perfidy

It's time once again for me to lay upon the benighted masses another over-long, wordy, and tedious book review of interest only to me and people like me. See, I've always wanted to write for the Atlantic, yet I lack drive, ambition, talent, or the requisite measure of snobbery it takes to write 5,500 words on the unsung childlike genius of Proust and the perils of English translation. Despite these handicaps, I in my own way want to be like the big boys.

I geek out about things: it's what I like to do. If I learn a little about something, I usually want to know a lot more. In some ways, this is a pain. For instance, I'm a baseball fan but suck the big one when it comes to quoting statistics about who was the best Texas-born left-handed shortstop of all time. I'm waaaaay out of my league on that count, and it's frustrating.

But in other ways, geekery is deeply rewarding. For example, I like to cook and over the years have gotten pretty good at it. I've got a sensitive palate and a notion of what an extra teaspoon of rosemary will do to the balance of a beef stew. Since I'm a decadent Western aesthete at heart, in individual pursuits like cooking, wine, or the building of Magic The Gathering decks, it's very very good to be a geek.

Currently I am geeking out about bread baking. My mom taught me the basics years ago, and since I moved into a place with a real gas oven, I have been baking bread in earnest. Over the years I have amassed a collection of half a dozen or so decent bread cookbooks, and on my own I managed to give myself an okay grounding in the principles of bread baking. But my inner geek was not yet satisfied. My holy grail of breadmaking is the quintessential artisan loaf: a chewy, slightly open crumb with plenty of body and a deep flavor encased in a crisp yet tender outer crust. I had come close on my own, and some of my efforts last winter with sourdough rye loaves were outstanding. Even so, I didn't have a clear idea of what to do to achieve consistently good results without guesswork and uncertainty.

Enter Rose Levy Beranbaum. Beranbaum is a noted cookbook author and total geek whose "Cake Bible" is one of the landmark cookbooks of the last decade. In that book, Beranbaum approached cake baking with rigor, enthusiasm, and creativity, resulting in recipes that very nearly come out perfect every time.

Beranbaum's new book, "The Bread Bible," does the same for bread.
Exhaustively researched, fully annotated, and crammed with detail, this is the best single book on the subject I have ever come across. I got The Bread Bible for Christmas, and the next day decided to whip out a couple breads to have with our New Years' dinner. I chose Beer Bread and something called Sicilian Pizza Roll. Both were fantastic, better than almost anything I had done before. Her recipes were perfect. The Beer Bread was crusty and chewy, with a subtle flavor you would never guess came from a bottle of Porter. The Sicilian Roll was like a rolled pizza stuffed with broccoli, garlic, and olive oil.

Ever since then, my weekends have revolved around baking. Friday night 11 PM: mix the levain starter. Saturday 11 AM: mix and knead the dough. Six hours and several steps later: remove from oven and enjoy with dinner, then start Sunday's bread. My wife has grounds to complain-- this hobby is time-consuming and not any cheaper than just buying a loaf at the store. But she has yet to stop me. Must be good bread.

Rose Levy Beranbaum's approach to baking has many advantages over conventional cookbooks. Where a pithy, catch-all book like The Joy of Cooking or The Better Homes & Gardens Cookbook favors economy over rigor, Beranbaum goes the opposite route. The recipe for her basic Hearth Bread (essentially the "quintessential" bread I was looking for above) runs to five pages and includes notes on pan selection, various rising strategies, and variations. Whereas another cookbook might specify "5 to 6 cups all-purpose flour, " Beranbaum's ingredient lists specify exactly how much flour ("2 2/3 cups plus a tablespoon") to use, and in some cases even exactly what brand of flour will work best.

Within the recipes, the instructions are impeccable. When Beranbaum writes that "the dough will be very sticky," you know that the dough will be a total mess, almost unkneadable by hand and sticking to the counter, your hands, the bowl, and your face (don't ask!). But when she writes that "after five minutes of kneading, the dough will be smooth and only slighty tacky (sticky)," you also know that five minutes from now, your sticky morass will have somehow transformed under your fingers into a perfect dough: shiny, smooth and elastic. And so it goes.

But all the detail in the world is useless without the "why," and here Berabaum also excels. She devotes several pages to the differences between all-purpose and bread flour, down to the differences in protein content between King Arthur All-Purpose and Pillsbury (it's something like 7.4% vs. 7.2%, if you were wondering). Yeast, salt, sweeteners, and additives all get similar treatment, as does equipment. Why does the Ciabatta dough need to be so wet? Why must you not overknead the baguette? Why use All-Purpose for pizza dough? Why must you not add the salt until the final mix? All is explained, and everything works perfectly.

Quick breads, scones, muffins, popovers, sweet rolls, sourdoughs, Indian paratha, Kugelhopf, rye, and French breads all get the Beranbaum treatment, and all of them are outstanding. She even includes a recipe for Wonder-style soft white bread. I tried it this weekend, and it's absolutely oustanding. Not gummy at all, and utterly delicious.

As with any cookbook, "The Bread Bible" is not without its flaws. There are better resources than this one for absolute novices-- James Beard's Beard On Bread deserves its reputation as a classic, and you can't go wrong with the Joy of Cooking. Rose Levy Beranbaum's approach works better if you alrady know your way around a loafpan a little and are ready to find out the effects of relative hydration levels on gluten extensibility. A new baker is likely to get lost in the details where these other books are more careful about helping novices understand the very basics. (Beard's approach is particularly good for newbies, and includes an essential section on what could go awry and how to correct it. )

Sometimes Beranbaum's best asset-- her methodical nature-- is also a liability. Several times I've made a foolish mistake and had to throw out a half-mixed dough because I glanced and saw "3 1/2 cups flour," but missed the note, "hold back 1/4 cup if mixing by hand." Substitutions come at the end of recipes, and this also caused a problem when I had to swap in real milk for powdered milk, but forgot to change out the water for milk when adding the ingredients. These problems stem partly from my own cooking style and lack of organization, and a marginal note by me is all it takes to fix them. But I've rarely encountered these issues in the past, which makes me suspect that Beranbaum's style won't be a perfect fit for everyone.

Baking is as serious in its way as kung fu, doll-collecting, or pet breeding, and I for one am glad that Rose Levy Beranbaum has finally met the need for a serious, geeky, high-quality book on breads. If you have any interest in a technical-manual approach to bread construction, I cannot recommend "The Bread Bible" highly enough.