Ken Forkish

I received a galley of this book via NetGalley.

Straight up: I want to buy this book. I’ve read many baking books that discuss how to cultivate and utilize sourdough starters, and this is the least intimidating, most friendly of the lot. Every recipe is fully illustrated with detailed instructions led by avatars of baker Ken Forkish and comic book artist Sarah Becan. The one downside is that the book doesn’t include many recipes, but several variations are included. Really, this book provides an accessible foundation to perfect sourdough techniques and innovate from there.… (mere)

The author of FWSY improved this more recent publication as a reference bread-making book. The focus was less chatty on the personal backstories, and included more straightforward how-to and recipes. The photography was outstanding in documenting the dough manipulation.

On a personal level, recipes were not as applicable in my kitchen since I have no interest in making sourdoughs, or buying a Dutch oven type of container for baking bread. However, there were solid entries for the familiar open loaf pan and good advice on using different fermentation procedures to boot up the flavour to an artisanal level. Many recipes have only very small changes and rely on experienced dough-handling to take advantages of these subtle manipulations.

Recommended as a techniques book if you are interested in developing bread products to a higher level.… (mere)

A journey from tech employment to becoming a successful baker. The narrative was interesting, much like the evolution of learning to bake bread products, as told by Sam Fromartz In Search of the Perfect Loaf. In FWSY, the author supplies easy to follow recipes and detailed techniques.

One flaw in the presentation was the focus on recipes with rather minor adjustments to create a different product. Maybe in professional baking facilities and processes, as well as reliance on a Dutch oven mode of cooking, this might be useful.
In a standard home kitchen, not so much. There were comments about managing pre-ferments, like poolish and biga, adjusting conditions to achieve a good fermentation and bulk proofing however, which make this a useful reference cookbook.… (mere)