Food book: Panes con Oficio - bread recipes from Spain

It's rare to find bread books translated from Spanish into English - most of the translated works on my shelves are on pastry or chocolate - so I snapped this up. The author, Joaquin Llaras, says he was literally born into bread: "My mother had me in a bread basket in the back of the bakery that my parents ran in a village in Huesca [Spain], called Monzon." Breadmaking in his family goes all the way back to his great-great-grandfather, so it seems natural that Llaras also went into the profession.

The ingredients that make bread are universal, no matter where the chef is from: flour, water and yeast ("wild" or commercial). The equipment available to a professional baker, however, is very different from that at the disposal of most home cooks. Thankfully, Llaras shows us how to knead by hand and how to bake the bread in a standard oven that doesn't have higher bottom heat or steam injection.

He gives recipes for Galician bread; black olive bread; cheese bread; butter croissants; focaccia; tritordeum bread; kissing buns; panettone; madeleines; brioche; and muffins.

Panes con Oficio - True Bread by Joaquin Llaras