Clayton's new complete book of breads
For me, cookbooks have two functions. The first is to act as a spur to the imagination. A properly provocative cookbook would be one you could browse through with the same pleasure that you might take in reading an adventure novel. You get to have the excitement without the danger (or the calories). As an added benefit, you increase the store of ideas from which you put together your own cooking. Seen in this light, a book that offers
you recipes that you might never make or suggests ingredients that you could never find is doing you a favor: it is developing your imagination. Maybe I don't have Chinese five-spice powder or galangal, but I wonder how that recipe would work with dried ginger or a cinnamon, salt and fennel mixture.
The other function, of course, is to provide the cook with recipes and information on the craft of cooking. There are certain constraints on the cook's imagination and some experiments not worth pursuing. A good cookbook tells you what works and what doesn't. As a bonus, sometimes a cookbook is just plain fun-to-read.
As a writer of wine books, I try to spur the imagination, suggest the limits and come up with a good read. Let's see how Bernard Clayton's New Complete Book of Breads stacks up.
In terms of igniting the imagination, Clayton does a pretty good job. He explores the many different faces of bread throughout the world and makes them seem accessible to the home cook. By stressing the use of Rapid-Rise yeast, baking with Clayton becomes a relatively quick affair. At a culinary school, I gave his recipe for Cuban bread to classes that had four hours to prepare lunch for the public. Their bread always came out on time and made a great impression. The book is not comprehensive, but its range is wide.
Bread-making can seem complicated and there's no end of books that delve into the complications. Clayton's treatment is straight
forward, enough information so you understand what you're doing, not so much that the process seems inaccessible. The novice baker who has gained some confidence can go on to incorporating techniques like slow rise and sourdough.
The book is also a good read. Clayton's introductions to each recipe are well-written
and apropos. As a gift or as a single reference for a cook whe's expanding his reach, this is the best of the reference-cookbooks on bread.
