Review: Bread Revolution by Peter Reinhart.

“The smell of good bread baking, like the sound of lightly flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight… [Bread making is] one of those almost hypnotic businesses, like a dance from some ancient ceremony. It leaves you filled with one of the world’s sweetest smells… there is no chiropractic treatment, no Yoga exercise, no hour of meditation in a music-throbbing chapel. That will leave you emptier of bad thoughts than this homely ceremony of making bread.”

― M.F.K. Fisher, The Art of Eating

Bread Revolution: World-Class Baking with Sprouted and Whole Grains, Heirloom Flours, and Fresh Techniques Hardcover — by Peter Reinhart (2014) Ten Speed Press.

When I started baking bread in the ’90s (as a complete amateur, with no training or real instruction) I sort of had to feel my way in the dark. While there were some good cookbooks, none of them focused on technique. I loved to buy artisan bread when I could, and when I could find a good whole wheat bread, it was always a revelation. Baking my own bread with whole grains turned out to be a horse of a different color. One loaf, I am sure my family remembers, was one we were all sorely tempted to shellac and repurpose as a doorstop. Determined to sample the fruits of my labor, I chewed mightily on the stodge and forced myself to down something that…