Review: Bread Science, the Chemistry and Craft of Making Bread

So, you have reached the point in your life where you have started practicing the things you thought you would never do that you saw your mother and grandmother do: mending cloths, fussing over leftovers, and baking bread.  The problem is your grandmother was taught how to make bread through the memorized techniques passed from parent to child across generations by word of mouth, and your mother didn't care to learn too carefully because she got caught up in the conveniences of modern society, what with bread that lasts for weeks on the store shelf and bread makers and frozen Rhodes dough.  The chain of knowledge is broken.

Well, there is redemption.  I have begun baking bread out of the keen old-fashioned interest of saving money and eating more simply.  The KitchenAid stand mixer was a catalyst; I don't feel too bad using it considering that I have watched my grandmother use her's since I can remember.  I first started experimenting with the recipe included in the KitchenAid cookbook.  Everything was very technical, water 105-115 degrees as measured by a good thermometer, precise mixing for x amount of minutes, scrape bowl, precise mixing for x many more minutes, and on and on.  I followed the recipe exactly, and in the end got a pretty good loaf of bread, but I didn't care for the flavor and I didn't feel like it was mine.

I started experimenting on my own, starting with the most simple recipe I could find, and I started reading Bread Science.

Bread Science is a genuine explanation of how and why things happen as you make bread, along with practical instructions.  It turns out, like most things in life, when it comes to making bread - knowledge is power.  The book is organized like a reference book, but written in logical order so that reading it cover to cover makes sense.  Chapter 1 covers bread basics: water, flour, yeast, and salt.  Chapter 2 goes hardcore into bread science, giving a detailed summary of the current state of knowledge on many of the processes happening in bread as it is made.  By hardcore I mean, when talking about fermentation you get into the Krebs cycle and when talking about the structure of gluten you are get a healthy dose of protein bonding.  At first I was a little bit turned off by the detail, but then I realized that you can't expect somebody lacking in chemistry to understand the structure of gluten without knowing what a protein is, and you can't know what a protein is without knowing about amino acids and the ways they bond with each other.  I see chapter 2 as optional extra detail, meant to be referred to when curious about something specific. Chapters 3-7 treat the different steps of bread making practically, as if Emily was right there walking you through your first batch of bread.  Finally, chapter 8 contains 5 recipes, troubleshooting, and other bread tips.

My only criticism is small and stylistic: the diagrams, which are hand drawn with cute girl handwriting.  I feel that they distract the reader from how professional the book is.  This is a meticulously researched and well written piece of bread literature.  The amateur figures gave me the impression of a truck-stop bumper sticker pasted on a beautiful new sports car, just not as professional as the rest of the book.

I can't recommend this book enough if you, like me, want to make great bread and know why it turned out great.  This isn't a recipe book to blindly follow.  Rather, the philosophy here seems to be "teach a man the craft of making bread, and you have fed him for a lifetime."  The recipes included are very basic, intended to be adapted and expanded upon by the bread maker.  Rather than give you a laundry list of specific bread making parameters, like that the temperature has to be exactly 105-115, she teaches what you need to know to make your own judgement.  Both my father and I have both read this book, and have found satisfaction in understanding and eating better bread.  When I told my dad I was going to write this review, he said "well, you let that author know that since I read her book, I can honestly say for the first time that I make better bread than my mom."

Bread Science, the Chemistry and Craft of Making Bread by Emily Buehler is available for sale from Two Blue Books, the author's website.  You can download a lengthy excerpt here.