Simply Great Breads: Sweet and Savory Yeasted Treats from America's Premier Artisan Baker

I highly recommend this book. I have pretty much every Peter Reinhart book and I love to bake artisan bread. This book provides many recipes with very flavorful outcomes but with relatively minimal effort. The Bialy's are amazing. I avoid getting too fat by giving most of my product away to colleagues. I'll tell you, the Bialy's are one of my coworkers' favorites.

This book is a must read it explains the significance of the mathematical percentages of flour to water and yeast. The collection of recipes are more towards the sweet than savory but once I understand what their theory was it was I big turn on my road to baking bread. Worthy of being in any bakers collection.

I am a fan of Leader's previous book, "Bread Alone," a significantly more comprehensive bread baking book than "Simply Great Breads." This new book is not intended to be a comprehensive, nerdy treatise on bread; the fly leaf of the book states that it is a "collection of easy yet sophisticated yeasted treats that every home baker must try." I think it hits the mark, although "easy" will vary based on the experience and confidence of the home baker.There are about 46 recipes in the book, including "variations" of master recipes. There are photos for many of the finished products, accompanied by clear instructions, even though in some cases the ingredients are on one page and the directions are on the next. Leader has included equivalence guides, and provides measurements not only in cups, but in grams, as well. Additionally, he has a temperature guide in the book to accommodate those using Fahrenheit, Centigrade and gas mark ovens.The main chapters are: Classic Breakfast Breads, An Ideal Bread Basket, Flavor Packed Flatbreads, and Quick Yeasted Treats. He admittedly takes some liberty with traditional recipes, like Navaho Fry Bread, but he says this up front in the introduction to the recipe. He also tweaks other recipes, like the classic Parker House roll. Again, he explains what he is doing in the intro to the recipe, so that the reader is well aware that he/she is not making a classic recipe in the classic manner. I have tried both the challah an the yeast-raised waffles, and both turned out very well. Definitely looking forward to trying out more of the recipes.

I bought this book after checking it out from the library. The instructions are clear and the pictures make your mouth water. It has a great variety of breads and I can't wait to try them all.

Great book for the breadophile! This book has inspired me to create more of the wonderful expanding dough. The pictures are great and recipes or doable!

The layout of this book is appalling. Recipes may be good but the publishers have done a poor in engaging the reader/cook.

The recipes are rather complex in nature. I have looked through the recipe book in depth, but have not been tempted to try any of the recipes, like I usually am with a new cookbook.

I have tried several times to learn to bake from books. The only real success I have had with baking bread has been using Cook's Illustrated's 'Almost No-Knead Bread' recipe. I hoped to learn how to make bread from this book. I tried the Parker House Rolls first - and could have done as well with Pillsbury dough from the supermarket. When I looked for a similar recipe on Cooks Illustrated, they described a fold one needs to perform with Parker House rolls and had an illustration of it that I should have seen before trying to make the recipe in this book.The book has a lot of tips that I will keep trying, (strong recommendations for a baking stone, types of flour and yeast, etc.) but it isn't the 'learn to bake bread' bible I was looking for - at least for me. Actual mileage may vary.And there is a beautiful looking loaf of bread on the cover of the book - crusty, rustic bread. As best as I can tell, there is no recipe in the book for that loaf.

very good bead book

I will be baking now.