Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza [A Cookbook]

I've several books on bread making, but this one has guided me to the most professional end result. Ken Forkish has done a superb job of taking the methods and techniques employed by a craft bakery and converting them for home use. Making bread the Forkish way required several leaps of faith though. For example, I'd been told to strenuously avoid having the yeast coming into contact with the salt. Here, yeast and salt are sprinkled across the top of a flour and water dough. He recommends using ordinary plain flour rather than strong bread flour. The amount of water can seem excessive (and actually some reviewers suggest reducing the amount by 5% to allow for UK rather than US flour). Quantities of yeast can be extremely small. I followed the instructions for the most basic recipe, Saturday white bread, and am extremely pleased with the end result. It's a notably professional looking crusty loaf with a pretty good flavour (more advanced recipes produce ever more flavoursome loaves). It involved learning some new dough handling techniques but wasn't painful at all. I watched the author's accompanying short videos via YouTube - well worth it. (Just Google ken forkish flour water salt yeast youtube). The elapsed time was 7 1/2 hours, but very little of my time was required. The method is no knead, just some stretching and folding. I followed the instructions carefully, though I halved the recipe amount to produce dough for just a single loaf. (I did not adjust the % of water, at 72% for this recipe, it was close to the 70% I am used to). The author specifies quite a lot of kit: accurate electronic scales (ideally measuring tenths of a gramme), instant read probe thermometer, mixing tubs, proofing baskets (bannetons), and 1-2 cast iron casseroles (Dutch ovens). I used the large bowl from my stand mixer, an oval banneton, and the oval cast iron casserole I use for chickens (others have used pyrex to good effect). The recipes use either dried yeast or levain (sourdough) or a hybrid of the two. It's a good eBook with linked lists of recipes at the start of each recipe chapter. For the most part the author repeats instructions in recipes rather than referring back. Photos to illustrate techniques are a reasonable size. Just one less enthusiastic note. His method of creating a levain (sourdough starter) involves a large amount of flour and is very wasteful. However, others have simply scaled back on his recommendations. Thoroughly recommended.

I heartily recommend this book. I have been making sourdough bread for some time but with Mr Forkish’s guidance my loaves are a lot better - much tastier, a good sourdough tang, and a great crust. There are recipes and lots of help for creating loaves with commercial yeast, or with a starter (levain), or hybrid loaves containing both. There’s guidance for making your own starter and how to feed it, with lots of information to help you understand the chemical process. I was slightly cynical of following his methods, using a thermometer, casserole pot, huge tub, and very wet doughs, but it really works consistently with dependable results. Very wet doughs used to make me flip out and give up. Kneading and knocking back used to make me wonder if the time and effort was worth it. He has included some of his own story of getting into bread and setting up his bakery and pizza restaurant which adds a lovely flavour, background and illustration to the book. This book has given me a lot of confidence in my bread-making, and I have had great comments from friends and family who have tried some of my sourdoughs. I used to make bread in a bread machine, then started my own starter and made sourdough bread from information retrieved from trawling the web; often contradictory or without enough information on the processes I rarely got consistent proper tangy tasty bread, and fretted that I wasn’t feeding the starter in the best way. After reading this book I will never go back! I am now (several months after buying and reading it) a real fan of Mr Forkish.

Love this book

Two and a half years ago, with plenty of time on my hands and missing the tasty continental breads sampled on holiday, I decided to start making my own bread. It was not something I knew much about, so I bought a few books and a bread machine which I used (still do sometimes) to mix and prove the dough. The results were good, better than the supermarket breads, but lacking in comparison to European counterparts. While looking for clues to the difference, I came across Flour Water Salt Yeast which I initially bought for the Kindle. Having delved into it and enjoyed what I was reading and learning (autolyse was new to me), I bought the book (and a 24 cm casserole pot, 5 litre poly tub and a proving basket!) and got stuck into the recipe for Saturday White Bread (on a Wednesday). It was not without problems. Having added 350 g of water to 500 g of white flour, I created a really wet mix and 40 minutes later I was forced to add another 50 g of flour to rescue it. Fortunately, as you can see, the result turned out well and hit the mark with a crisp crust, slightly chewy crumb and a great taste. I was also nervous but about using the “Dutch Oven”. I mean, how many of us are glued to the oven glass wondering if the bread will get the magic bounce in the first few minutes of cooking rather than collapsing disappointingly? In the covered casserole pot, I had no idea how it was doing. I could have been baking a flatbread for 30 minutes and I confess relief when the cover came off for the last 15 minutes of cooking and revealed a nicely risen loaf. Would I recommend the book? Yes, absolutely. It is a great source of information and technique, particularly if the potential buyer has some knowledge of bread making and wants to experiment. Please bear in mind the book is written for U.S. flours whose hydration rates are around 7 % higher than flours typically found in the U.K. (which are usually U.K. sourced). Finally, why 4 stars and not 5? I am not convinced about the levain process which uses a 500 g of flour to the same of water, of which three-quarters is thrown away daily for 5 days. Perhaps I am missing something and need to read deeper or read it again. As of the moment it seems wasteful, but it is a good book and one that has encouraged me to read more about the art of artisan bread making. Perhaps this is what the author had in mind.

