A great intro to Bread Making: Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day { book review }

While, I mainly like to keep the focus of this blog to recipes and information about bison meat (as that is my biggest area of expertise...) I do have some other cooking and baking interests and I'm thinking we'll start branching this out a little bit.

And today's a good day for it. The whole city is basically shut down, and I've been holed up in my apartment all day, giving me the chance to spend some time working on some projects that have long been on the back burner. *Ahem* ... cleaning my kitchen and organizing the cupboards... *Ahem*

My apartment kitchen is quite small for my normal use. (Just the other day I joked with my mother that we could both have a room completely dedicated to kitchen cabinets and still not have enough cupboard space -- and she agreed.) So, taking the time to get that cleared up, has cleared up some of my much too little counter space so I can get back to baking and cooking comfortably!

So, I wanted to start a series of posts that focuses on one of my other kitchen interests: Bread Making.

I got interested in bread making a couple years ago, and I spent quite a lot of time looking for a good book that would help get me started, as I had zero experience.

This was my first attempt at following a recipe from Reinhart's book: White Sandwich Bread & Hamburger Buns. A little more dense than I would have liked - but happy for a first attempt!

I was looking for a book that did not rely on the use of a bread machine. I do not have one, and don't have any intention of buying one. And I also was looking for a book that gave me instructions for mixing by hand. I do not have a stand mixer, nor do I want one. Cooking is one of my hobbies. It provides me enjoyment and stress relief and a lot of that comes from the feeling of mixing batter and kneading dough by hand.

I was also looking for a book that could help me with the following recipes which I was specifically looking to learn to make: French Bread, Croissants (and chocolate croissants) and sandwich buns for burgers and such. 

I found the book I was looking for in Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day.

It has a great introduction to bread making, and very easy to follow instructions and recipes. It does not take shortcuts - most (maybe all) of the recipes are two day processes - making the base the day ahead of time and allowing the dough to refrigerate overnight.

Here's an example from the book of the detailed instructions and photos they give you. Note - not all recipes have such detailed picture illustrations, but I've found the more complicated ones, i.e. croissants, do!

This book is great, because it provides instruction for both methods, whether you choose to mix by hand or with a stand mixer.

I have so far tried a few of the recipes:

- croissants (which are of course very time consuming, but so much fun to make)
- white sandwich bread (and hamburger buns)
- Bagels
- Sticky Buns
- Cinnamon Buns.

And I am quite anxious to try several more - which I will certainly be blogging about..

I am not able to spend a ton of time working on my bread maker skills, so this book is certainly great for a beginner. The photography is beautiful and I am quite convinced I found the right book for me.

If you are interested in trying out this book, I have the link below through Amazon. Let me know how it goes for you and I'd love to see what you make!

I plan to pick this book back up here this month and get re-aquainted with my bread making. I will be dedicating a few of my next posts to what I make and showing it off! Stay tuned!