By Richard Bertinet
The book has won several awards, including the Guild of Food Writers' Best First Book and the IACP Cookbook of the Year, both in 2005. The author, Richard Bertinet, is a Frenchman now living in Britain. His recipes are not what I would call "contemporary" - they're actually quite classic, and include fougasse, baguettes, pain de mie, rock salt and rosemary focaccia, ciabatta, seaweed bread, pain de campagne and rye bread with caraway and raisins.
He recommends "working the dough" (his term, which he prefers to "kneading") with your hands, rather than a machine, to give you a better "feel" for the dough.
Chapters are organised by the type of dough and there are variations on basic recipes. So for white dough, you can make puffballs, bread shots, lemon rolls, sesame and anise breadsticks and spicy Moroccan rolls. The brown dough recipe gives variations such as apricot and oat bread, honey and lavender loaf, poppy seed stars and pecan and cranberry bread.