I wanted to make better high hydration bread and bought this (my third) bread book. I only bake sourdough but would like to learn the general craft. Ken uses commercial yeast as well and there is maybe only a quarter of the book is on purely sourdough bread making. Another criticism is the large amount of starter/levain he suggests in the book. I use about a 10th to maintain my starter. That said his advice still got me the best rise so far with 78% hydration. What I did differently is not to skip autolyse, hit the sweet spot of 25 degrees dough temperature and use a god damn Dutch oven. I really didn’t want to buy one as it’s huge and heavy and I can’t be bothered to find room in my kitchen to store it. But after books and books recommending it, I borrowed one to try. It gave a much better rise than my copper pot. If you just want to be better at making bread and get more intuitive, it’s a good book, it has a lot of good tips and whys and hows. If you want general recipes, there aren’t many. They are all free forms with almost no enrichment and a few pizzas. No rolls, loaves, ciabatta or other bakery usuals. (Ken mentioned how his bakery makes a great raisin and pecan bread but the recipe wasn’t in the book, a disappointment) However, it should get you into a bakers mindset and start experimenting and creating your own rather than following recipes. For that reason, I recommend this book to home bread makers who are into this art.

I have made something resembling bread many times before - standard jamie oliver/nigella/delia type fare - the kind that rarely need more than a page or two to explain and generally follow the same broad template. They have always been perfectly edible, but nothing better than you can pick up at a supermarket, and the process makes the kind of bread you can get at artisan bakeries or top restaurants seem well out of reach. Certainly, nothing that would ever make you rush to make another the next day. I bought this partly because I was bored out my mind in self isolation and needed a hobby beyond video games, but also in the hope I could educate myself further and maybe produce some decent stuff. Fortunately, all those expectations were blown out of the water. I read through until the section on levain (sourdough, essentially) in one sitting, and by the end of the next day I had something I would happily have paid a fiver for using only basic plain flour, a tiny amount of yeast and a pinch of salt. I found myself talking to anyone who would listen about the difference between poolish and biga and the different kind of processes you can use employing only the four key ingredients to produce completely different results. Ken’s passion for his craft really shines through and you are encouraged to immerse yourself in baking and to properly understand the processes involved and how and why things are done in a certain way. Admittedly, it is more work than your average cookbook and you need to be prepared to go with the mad scientist stuff (the first loaf I made specified 3/16’s of a teaspoon yeast to 1000g flour). Likewise, it felt like a bit of an autobiography for the first few chapters and you will need to wade through a bit to get to the point. However, if you are interested in getting into baking, want to produce some fabulous bread and are happy to invest some time into it, then get this book.

This is a very good book on true Artisan bread making - Forkish takes you through from the basic ingredients via simple yeasted breads right through to complex levain based (sourdough) breads. His methods are very easy to follow, but are completely different from the typical "leave it to rise for one hour" approach. This is a good thing. Most of his breads rise overnight and have a much more complex flavour because of it. He gives example schedules as well, so you can plan out the baking over a couple of days. This doesn't mean there is lot of work in creating bread here, it just takes a while - most of which time you can easily be out at work or off doing something else. My favourite recipes are the "Overnight Country Blonde" and the "Pain au Bacon", both of which are stunning! I have a couple of comments though: In the levain based bread section, he advises building up an awful lot of levain, then chucking most of it away. I think this is wasteful, but I have had good success building up half the amount he specifies. Also, to get the best from this book, you will need to either already own or invest in a Dutch Oven or large cast iron lidded casserole that fits into your oven. I use a Lodge Combo Cooker (see link below) which is absolutely perfect. If you don't have such a container, it really is worth buying one as it will take the bread to another level - there's also the benefit of being able to cook other stuff in it too! Lodge Combo Cooker with Shallow Skillet Lid, 3 qt Other than the recipes and techniques, Forkish's story is pretty interesting and entertaining. All in all, it's a good read, a good recipe manual and a good book on the art and science of bread baking. One final point....if you get hooked on this approach to baking, it is well worth buying good quality flour and salt. The yeast you can create yourself if you follow his advice on creating a sourdough starter. If you are in the UK, Shipton Mill produce fantastic flour for online ordering....

Really got me into baking, I never read books but this made me want to read more, interesting personal story alongside great tips