The Bread Lover's Bread Machine Cookbook: A Master Baker's 300 Favorite Recipes for Perfect-Every-Time Bread-From Every Kind of Machine

by Beth Hensperger

Book Overview

Can the incomparable taste, texture, and aroma of handcrafted bread from a neighborhood bakery be reproduced in a bread machine? When Beth Hensperger, one of America's most respected authorities on bread, first set out to try, she had doubts. Then she spent hundreds of hours testing all kinds of breads in a bread maker, and her answer turned out to be a resounding "Yes "

In this big and bountiful book full of more...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 155832156X
• ISBN13: 9781558321564
• Release Date: April 2000
• Publisher: Harvard Common Press
• Length: 656 Pages
• Weight: 2.38 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.5" x 8.0" x 9.9"

Customer Reviews

The best cookbook for bread in all of the world 👍

The best bread recipes for bread machine. You can find a lot of kind and interesting bread recipes.

They only bread book you'll ever need!

I ordered this book after buying my second bread machine. My new machine makes all kinds of breads and this book fits the bill. The recipes are easy to make, which makes fun to try all the different kinds of breads this book offers. This book also gives you recipes for making your own starter, which was used in one of the breads. So worth the money!

Wonderful Recipes

Baking is my thing, even though I must cook everyday foods to survive. Because I have limited shelf space, and because I want to simplify my life, I only keep those cookbooks I use and treasure. This is one of those books. I love the recipes in this book!! They are accurate and produce consistent results. If you like glossy pictures in your cookbooks then this book is not for you, but if you want easy and tasty recipes then this is the best book in the market. In reading some of the negative reviews I would like to comment that perhaps the fault does not lie in the recipes, but in the cook. Successful baking requires quality ingredients, careful measuring and correct temperature. Of all the ingredients used in bread baking the most important is of course the flour. Not all flours are created equal, they vary in protein content and moisture. Protein helps give structure to the dough, a soft spring wheat, low protein, flour (White Lily, Wondra) is good for cakes, a high protein winter wheat flour (most bread flours) is good for breads. The moisture content of the flour determines the amount of liquid to be added to the recipe. I have found Gold Medal and Pillsbury flours have a higher moisture content than other flours and require slightly less liquid. So try the same recipes using a different flour, and check the dough before the machine goes into the bake cycle and adjust accordingly..... too wet, add flour; too dry, add liquid. Lastly, always use the same brand of flour and learn to work with it. I use King Arthur flour exclusively for consistent results. I know some of the info in this review is not necessarily about the book in question, but the info may be helpful to someone having difficulty in achieving consistent results in the baking process.

I use this book more than any other cookbook on my shelf

I am a working mom but I love to cook and I love good food. My husband is European and won't eat American store-bought bread, so I got my first bread maker shortly after we were married almost 16 years ago. I got this book quite a few years ago and I've opened it about once a week since (about how often I make bread). I've made more than half of the recipes in the book, and they are all wonderful. I really couldn't live without it. However, as others have said, the whole wheat recipes are generally not quite that. Only one or two of the WW recipes are 100%. The others have half to 3/4 white flour. The author explains why - she doesn't feel that you get a "satisfactory" result with the whole wheat flour, and she adds a lot of extra gluten to these recipes. However some of us really like the dense 100% whole wheat(or other grain) breads. I wish that there were a companion volume dedicated just to whole grains. I learned so much about machine bread baking from this book - now I want to learn just as much about machine bread making with 100% whole grains. I'd really like to understand the properties of the other bread-grains better, as well.

Can't live without it!

I bought this book last Christmas after receiving a machine for a gift. I made a few recipes from the owner's manual and experienced quite a few flops. I refused to be defeated and knew there must be a book out there that would help me make good bread (with the machine that I had begged for). THIS is the book! I read all the reviews that precede 2002 and got the book right away. I love the way Hensperger explains ingredients, the science of bread and how the machine works. We use our machine at least 3-4 times a week. Some of my favorites from the book include the Hamburger and Hot Dog Buns (I will never buy storebought again!), the Garlic Foccacia, the Orange Bread with White Chocolate, Apricots and Walnuts, and for sandwiches my family loves the Instant Potato Bread and the Maple Buttermilk Bread, both of which turn out light and fluffly.I remember reading a review that discussed the different ways to measure flour. For some reason, if I do it Hensperger's way, I always have to add more flour. So, I just scoop it without aerating the flour first.Another review mentioned that you "have to" use SAF yeast. I haven't found this to be true. I have used the SAF, but have also used fast-acting and bread machine yeast. Both have turned out fine. All of the ingredients have been at a local supermarket (I live in a small town - 23,000, on the Central Coast of CA) except the specialty flours like barley, spelt, semolina, etc. Those I have found at a health-food store.I can't say enough good things about this book! My copy is tattered and stained and I am enjoying working my way through all the recipes. It is a book I definitely can't live without

Every recipe is a hit!

I bought this book because I read the reviews written by other customers and they were overall very good. So far I've made 3 recipes from the book - a flax seed bread, beer bread and a whole wheat bread - and they've all turned out amazingly well. I was resigned to the "fact" that bread machine bread was more dense than grocery store bread - until I tried these recipes. The bread is light and moist and the crust is crispy and delicious. I haven't bought the SAF yeast, I'm using regular bread machine yeast but it doesn't seem to matter. I admit - because I'm from Canada, apparently our flour is different from US flour - that I modify the recipes a bit - reducing the flour by 1/8 to 1/4 cup. I've also found that I can reduce the amount of sugar and fat called for in the recipes and still have excellent results.This book is wonderful and I would recommend it to anyone with a bit of knowledge of baking and a desire to spend some time with their bread machines.