Baking bread doesn’t have to be intimidating – Rose Levy Beranbaum’s cookbook explains why

American baker Rose Levy Beranbaum doesn’t just provide recipes in her cookbooks – which include The Cake Bible (1988), The Pie and Pastry Bible (1998) and The Baking Bible (2014) – she tells us what she does to get the best results, and explains in simple terms why she does things a certain way.

In The Bread Bible (2003), she takes on a subject that many home cooks find intimidating. How, they wonder, can a few simple ingredients (at its most basic, just flour, yeast and water) make such a huge variety of breads. And, more importantly, why are the loaves they bake at home not as good as those made by a professional baker?

In the introduction, Beranbaum writes that she also found bread making intimi­dating initially. While working in the bread section at New York’s Restaurant Daniel, she writes, she told chef boulanger Mark Fiorentino that she was considering giving up bread as a subject for a cookbook because “unlike cake and pastry, which I had managed to control to my satisfaction, my bread never turned out exactly the same two times in a row.

“This masterful but modest craftsman looked at me from his towering height, smiled, and said, ‘Neither does mine; I don’t know what I’m doing half the time.’ With this kind encouragement I was up and running again. Yes, bread is big parts alchemy, instinct, and artistry.

“And although I’ve come to the level of repeatability where my breads at least weigh the same amount every time, I’ve also come to the realisation that it’s actually quite delightful that, despite the most precise and detailed directions, no two breads are ever exactly the same. Your bread won’t be exactly like mine, but it will be wonderful. In this world of ever-increasing homogenisation, bread remains one absolutely great way to express individuality […]