Complete Book of Breads

by Bernard Clayton Jr.

Book Overview

In the 1970s, Bernard Clayton's The Complete Book of Breads became the bible for bread bakers everywhere. In the years since its publication, however, new equipment such as dough-mixing attachments... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0671215485
• ISBN13: 9780671215484
• Release Date: January 1973
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Length: 559 Pages
• Weight: 2.07 lbs.

Customer Reviews

A carb lovers dream

At first glance, one might think this book is a bit excessive. I mean, it's enormous and it's all bread. And coming from someone who hadn't made a ton of bread before, it was a little intimidating. But the reveiws don't lie - this is an excellent book that will seriously turn ANYONE into a bread making master. The book is divided up into sections - White Breads, Little Breads, Festive Breads, et cetera. And while it may seem like, with so many recipes, a lot of these breads are going to be very specific and not everyday useful, that's very much not the case. The recipes are presented in the clearest, most concise, straighfoward and thorough method of ANY cookbook I've ever owned. Each recipe is broken down, step by step (and even in minutes) for hand, mixer or processor. There are hints and ideas at the beginning of each recipe and along the way. Even someone who has never made bread before would be baking a delicious loaf in no time. I have made at least one recipe a week from this book since I purchased it a year ago and - no kidding - I've only had two that didn't turn out perfect (and in those cases, I knew what I had done wrong). And to be fair, even the ones I messed up were still very edible! Some of my favorites are the Buttery Rowies, all the muffin recipes, and the Pepper Cheese Loaf. I recommend this book to anyone who has an interest in learning to make bread, or is already a proficient baker and wants to learn even MORE delicious recipes!

Lots of Easy Bread Recipes for the Rest of Us.

The subject of bread baking seems to attract large, authoritative titled books, as this is the third 400 or more page book on bread which claims to be either complete or a bible. As the other two books (both entitled `The Bread Bible' by Beth Hensperger and Rose Levy Beranbaum) were published in the last five years and Mr. Clayton's first edition of his book was published thirty years ago, Bernard Clayton has a distinct claim to have commanded this cookbook niche for the longest time, thereby having ample opportunity to correct, improve, and augment. From the author's new introduction, I see he has been doing that faithfully for the last thirty years.In a sense, Mr. Clayton is very old school, as he was in a position to consult not only with Julia Child, but also with Craig Claiborne and James Beard, both of which have left us for tables on high. The augmentation of thirty years' effort gives us a volume which weighs in at 685 pages at an exceedingly reasonable $35. Kudos to Simon and Shuster for giving the volume the price of most cookbooks which rarely exceed 300 pages.While Mr. Clayton arose from an `old school' background, the general technique behind his bread recipes is very modern and will be very welcome to the inexperienced home baker. The heart of his technique for yeast breads is to use the newest incarnation of commercial yeast, typically called `Rapid Rise'. I believe this yeast was specifically developed to work with bread machines. The fact that `Rapid Rise' yeast can be added to dry ingredients without being proofed in warm water and sugar or flour is what distinguishes it from the older `Active Dry' yeast from producers like Red Star and Fleishmans. Virtually every yeast based recipe in the book mixes the yeast with dry ingredients and starts with water at 120 degrees Fahrenheit rather than blooming the yeast in water at about 105 degrees Fahrenheit.The very best thing about Mr. Clayton's book in comparison to it's closest competitor, `The Bread Bible' by Rose Levy Beranbaum is the fact that Mr. Clayton makes a point of showing you how bread baking can not only be easy, but it can be relatively easy with an incredibly wide range of historically and ethnically interesting breads made with manual kneading, bread machine, stand mixer, and food processor. After reading books by such hyper fussy bakers such as Beranbaum, Silverton, and Reinhart, this is a real revelation. The second best thing about this book is revealed in the title. This is a complete book of BREADS. Note the plural. The most important aspect of the book is that it presents, in depth, recipes for twenty-four different types of breads, including many ethnic favorites. I found, for example, a recipe for the Russian Easter bread, Kulich, a close cousin to the local Lehigh Valley favorite, Paska from the Ukraine. None of the other encyclopedic approaches to bread included this recipe. However, I did recently find it and the true Ukrainian recipe in the new book `Celebra

Outstanding book full of recipes that work

Clayton's book came out long before the latest round of fancy sourdough and other artisan bread books, but it is every bit as good as they are.He does not spend hundreds of pages fawning over artisan bakers. He just assumes, rightly, that you and I can just go ahead and bake very good bread.Recipes include hand, mixer and food processor versions; I have no trouble following any of the methods for any of the recipes.And the recipes WORK! Not true for all bread books.So if you just want to bake, rather than worship bread and a few famous bakers, get this book and get going.

A very helpful BIBLE of Bread Making.

I have baked primarily the mixed grain and whole grain wheat breads from this book with success each time. Good explanations with directions for utilzing stand mixers, food processors or the old fashioned "by hand" methods of mixing and kneading. Packed full of information and recipes. Color pictures would be nice, but it's such a great source for such a variety of breads, I don't hold that lack against it. A must for the home breadbaker from the very father of bread making.

The ultimate cookbook for from-scratch bread bakers

I recently told someone I bake all our bread from scratch--no bread machine for me. He looked at me in amazement and asked, "Then how do you do it?!" "Just the way your grandmother did," I told him. With Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads, anyone can bake flawless loaves of bread. Clayton has thought of everything, from explaining the many different types of flours and their differing attributes to formatting every recipe for hand mixing, electric mixer and food processor. I was given a recipe for Irish soda bread that listed the ingredients by weight, not volume, and Clayton even has a conversion table. I have made his recipe for Rudi's stone-ground wheat bread every week since I bought the book; the bread is so wonderful, my husband and I are addicted to it. But I have made perhaps ten other bread recipes, and without exception they have been delicious and professional looking. Clayton doesn't resort to tricks but uses techniques that are guaranteed to produce perfect results. I find the process of bread baking exhilarating: by mixing a few simple ingredients together I produce a living, changing dough that appeals to every sense: the resilience of the dough as I knead it, the excitement of seeing the dough rising in the bowl, the irresistible smell of the loaves as they bake, the crunch of the crust--and the taste of a fresh chunk of bread, hot from the oven, that makes me weak-kneed with pleasure every time. From flat breads to quick breads to pizza doughs to every variety of yeast bread, Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads will never let you down. How could it? Your spirits will rise along with your bread.