Bread is one of humanity’s earliest foods. It is certainly the oldest food that uses cultivated crops. It is meaningful to us humans in many ways. It symbolizes warmth, nourishment, and home.
Just as everyone in my family grew up using The Fannie Farmer Cookbook, every one among us (well, every woman among us) grew up baking bread with King Arthur Flour.
From a company that could trace its roots back to 1790 (King Arthur calls it “the first flour company in the young United States”), this unbleached flour was named King Arthur in the late 19th century.
The name combined romance and practicality, as does the creation of bread itself. Baking bread is a way of feeding one’s family. It is also a way of showing love.
The King Arthur Flour company re-christened itself King Arthur Baking in 2020 to reflect the growing diversity of its offerings—not just many types of flour and other ingredients, but also recipes, equipment, and even classes.
Despite all this history, the company came out with a bread-baking book only this past October. The King Arthur Baking Company Big Book of Bread (Simon Element, 464 pages, $45) was the brainchild of my part-time neighbor in Hawley, Doris Cooper, who is an editor at the book’s publisher.
Doris spent summers here as a child, and she visits her family in Pudding Hollow frequently. I was tickled when I read the book to see her listed as editor. I asked her how the project came about.
“I really wanted to do a book with them,” Doris told me, meaning the King Arthur Company. “So I pursued them for years.”
It helped that the drive to King Arthur is less than two hours from Hawley. “It was a very appealing aspect of this project that I could go there,” she laughed, noting that the bakers at King Arthur are “definitely Franklin County kindred folk.”
Cookbooks are among Doris’s specialties as an editor. She grew up in a family of cooks (I can testify to the culinary skill of both her parents) and loves “finding new and surprising ways to combine ingredients.”
She also enjoys cookbooks because unlike novels, for example, they don’t have to be read from start to finish. “I like doing books that you can find your way into,” she elaborated.
In fact, I would suggest that readers not try to read the “Big Book of Bread” from start to finish. They may find themselves exhausted … and not a little daunted.
The book’s opening chapter presents the tools and techniques the authors (all of whom work at King Arthur) recommend. The lists are long.
I bake bread as much as—probably more than—the next person. I don’t have all the tools the authors think I should. I will probably add tools as time goes by based on the book’s suggestions, but I don’t need to possess all the recommended gadgets to enjoy using the recipes and tips in the book.
I recommend that readers skim that first chapter, and return to it later as needed, before diving into the more than 125 recipes in the book. The array includes flat breads, yeast breads, sourdough breads, rolls, and even dishes that include prepared bread.
Doris told me she likes the way the book caters to the way people cook (and eat) today. I see her point. Many of the recipes come from other parts of the globe. Most look extremely doable.
Each recipe is accompanied by a gorgeous photograph to show the baker what s/he is getting into. And the book has the best explanation of the process of creating a sourdough starter I have ever seen.
For those readers not quite ready to venture into sourdough territory, it also includes several recipes that compromise between yeast and sourdough bread by using a preferment. A preferment is a bit of bread dough mixed well in advance of the main recipe that can add flavor and texture to the final product.
With all these features, it’s no wonder that The King Arthur Big Book of Bread jumped to the top of The New York Times best-seller list right after it came out. Doris says she is gratified that it did so. It wasn’t the aim when she and the authors put the book together, however.
“Our goal was that it would become the go-to bread book for the next decade,” she told me.
In my house, it will probably be that book much longer. The current edition of Fannie Farmer came out in 1996, and no one is going to be able to pry that out of my hands anytime soon. I imagine the Big Book of Bread will achieve similar longevity on my cookbook shelf.
(Not So) Basic White Sandwich Bread
I chose this bread to feature from the book because it’s relatively simple, and of course delicious. The authors estimate that making it will take approximately 5 hours, although much of that time doesn’t require any work on the baker’s part! They note, “The dough is slightly sticky but can be mixed by hand or in a stand mixer.”
Excerpted from THE KING ARTHUR BAKING COMPANY BIG BOOK OF BREAD: 125+ Recipes for Every Baker. Copyright ©2024 by Jessica Battilana, Martin Philip, and Melanie Wanders. Photography Copyright ©2024 by Ed Anderson. Reproduced by permission of Simon Element, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. All rights reserved.
Ingredients:
360 grams (3 cups) unbleached all-purpose flour, plus more for dusting
25 grams (2 tablespoons) sugar
7.5 grams (1-1/4 teaspoons) fine salt
6 grams (2 teaspoons) instant yeast
57 grams (4 tablespoons) unsalted butter, melted
142 grams (1/2 cup plus 2 tablespoons) warm milk, whole preferred
127 grams (1/2 cup plus 1 tablespoon) warm water
Instructions:
To make the dough: In a medium bowl, combine the flour, sugar, salt, yeast, butter, milk, and water. Mix with the handle of a wooden spoon until no dry patches of flour remain and a soft, sticky dough forms. Cover and let rest for 15 minutes.
Transfer the dough to a lightly floured surface and knead until a tacky, springy dough forms, about 5 minutes.
The dough will be sticky at first but will smooth out quickly; to make it easier to handle, use a bench knife to scrape the dough off your work surface as you knead, which will speed up the process and reduce the amount of flour required for kneading. (Adding too much flour at this stage can make your bread denser.)
Return the dough to the bowl, cover, and let rise at room temperature until puffy though not necessarily doubled in size, 1 to 2 hours.
Alternatively, in a stand mixer fitted with the dough-hook attachment, mix the dough on medium-low speed until no dry patches of flour remain. Increase speed to medium and mix until smooth, elastic, and pulling away from the sides of the bowl, about 5 minutes.
Cover and let rise at room temperature until puffy though not necessarily doubled in bulk, 1 to 2 hours.
Grease an 8-by-4-1/2-inch loaf pan with pan spray.
Shape the dough and let it rise: Lightly flour a work surface; then use a plastic bowl scraper to ease the dough out of the bowl onto the work surface. Gently deflate the dough and pat it into a 12-by-8-inch rectangle. Shape the dough into a log by bringing the short sides toward the center, overlapping them slightly.
Flatten the dough into an even layer; then starting from the top, gently roll the dough toward you to form a log and pinch the seam to seal; then place it seam-side down in the prepared pan. Cover and let rise at room temperature until the loaf crowns about 1 inch over the edge of the pan, 1-1/2 to 2 hours.
Toward the end of the rising time, preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
To bake: Bake the bread until the crust is golden brown and the internal temperature reaches 190 degrees, 30 to 35 minutes.
Remove the loaf from the oven and immediately turn it out of the pan and onto a rack. Doing this right away helps the bread come out of the pan easily and preserves the crust. Let cool completely before slicing. Makes 1 loaf.
