A Book About Bread: A Baker’s Manual – Issa Niemeijer-Brown

Issa Niemeijer-Brown

Artisan Baking with Knowledge and Intuition 

Description:
Bread may be familiar and even ordinary, but A Book About Bread is exceptional and surprising. Accessible and clear, A Book About Bread teaches you how to make perfect baguettes and sourdough loaves by taking bread baking back to basics: understanding, feeling, and intuition. Providing the original recipe’s from Issa’s award winning bakery A Book About Bread goes beyond, combining theory and practice in a unique way that enables experimentation and the search for the ultimate loaf.

https://www.waterstones.com/book/a-book-about-bread/issa-niemeijer-brown/9789464710717

Review
Issa Niemeijer-Brown is one of the most acclaimed bakers in the Netherlands, his award-winning artisanal French bakery Gebroeders Niemeijer (The Niemeijer Brothers) is one of the best in the country, receiving international recognition for its breads, croissants and pastries. 

The Dutch edition of A Book About Bread – released 2020 – was an immediate bestseller and is now considered a classic in the Netherlands; it is now published for the first time in the UK.

It also recently won the Gourmand World Cookbook Awards 2023 Best Bakery Book in the World!

We can totally understand why there has been such acclaim, as explained at the front of the book, ‘this book is different from other bread baking manuals. Rather than simply providing recipes and instructions, it teaches you the process of bread baking and enables you to create your own recipes.’

The first part of the book takes you through a step-by-step process of how to make your own bread. This is followed in the second part where Issa shares the real recipes that they use in their award-winning bakery, this encourages the reader to try out different techniques and taste how even small modifications in a recipe can produce differences in flavour. The final part of the book guides you through creating your own recipes with a number of helpful tips about how to achieve your own perfect bread.

The content includes an Introduction, Defining Bread, Making Your Own Bread-What you need to know, How to Use the Recipes , Recipes, Making Your Own Choices, and an Appendix, full of the most useful information about bread making.

Within the recipes are the most delightful selection of bread choices, baguettes, sourdough, rye bread, pizza dough, fougasse, pavé, and so much more.