Modernist Bread at Home is an indispensable cookbook for anyone who is passionate about making homemade bread.

There is so much to be gained from baking your own bread. It’s both physically and mentally satisfying, an outlet for creativity and innovation, and just plain comforting (seriously, is there anything more comforting than warm homemade toast with butter?). That’s why The Cooking Lab is thrilled to unveil their newest cookbook, Modernist Bread at Home — the ultimate guide for home bakers eager to create exceptional bread.

It’s hard to believe TCL released Modernist Bread nearly seven years ago. Since then, they’ve received a lot of feedback about creating a version of the book specifically for home bakers and have been quietly working on just that over the last few years. With years of dedicated research and meticulous experimentation, TCL has distilled the expertise of Modernist Bread into a comprehensive 420-page volume that streamlines the art and science of making bread at home.

Much like how Modernist Cuisine at Home is to Modernist Cuisine,this book is designed specifically for home bakers so that you can create extraordinary bread in the comfort of your own kitchen regardless of how much experience or time you have. You’ll discover delicious, easy-to-follow recipes, innovative yet practical techniques, helpful scientific insights, and useful visual guides. Everything has been tested (and retested over and over again) with their unique brand of rigor to ensure you’ll get great results with a home oven.

One of the biggest goals for Modernist Bread at Home was to make it as accessible as possible. TCL has worked hard to address the needs of home bakers as well as the realistic challenges that come with making bread, a time and labor-intensive food, in your own kitchen. They know, for example, that life easily gets in the way of making bread in the middle of the week. With that in mind, TCL developed time-saving tips and strategies, like freezing leftover levain so that you can use it as a flavour booster. The inactive levain can be added to direct doughs (doughs made with instant yeast), evoking sourdough flavour in much less time.

There are plenty of invaluable skills to master, bringing a new level of confidence to your baking every step of the way. With Modernist Bread at Home, you’ll learn how to make beautiful loaves of homemade bread that fit within your weekly schedule and have a depth of flavour beyond what you’ll find in the store—and you can proudly say that you’ve made it with your own hands. The Cooking Lab is incredibly proud of this cookbook, and hope that you’ll love it as much as they do.

Here’s a sneak peek into what you can expect from Modernist Bread at Home:

OVER 160 RECIPES

Modernist Bread at Home features over 160 extensively tested, easy-to-follow recipes that span the world of bread. You’ll learn how to make:

• Rustic sourdoughs
• Traditional French lean breads
• Sandwich breads
• Brioches
• Ryes
• Challah
• Focaccia
• Bagels
• Bao
• Gluten-free breads

Some highlights include TCL's innovative recipes for Second-Change Sourdough, No-Knead Brioche, 100% High-Ryes, and gluten-free bagels.

EASY-TO-FOLLOW RECIPE FORMAT

Great care went into designing how the recipes are formatted in this book. The unique layout makes it easy to follow, understand, and prep for recipes. An illustrated tour breaks down the format and essential information before you get started.

INNOVATIVE, YET PRACTICAL TECHNIQUES

The techniques in this book were developed with home bakers of all experience levels in mind. Whether it’s new ways of utilizing tools already found in your kitchen, enhancing the flavour of bread with pressure-caramelized inclusions, or using TCL's dough CPR method to rescue overproofed dough, there’s information that both well-seasoned home bakers and complete novices will find helpful. They even discovered ways to speed up bread making, as in their Second-Chance Sourdough or a more straightforward traditional French brioche, so that you can still have fresh bread even with a busy schedule.

HELPFUL VISUAL GUIDES

Don’t know where to start? That’s okay. Modernist Bread at Home features helpful visual guides for:

• Getting the most out of TCL's recipe format
• Planning how to fit bread making into your schedule
• Choosing what bread to make based on your skill level, how much time you have, and what kind of bread you’d like to add to your repertoire
• Essential gear for baking bread in a home kitchen. All the tools are easy for home bakers to find
• Step-by-step technique tutorials
• Troubleshooting common issues throughout the bread-making process

172-PAGE WIRE-BOUND RECIPE MANUAL

To keep your hardcopy pristine, Modernist Bread at Home comes with a wire-bound recipe manual that contains all the recipes and reference tables.

Regardless of your baking experience, Modernist Bread at Home empowers you to create bread that’s beyond compare. The Cooking Lab believes that bread making should be an accessible experience for everyone, and this book is your key to achieving just that.

• Language: English
• Author(s): Nathan Myhrvold, Francisco Migoya
• 419 pages
• Published in 2024