Flour Water Salt Yeast

Hardcover, 272 pages

English language

Published Jan. 7, 2012 by Ten Speed Press.

ISBN:: 978-1-60774-273-9
OCLC Number:: 772137147

(5 reviews)

From Portland's most acclaimed and beloved baker comes this must-have baking guide, featuring recipes for world-class breads and pizzas and a variety of schedules suited for the home baker.

There are few things more satisfying than biting into a freshly made, crispy-on-the-outside, soft-and-supple-on-the-inside slice of perfectly baked bread. For Portland-based baker Ken Forkish, well-made bread is more than just a pleasure—it is a passion that has led him to create some of the best and most critically lauded breads and pizzas in the country.

In Flour Water Salt Yeast, Forkish translates his obsessively honed craft into scores of recipes for rustic boules and Neapolitan-style pizzas, all suited for the home baker. Forkish developed and tested all of the recipes in his home oven, and his impeccable formulas and clear instructions result in top-quality artisan breads and pizzas that stand up against those sold in the best bakeries anywhere.

Whether you’re …

From Portland's most acclaimed and beloved baker comes this must-have baking guide, featuring recipes for world-class breads and pizzas and a variety of schedules suited for the home baker.

There are few things more satisfying than biting into a freshly made, crispy-on-the-outside, soft-and-supple-on-the-inside slice of perfectly baked bread. For Portland-based baker Ken Forkish, well-made bread is more than just a pleasure—it is a passion that has led him to create some of the best and most critically lauded breads and pizzas in the country.

In Flour Water Salt Yeast, Forkish translates his obsessively honed craft into scores of recipes for rustic boules and Neapolitan-style pizzas, all suited for the home baker. Forkish developed and tested all of the recipes in his home oven, and his impeccable formulas and clear instructions result in top-quality artisan breads and pizzas that stand up against those sold in the best bakeries anywhere.

Whether you’re a total beginner or a serious baker, Flour Water Salt Yeast has a recipe that suits your skill level and time constraints: Start with a straight dough and have fresh bread ready by supper time, or explore pre-ferments with a bread that uses biga or poolish. If you’re ready to take your baking to the next level, follow Forkish’s step-by-step guide to making a levain starter with only flour and water, and be amazed by the delicious complexity of your naturally leavened bread. Pizza lovers can experiment with a variety of doughs and sauces to create the perfect pie using either a pizza stone or a cast-iron skillet.

Flour Water Salt Yeast is more than just a collection of recipes for amazing bread and pizza—it offers a complete baking education, with a thorough yet accessible explanation of the tools and techniques that set artisan bread apart. Featuring a tutorial on baker’s percentages, advice for manipulating ingredients ratios to create custom doughs, tips for adapting bread baking schedules to fit your day-to-day life, and an entire chapter that demystifies the levain-making process, Flour Water Salt Yeast is an indispensable resource for bakers who want to make their daily bread exceptional bread.

1 edition

SlowRain reviewed Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish

Review of 'Flour Water Salt Yeast' on Goodreads

4 stars

Let's get this bread!

This is a very good book for beginners to moderately skilled bakers. It details the bread-making process nicely and makes it easy to understand. The concepts and recipes are well-described, and there seems to be something in here for everyone. There are different schedules for making bread so that you can incorporate one of them into your own schedule. Best of all, you are given all the information you need so that you can tailor any of the recipes to accommodate your schedule. And the recipes are super easy to scale up or down.

I focused my reading on the straight breads and the ones using a starter as those are the recipes I'm likely to try now. I just skimmed the levain (sourdough) recipes, focaccia, and pizza recipes. I'll give them a second reading later.

I can't recommend this book enough. It's quite likely the …

Let's get this bread!

This is a very good book for beginners to moderately skilled bakers. It details the bread-making process nicely and makes it easy to understand. The concepts and recipes are well-described, and there seems to be something in here for everyone. There are different schedules for making bread so that you can incorporate one of them into your own schedule. Best of all, you are given all the information you need so that you can tailor any of the recipes to accommodate your schedule. And the recipes are super easy to scale up or down.

I focused my reading on the straight breads and the ones using a starter as those are the recipes I'm likely to try now. I just skimmed the levain (sourdough) recipes, focaccia, and pizza recipes. I'll give them a second reading later.

I can't recommend this book enough. It's quite likely the only bread book you'll need if you just want to make something delicious and healthy for your family and have a little fun doing it at the same time.

And, as an extra bonus, the author has put some videos on YouTube which show some of his techniques so that they're easier to understand:

https://www.youtube.com/user/KensArtisan

EDIT: The author has since written a separate book dedicated to pizza (The Elements of Pizza) which contradicts the method he used in this book. The method in this book isn't bad, but you may want to read the new book for what he describes as a better way to make the dough (and the tomato sauce, too, I believe).