This is a neat approach to bread, and I've enjoyed using its recipes in a commercial environment. It's hard to imagine doing all this at home. If you just want to learn more about fermentation and how to play with it to fit your needs, you'd get a lot of creating a starter and building breads every day for a month. It may not be worth continuing long-term unless you make a lot of bread. You can always get a bit of starter from a bread-obsessed friend.If you really like this type of bread, the results are fantastic. The basic country bread is great sliced and grilled. Loved: the photography, the descriptions of how the dough should feel or smell at different stages in addition to the usual visual terms. Many of the recipes are inspiring.Not so much: the tips seem really tied to San Francisco - no help for high altitude bakers. Also not a great method for small batch home baker dilettantes liked myself - I know starters and levain are the way to get great flavor but just can't bring myself to love a method that calls for discarding so much food, nor daily attention and baking.I found more than enough to enjoy this book at great deal. Will take the tips that work for me and leave the rest.
Now that I have gone through this book, I know it is going to change my life! And make me fat. :D
—hilda
Best technique for making country loaves out there using homegrown yeast. Highly recommended.
—shegyn
Great book. Use the information all the time, since I bake bread frequently.
—shibbybro32
