52 Loaves

February 15, 2010
A clever weekend baker learns some life lessons, loaf by loaf.

As in his previous book (The $64 Tomato: How One Man Nearly Lost His Sanity, Spent a Fortune, and Endured an Existential Crisis in the Quest for the Perfect Garden, 2006), Alexander sets a fairly lofty goal—this time he wants to bake perfect bread. The author established a time frame for his task of a loaf per week for a year. That undertaking may not be as showy, perhaps, as cooking all of Julia Child's recipes in the same time period, but it's a formidable task nonetheless. Alexander used just four ingredients, baking his peasant yet artisanal bread from scratch using water, salt, wheat and yeast—a 6,000-year-old recipe"found scratched on the inside of a pyramid." The author built a rudimentary oven, separated wheat from chaff by hand and worked diligently to produce the ever-important gas bubbles in his bread's texture. Some of his baking, presented to an obliging family, was tasty, while some went against the grain. He considered sponge and crust, crumb and batter and the magical qualities of the ubiquitous ancient fungus, yeast. He also traveled quite a bit, baking in New England, at the Ritz in Paris, in a medina in Morocco and finally in l'Abbaye Saint-Wandrille, a modest seventh-century French abbey where he produced his best loaf. During his quest, Alexander learned plenty. For example, the professed atheist found something numinous in the loaves, and especially the process. His bright writing highlights a pleasing variety of comical misadventures. Recipes appended.

Entertaining and educative.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

April 15, 2010
Opening with a story about his attempt to take sourdough on an airplane, Alexander ("The $64 Tomato") recounts his challenge to make peasant bread every week for a year until he baked the perfect loaf. Bakers will delight in his often humorous mission as he relates leaving out salt, growing his own wheat, discovering parchment paper, and splashing water into the oven in an effort to create steam, "[that] miracle vapor that's indispensable in bread making from start to finish!" Alexander also writes about attending a kneading conference in Maine, spending time in a French monastery, and going to Morocco. During the first week of his quest, the bread books on his shelf weighed two pounds; by week 47, he owned 64 pounds of books. As he sums up, "Bread is life." He includes some recipes and "A Baker's Bookshelf," a list of the books on bread he acquired. VERDICT This humorous memoir is recommended for anyone who has ever tried to bake a loaf.Nicole Mitchell, Birmingham, AL

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

April 15, 2010
Obsession takes many forms. Alexander, already a seasoned horticultural adept, now turns his attention to producing the ultimate loaf of bread. To achieve perfection in so simple a creation (yeast, water, flour), Alexander husbands his own field of wheat. He learns to raise this ancient grass, harvest it, prepare the grain, grind it to flour, knead it with the purest water, generate the active microorganisms to puff up the dough, and then bake that dough to produce a properly satisfying crumb within a flawless crunchy brown crust. He researches his topic thoroughly, but realizes he needs more hands-on tutelage. Moreover, the definition of a perfect loaf changes both by place and time. Alexander travels the world to learn from masters of bread baking in various styles, ending up in a Norman monastery. Impressed with the monks daily spiritual discipline, Alexander structures this account of his quest according to the ancient canonical hours.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)