August 9, 2007 - 3:22pm
New Reinhart and Leader Books
I'm kinda excited. I'd ordered Peter Reinhart's "Whole Grain Breads" and Daniel Leader's "Local Breads" from my local bookstore (sorry, Floyd, I don't do business with Amazon). Both were due out in September, but I had a message on my answering machine today (early August) that they were BOTH in. Sometimes they get books in early and are not supposed to sell them before a certain date, but they had no such directive. So I have them right this very minute! Too bad I have to attend to other things right now (make crackers for an event tomorrow night), but I'll be poring over them ASAP.
Rosalie
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ooh, cool! Which breads are you most excited about? Last week i found a used copy of Breads from Le Brea Bakery and Glezer's Blessings of bread and got both for for ~20 bucks. Nothing is quite as exciting as a new bread book!
Well, bj, the pictures in the Reinhart book are to die for. I haven't had a lot of time to study, but I want to make and EAT everything he has a picture of. His theme is what he calls delayed fermentation on whole grain dough.
The Leader book has its pictures grouped together with non-glossy pages in between. They aren't as saliva-inducing, possibly because they aren't all whole grain. (Can you tell I'm a wholegrain freak?) The picture of the buckwheat batard drew me to that recipe, and I think I found an error in the baker's percentage for the levain (page 82, for when you have the book). The recipe calls for 125 grams buckwheat flour, 100%. It also calls for 300 grams liquid levain, 300 grams, 60%. My pea-picking brain could be wrong, but that's 240%; except that the directions below suggest that you are using only 1/4 cup (out of 1 1/2 cups) of the liquid levain in the buckwheat levain, which would be 60 grams or 48%. (He's just finished explaining the several-day procedure for making your own liquid levain, and this is some kind of tie-in, but it's got me confused.)
I hope that tomorrow I'll have more time to go through the books. The ladies at the bookstore say I need to bring them some fresh-baked bread now.
Rosalie