The Hot Bread Kitchen Cookbook: Artisanal Baking from Around the World

Two things struck me straight away with this book.1. Unless you have an oven which goes above Gas Mark 9 or 250 degrees C, don't buy it. You can't make half the bread recipes.2. A book from a bakery which recommends that you buy shop-bought bread or tortillas does not inspire confidence.It's way too New York-centric. There is little or no mention of the great central and eastern European tradition of bread making. French breads are reduced to a single baguette recipe (though at least we are given a recipe for pain levain).Profoundly disappointed, because they could have done so much more.

This is my favourite bread book for some time. The Hot Bread Kitchen is a New York bakery set up to train immigrant women to be bakers so they can earn a living, and to support them in moving on to set up their own businesses if that is what they want. Consequently the recipes are representative the backgrounds of the women who have passed through the bakery.It covers a range starting with unleavened and yeasted flatbreads, masa (cornmeal), yeasted breads, enriched doughs, etc.Culturally it moves through North Africa, the Middle East, Bangladesh, Mexico, Europe, USA, the Jewish tradition. Throughout there are interesting food recipes to go with the breads.Explanations are clear; measurements are in cups and grams.As a sourdough baker I was initially disappointed that there are no sourdough recipes. But the author explains that, so as not to deter a wider readership, doughs that would contain a sourdough starter in the bakery, have had pate fermentee (a matured yeasted dough) substituted instead. She suggests that sourdough bakers simply swap the pate fermentee for starter.Perhaps not an absolute beginners book but one for bakers of all abilities. I've been baking bread for over twenty years but I've learnt a lot from this book and will continue to do so.

As much a book about lives as about bread. The stories are what makes this book special. Not at all what I expected.

Excellent read, some excellent tips too. Look forward to trying some different bakes.

Excellent read and great recipes. Reading about the stories behind each recipe helps you to appreciate them all the more.