseudo-mystical ramblings

The real thing, for the passionate who want to get it right by Software Dude
This book is what I’ve been looking for for 15 years, with the level of depth and detail that I wanted. I have a bread machine and love it for what it does, but real rustic breads and sourdough are a special thing.

The use of natural yeasts and the slow rise method is actually less work in my opinion because you don’t have to hover. Something can go 3,4,5 hours or all day before having to mess with it, and just sticking something in the refrigerator overnight is no biggie. The slow rise makes the whole process more forgiving.

I have varied the process somewhat, I don’t shape the loaves and leave them overnight in the fridge because the outside gets too dry. I just do shaping the day of baking and let it do the final rise, and its a lot easier to just let a blob of dough rise in a container than to spread out things on sheets and take up space. That’s just me.

It isn’t unnecessarily complex but it is a re-framing of the process, and the results show. If you love rustic breads this is the real deal.

Great Homebaking Book by Hungry Reader
I am not an expert baker by ANY stretch of the imagination. I have Peter Reinhart’s other 2 books - The Bread Baker’s Apprentice and American Pie - and have had such success with his recipes that I had to get this book. I was a little nervous about some of the comments about the complexity of the recipes but I have to disagree now that I have purchased the book and used the recipes. I like the fact that Mr. Reinhart does talk beyond a simple recipe so that you can begin to make some modifications and customize your bread, make it your own. I have made some fabulous bread with his recipes - including the Multigrain which I made last night. Let me tell you - I have made some AWFUL multigrain bread in my lifetime! With Mr. Reinhart at my elbow, I made some smashing bread last night! I had frozen some biga - as he had suggested - took it out to thaw, and began making the bread right before starting dinner. Yes, it was a very late night, but in the end I had a beautiful, very tasty loaf of multigrain bread. And I even made a hasty modification to the multigrain addition because I did not want to mess with putting grains together. Great book, great addition to one’s book collection, and a terrific learning tool for bread making!

Not bad but…… by S. Heyworth
I purchased this book because I wanted a recipe for a stater for a type of bread that I wanted to make. Being new at making bread I was not familiar with terms of the different starters. It did give me the starter that I needed. But other than that I found the book really dull to look at and to read through. On the other hand I also bought a book called The Italain Baker by Carol Field and this the book that is worth buying.

I am sure that the Crust nd Crumb has it’s good points but when you read it they do not give you mixing instructions that you can use with your standing mixer. Also, I would like to have seen the finish product shown in the book, I would have known what I was making in the end. Not all breads are alike. I found that the book is boring to go through.

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