It is very true that, when you get off the plane in San Francisco and smell the air and feel the sunshine, you know you have landed in a different world.
Northern California is an intensely rich culinary hive. Farms and orchards, fisherman and bakers, candy makers, green restaurant revolutionaries, wine makers, cheese gurus — all these places and peoples are mazed into the hills and valleys that wrap around San Francisco. It’s a magical land offering many wonderful food stories.
The stories of Della Fattoria Bread is one of the best. Author and bakery owner Kathleen Weber began with the best in education: she opened up Carol Field’s The Italian Baker. She baked and rose from kitchen amateur to entrepreneur. Her bread was soon good enough to be offered at The French Laundry. She’s never stopped.
Now, with thousands and thousands of loaves under her apron, Kathleen is sharing her skills and her insights in this treasury of bread baking. The subtitle tells you the scope of the book: 63 foolproof recipes for yeasted, enriched and naturally leavened breads. Now, “foolproof” is a tricky word but if you follow the recipes — and use the many pictures and sidebars that adorn pages in amplification — then foolproof you will be. Your breads may not appear at The French Laundry but they will be praise worthy. You’ll see.
The chapters here are based on bread style and offer you a variety of options in each case, whether yeasted or enriched or naturally leavened. Here’s a quick tour of the chapters and some recipes ideas designed to catch your bread-baking attention:
- Yeasted Breads
Arborio Rice Bread
White Boule
Cinnamon-Raisin
- Enriched Breads
Overnight Brioche Dough
Sticky Buns
- Pre-Fermented Breads
Pane Toscano Loaves
Olive Oil Wreath
Pane Duram
Traditional Sweet Baguette
- Naturally Leavened Breads
Pain de Campagne
Olive Campagne Boule
Garlic Jack Campagne
Pumpernickel Rye Boule
Polenta Batard
- Crackers, Breadsticks, Pizza Doughs & Flatbreads
Spicy Cheddar Crackers
Hurry-Up Pizza Dough
Overnight Pizza Dough
Naan
As you can see, there may be only 63 recipes but they span the world in style and taste. Somewhere in this book there is going to a bread that reminds you of childhood or grandmother or some distant bakery that made you smile or cry in delight. Or both.
A typical recipe is three pages long, with high detail about the ingredients and technique. You are truly guided small step by small step from flour to finish. That’s the reason for the “foolproof” description. You won’t be standing around with sticky hands wondering just what to do next. You have a guide there, in precisely clear language, to lead you to the next simple step. Bread baking may not be rocket science, but it’s a heck of a lot more complicated than making a salad. Kathleen holds your sticky hands.
As humans, we have enjoyed bread for thousands of years. When we stopped being hunter-gatherers and planted the first grains, bread became our staple food. Over all those many generations, we have labored to explore breads, refine them, improve them, and create celebrations of life. In this book, Della Fattoria Bread, you will find the best in bread, the best in instruction, and surely the best inspiration to get flour on your hands.
Della Fattoria Bread was published in October 2014 by Artisan.