Slow Dough: Real Bread (Bakers' secrets for making amazing long-rise loaves at home) by Chris Yo
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  • N. N. Light
    • Nov 16, 2018
    • 3 min read

Slow Dough: Real Bread (Bakers' secrets for making amazing long-rise loaves at home) by Chris Yo


Title: Slow Dough: Real Bread (Bakers' secrets for making amazing long-rise loaves at home)

Author: Chris Young

Genre: Cooking, Food and Wine, Baking

Book Blurb:

Making bread is an ancient craft and a fulfilling experience, a skill that is learnt by touch and feel. There is nothing more satisfying than kneading, pulling, stretching and punching the dough, using a little yeast and sugar to transform its lumpen beginnings, as if by alchemy, into a loaf. But it's not all hard work. To get a truly wonderful bread, you can use a starter to do the work for you and it does wonders for the texture, flavours and aromas of the final bread. The Real Bread Campaign has been running since 2008, encouraging people to get baking and raising awareness of the additives that exist in most shop-bought loaves.

In Slow Dough: Real Bread, learn secrets from the campaign's network of expert bakers to make a huge array of exciting slow-rise breads at home. Whether you want to make a Caraway Seed Rye Bread, a Fougasse Flatbread or an All-Butter Brioche, in these recipes you'll learn how to make different starters for different breads, as well as the fundamental processes (many of which you can just sit and wait for): fermenting, kneading, first proof, last rising, and baking. In a world of mass-production and redundant additives, bread being among the worst offenders, this book, about real craftsmanship, is like a breath of fresh air.

My Review:

Love bread and want to learn how to bake beautiful slow-rise breads but scared to try? There’s this misconception that you have to have a culinary degree to bake bread, especially slow-rise breads. I have been baking bread for over fifteen years and am 100% self-taught. I (and my family) suffered through many failed/poor-tasting loaves of bread; I only wish I had this book to help guide me back then.

Slow Dough: Real Bread takes the guesswork out of creating mouth-watering artisanal bread. Chris Young shares his wealth of baking wisdom in easy-to-understand lessons. He doesn’t talk down to the reader and that’s very refreshing. He takes you step-by-step through the baking process and explains everything. This cookbook is like having your very own baking mentor.

The recipes are easy to follow and there are full-color photos for each recipe. I tried a few and my favorites include:

Cheese-Topped Chilli and Onion Boule

Milk Bread

Ciabatta

Pulla (my Finnish grandmother used to make these and they’re delicious with coffee)

Apple Village Buns

Buttermilk Rolls

The sections are detailed with easy-to-follow recipes and I especially enjoyed the ones that talked about sourdough, pizza, pretzels and leftovers (what to do with leftover bread).

This is a must-own cookbook for all bakers and my personal copy is displayed proudly in my kitchen.

Disclaimer: I received an ARC from Nourish (S&S) via Netgalley in the hopes I'd review it.

My Rating: 5+ stars

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Author Biography:

Chris Young is Campaign Co-ordinator for The Real Bread Campaign, a charity project with a mission to promote additive-free bread. In addition to compiling this book, Chris edits the quarterly magazine True Loaf, and wrote Knead to Know, the campaign's first book. His work has appeared in publications including Spear's Magazine, The Real Food Cookbook and the London ethical food magazine, The Jellied Eel, which he also edits.

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Reviewed by: Mrs. N

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