Bread Head: Baking for the Road Less Traveled

UPDATE: after three bakes, I'm upgrading this review to five stars. The error in the first recipe I baked looks like an outlier; I haven't seen anything else like it. And, more importantly, everything I've made from the book so far has been great (Carolina Gold, Farmhouse Sourdough, and the Toasted Sesame sourdough (above). I still think it's not a book for novices -- you have to be comfortable working with very high-hydration dough, among other things -- but I'm really enjoying the formulas, I'm finding that the default bulk ferment and proof techniques and times work really well for me (a chronic underproofer), and man, the bread is fantastic!ORIGINAL REVIEW:This is an attractive (and perfectly legibly printed) book by the head baker at Publican Quality Bread in Chicago; I bought the book partly because I like PQB's bread and partly because I've been really pleased with two other books published by chefs associated with the same restaurant group, and also co-written with Rachel Holtzman: Cheers to the Publican (Paul Kahan and Cosmo Goss) and Cooking for Good Times (Paul Kahan and Perry Hendrix). In my experience, the recipes in these books are well-written and well-edited, and they WORK, which is what I care most about in a cookbook.Based on a first bake, I'm giving Bread Head four stars -- four because the results were excellent, but not five, because I had to maneuver around three problems in the recipe. I chose to make Carolina Gold, a sourdough bread that incorporates a "porridge" made from cooked rice of that variety, as well as benne or sesame seeds.1. The "porridge" step calls for boiling and then simmering the rice for thirteen minutes, covered, in a small amount of water; it was clear that I wasn't going to make it thirteen minutes without drying out the rice completely, even over my lowest heat, so I had to add a bit of water midway through the simmer, and the result was not so much a "porridge" as cooked rice, tender but still with discrete grains. Nothing in the book described what the resulting porridge should be like, so I didn't know whether this what I should have expected (in my head the word "porridge" sounds mushier than this), but I went with it. In the end, the discrete grains are still visible in the bread, but there's nothing wrong with that, and they were fully cooked, so they don't have a distracting texture.2. The recipe is supposed to make two 900g loaves and calls for dividing the dough before preshaping. The total weight of the ingredients in the recipe is 819g, so unless Greg is using a special gamma-ray oven that can convert energy to stable-state matter -- which I suppose is entirely possible, given the cosmic flavor of his Grateful Dead references ;-) -- this is a significant copy-editing error, and one that might trip you up if you don't notice it in time; luckily, I did.3. The bread recipes all call for the use of a Challenger bread pan, a product for which Wade is apparently a brand ambassador. That's fine, but the book offers no alternative guidance for bakers who don't own that product. I went with my usual technique of 450 (not 475 as recommended with the pan) on a stone with a cast-iron steam pan and got excellent results, but if I were a beginning bread-baker, I'd be frustrated not to have known in advance that many of the recipes in this $40 book presupposed that I had a specific $200 tool.All that aside, the bread was delicious, and the benne seeds in particular give it a really nice, subtle sesame flavor, quite different from what you'd get from a coating of sesame seeds on the exterior of the loaf. I'm encouraged and will keep baking from this book, and I recommend it -- probably not as a first bread book, but certainly as an addition to your library if you're a more experienced baker looking for some variety. (The technical notes about controlling dough temperature in the back also look really useful, although I haven't tested them yet.)

I like how this man looks into grains and how it relates to our gut. My daughter borrow this from the library and I liked it so much, I bought it. If you want to be successful baking bread, get this book.

Great book with detailed descriptions and beautiful photos!

This book is great, full of really well thought out imagery and recipes. The instructions are clear, and help give context to help an aspiring baker learn and grow. I particularly like that there’s a whole chapter devoted to experimentation and various processes around such.

One of the best parts on living in Chicago is I can buy wonderful Publican Market bread made under Greg Wade's direction. He wrote this book and shares all the hard-learned techniques of baking artisinal breads and other items. You wonder why he would share his trade secrets, but any bread baker knows each loaf baked is a new experience and there's a lot of work involved so only the dedicated few will compete with professional bakers for their bread. But those will to put in the effort and search out good, healthy organic flours will be glad to have this excellent book.