Living Bread: Tradition and Innovation in Artisan Bread Making: A Baking Book

I own several bread recipe books by notable authors but I keep coming back to this one for the unusual recipes in the Simple Sourdough chapter. Leader’s writing is straightforward and informative. He’s obviously in love with his subject. The procedures are easy to follow, if a little repetitive, but for me so far they work. My attempt to make Pain a L’Ail Des Ours succeeded on my first attempt. I was skeptical of his method for steaming the oven, ice cubes in a hot cast iron pan, but it seems to work, at least for the breads I’ve tried. Again, though, it is the recipes that most intrigue me. They use a variety of flours such as rye and buckwheat in addition to regular white wheat flour, all combining to produce interesting flavors in the final loaf. I’d say you might need a little experience making bread before tackling these recipes but you’ll be richly rewarded in the end, and you’ll learn quite a lot about tools and ingredients along the way.

Have many recipe for many types of bread highly recommend it

I have over 40 books on bread (and 500 on food in general). I have been a big fan of Chad Robertson's Tartine book for years, but Living Bread has quickly become my new favorite. This book will be treasured by new bakers and seasoned bakers alike. I have cooked 5 breads so far from the book and each one was fantastic.The information is well written, very thorough, and super informative. The section on flour is one of the best I've read without being a college text on chemistry. The only flaw I have found in this book is the difficulty in finding the information about flour substitutions, as many of the flours he recommends are difficult to find. There are many recipes that I want to try before searching for the exact flour from the Puglia region of Italy. Don't get me wrong.. I'm gong to track down the flours, but in the meantime, I would like a clear and organized way to substitute. I eventually found the information in different sections of the book, but I have read the book twice now.Perhaps more importantly with the amount of books on bread out there it is refreshing to get one that has many recipes that are novel and exciting. Another great aspect of this book is the variety of types of approaches to baking bread: Yeasted , polish, sourdough, different sourdoughs (Rye, etc), and others. Another interesting aspect is the use of a variety of flours from around the world.I highly recommend this book. You will love the information about bakers, baking, and all the world breads, which are beautifully photographed as well. If you are an adventurous baker or just passionate about learning you will love this book.

Forkish, Hamelman, Geissler and others have all written excellent bread baking books. So why did I buy another one? Because non of these books have all the information I was looking for in one place. I felt they were a reflection of one bakers style and that style was not exactly mine. In contrast this book shares many styles and options.I grew up in a Bavarian bakery and literally learned how to be in touch with dough and bread. My grandfather was a traditionalist who preferentially made natural sourdough and was considered an old-fashioned weirdo who didn't' understand economics. That's true he didn't understand economics (Granny did!) however he knew what an honest bread looks and tastes like and more importantly how to bake it. And this book teaches you the same without any fuzz and gives you options compatible with your or my style.Moving to the US I was not getting the breads I loved and started to make my own. At some point thanks to Carla Bartolucci's excellent book "Einkorn", I discovered more flavorful grains and developed my own style. I tried to learn from all the other excellent books I read. It was hard and I had to take bits and pieces from all these excellent bakers to get at least some benefit. However there wasn't everything I needed in one book. Here it is!Living Bread shares most of the needed knowledge in a non-romantic and pragmatic manner. Knead the dough by hand to exhaustion? Really? Use a mixer, preferably a spiral mixer! The book tells you that it's ok not to be the super manual artisan. However if you want to be super manual that's o.k. too. It's a matter of style - your style. Mill your own grain because you like the flavor of fresh stone milled flour? This book tells you how and doesn't hide you will get more flavor at the cost of less rise. Don't mill your own flour, the book tells where to get the right flour. Pragmatic and real.The author traveled around the world and shares different baking styles from different people with us. Myself coming from Germany I was delighted to see the "Complex Sourdough" section. Bring it on! 24 hours? 29 to 35.5 hours for the Vollkornbrot. That's more like it. I know that's extreme for some people so there are shorter recipes as well: 35 minutes for Panepepato.The author introduces many different bakers and they all have different styles. This is an important point: It's their style and there is more than one way to bake a bread. This is very liberating. While there are some universal fundamentals, like using baker percentage and a metric scale many other things are up for grabs.This truly beautiful book is teaching all of us new old tricks in a comprehensive manner. It is empowering, it allows you to develop your own style. If I had to choose a single bread baking book, this is it. It's the book I've been waiting for. Now I need to get back to my stone mill and Alpha spiral mixer!

I have all 3 books by Daniel Leader. I have put the others I own on the shelf. His books give intensely relevant information and the recopes WORK. Why? Because he does not dumb the process down to a cake recipe and method. I am transfixed by Living Bread and return again and again to the Sicilian wheat story, also the FACTS about gluten, having become Sooo irritated by the food faddists that ruin eating and wreck the real information about what constitutes "nourishing". Local Breads is open beside me and the Ciabatta dough is fermenting in a stainless steel bucket! My husband is in ecstasy & hopeful that we wll enjoy the "slipper"; having given up on so called artisinal bakers selling Ciabatta loaves that are 5 inches high and a torpedo shape. Mr Leader - Thank-you. Now I need to win the Lottery and get Sicilian grain growing here in New Zealand. And, a mill!! These books - Bread Alone, Local Breads & Living Bread are soul food.

The books's content is great but it came with a bit of a binding issue. The front cover inner paper was torn but the rest of the book looked fine.

This is the first book I bought on bread making. It if full of great tips and delicious recipes, which aren't overly technical and generally take about 10 hours start to finish, versus more technical books that can take up to 24 hours to make the sourdough. I would recommend this to others as a first book. Enjoy!

I already have several bread books and am baking bread for 6 years. One could think, that there is not much new information about bread in such situation, but it's not true and particularly in this book I came across some really interesting recipes and - the most important thing - some new techniques, that make the baking easier. Really useful and interesting.

Living bread is jaw-droppingly good. It's really put all other bread books I've read in the shade. There are so many recipes and they're all beautiful and there's a reason for them being there.What do I mean by that? Well, there's a history to each loaf, a reason for why it's different in technique or ingredients. So many bread books just have the usual baguette/wholemeal/something with nuts in/etc and they're really boring and predictable. Here we get the history and rationale for why a loaf is the way it is, why a specific flour or technique is used.As an example I think the book has 6 completely different baguette recipes, some pure sourdough, some with buckwheat, a preferment, a direct method (which is spectacularly good btw).My only word of advice on buying this is that it's for the slightly more committed and serious home baker. If you're a beginner and want to start with the direct methods and work your way through the pre-ferment section and then sourdough, I think it would work. But it would be a steep learning curve.That said - if you've decided that bread should be quick and simple and you don't have the interest level to go searching for artisan flour, or the patience to make a starter...this one probably isn't for you.There's a reason that world class bread is rare - it takes a little patience and work.

There are not enough stars to tell everyone how wonderful Daniels books are.He taught me to bake sourdough in 1993 with his first book Bread Alone and I was overjoyed when I learned that Daniel had written a new book.A wonderful storyteller.Spectacular experiences that envelop the reader and I challenge anyone who reads his books not to embark on the amazing sourdough journey.It will change your life.

Obsessed with the stories, photos and recipes!