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Book Review: The New Complete Book of Bread Machine Baking

Reggie Dwork <reggie@jeff-and-reggie.com>
Sun, 22 Feb 2004 20:49:21 -0800
v104.n011.5
The New Complete Book of Bread Machine Baking
edited by Lara Pizzorno
copyright 1997 by Trillium Health Products
ISBN 0-7615-1125-3

I can't remember when I purchased this book but it was some time ago. The 
other day I noticed it sitting on my bread cookbook shelf and decided to 
explore it.

The first chapter is "Choosing a Bread Machine".  I thought this was unique 
and would help to the first time buyer to understand bread machine 
features, such as having enough power for wheat or whole grain breads.  The 
next two chapters cover ingredients and problem solving. The last six 
chapters are recipes: basic wheat and grain breads, vegetable breads, fruit 
and sweet breads, nut and seed breads, herb breads and hand-formed breads.

There are 75 recipes in total.  The recipes are one page each with 
quantities for 1 and 1.5 pound loaves and nutritional analysis.  The 
opposite page contains information about a primary ingredient in the 
recipe; for example, the light rye bread recipe faces information about 
rye.  There are also numerous recipe tips scattered throughout the 
book.  In addition to basic breads there are interesting recipes like 
Lentil Bread, Black Pepper Bread and Orange Spice Bread among many others.

I baked two of the breads: white bread and 100% wheat bread.  Both turned 
out very nice and had good flavor.  The 100% wheat bread recipe uses gluten 
flour.  I tried it both with and without the gluten and found no 
appreciable difference.  We ate the bread within two days so I don't know 
if the gluten would make a difference in how fast the bread dries out.  The 
white bread had a cake-like texture and was delicious.  I chose these two 
breads because if these basic recipes are good, the others should be also.

I think this is a good book, especially for a new bread machine baker.  It 
seems to be out of print, but look around for a used copy.