English Bread and Yeast Cookery

This a super book, if you want to make good tasty bread, this is the book for you. It is quite thick and there are no fancy pictures, just loads of tips and down to earth information. Eg: How to double up a recipe to batch bake - you don't need to double the amount of yeast you use. How to work out the amount fresh or dried yeast to use, etc. I had just bought another book about bread making, but found it useless. I tried 4 recipes in it and all were a disaster. I then read the reviews here and thought I would give Elizabeth David a try. I am so glad I did, I haven't had a failure yet. In fact I have just got a Rye Loaf from my oven and it looks scrummy. Oh! bye the way, this is not a book about making bread in Bread Machines, just lovely bread by hand.

Sent to a friend who loves it

If you bake bread, or intend doing so, this book is definately worth buying. No, it isn't full of pretty pictures . . . what it is packed with though is everything you will ever need to know about bread. It is a history book, a recipe book, an advice book . . . and more. After reading the book and following the advice given I have made the best bread I have ever produced, in a simple and straightforward way. It is useful to know what WON'T work for the home baker too. If you have an oven, a baking tray and a bowl, you can make fantastic bread - and you will never want to eat that soft, doughy stuff supermarkets call bread ever again!

A wonderful encyclopaedic survey of bread and yeast baking. Loads of fascinating historical descriptions, good practical recipes, information about different grains and recipes. Black and white illustrations by now a little dated, but still interesting.A magical book, and I can't recommend Elizabeth David's work too highly. One tiny warning; the book is very long, and will be constantly read and referred to. The paperback edition is thus almost certain to begin disintegrating after a while - my very old one has many loose and missing pages, so I finally felt obliged to buy a hardback version.

After having read all the reviews I decided this was the Bread book to buy.I am so disappointed though. In fact if I was living in the UK I would have returned it immediately.But I didn't want to inconvenience the people who had kindly posted it out to me for free, so I have kept it.It is so broad based that it is no real use to me, I just wanted to be let in on all the secrets that artisan bread makers keep to themselves with a few tricks thrown in for the home baker.E.g. Baking bread in an aga oven. pg 301Ingredients/Recipe.14 LB flour !!!14 tsp salt4oz yeast6 pints luke warm water4 tsp sugar12x2lb tinsSummer bread pg 317This is how the recipe is written out - the text is written in paragraph style with no separation of ingredients, making it extremely tedious to use.Flour, four pounds; Salt, one teaspoon full; Brewers years (two days watered), one tablespoon full; cold milk and water, one pint: two hours. warm water, one quarter of a pint; kneaded into a firm dough. rising nearly tree quarters of an hour.So, I am sat here wondering how I can be so wrong about this book when 15 people have reviewed it, all giving it five stars and not one other person has given it four or less.I am not a amateur cook, in fact I can translate a good recipe to perfection and often very pleased with the results.I hope this helps some people decide more objectively.

Informative and easy to read, this is a smashing book on the history of English breadmaking, but if you're after pure recipes, then you may need to look for another book.

Baking...

good