Bread Science: The Chemistry and Craft of Making Bread

The goal for me to understand how the bread magic works. And this is the best book for this goal. But keeping dough to proof on the floor, or with an ice box, or under a lamp… well, I am not that obsessed…

Love the depth to help you understand the science behind baking. Very detailed oriented. If you are not a nerd baker, this is not for you. But with that said, knowing the science behind baking ingredients and what really happens can take your baking to the next level. Since I nerd out on baking, I loved it!!!!

Other bread books give steps without going into the details of why each step is important. This book explains “why”. For example, I never understood the reason for punching down. The author states “punching down subdivides bubbles, creating more tiny bubbles where gas can go and thus helping the dough … rise evenly with a good, even internal structure … without gaping holes.” In other words punching down results in a better crumb. These explanations more than make up for the lack of many recipes in the book.

This is not a cookbook, it’s a science book. But, if you’re willing to read through the science in chapter 2, you’ll be rewarded with a much better understanding of why you should or shouldn’t do the things mentioned in chapters 3-8. Emily Buehler does a great job delving into the science and translating it into real world example much more than the brief descriptions in Harold McGee’s “On Food and Cooking” and even a bit more detail than Shirley Corriher’s “CookWise”. As excellent as those books and introductions into bread baking were, I knew I wanted to learn even more detail and this book delivered. As I’m just starting on my bread baking journey, we’ll see if all this knowledge really ends up translating into better bread than I’ve made so far, but I’m optimistic I’ll know how to fix things that go wrong.With that said, I wanted to understand why some popular recipes work and was disappointed it didn’t touch too much on those. For example, Chad Robertson favors higher hydration than the basic recipe in this book and I’d love to understand why it works. Or, another example is Jim Lahey’s no knead recipe which is very briefly mentioned in chapter 8. I’d love to know if there are intermediate stages between fully kneading the bread with a 2 hour ferment and not kneading at all with a 12-18 hour ferment. The book really only focused on the first end of the spectrum. I could (and will) experiment and find my answers, but I’d love to understand the science of what to expect before I do things which was the point of reading the book.

So much of baking bread is understanding the science involved. Emily’s book helps to breakdown down the whole process in ways that have only helped my bread baking. If you are serious about baking tasty and beautiful artisan bread, this book is a must read.

What does fat do to the formation of gluten? Does it matter what type of fat you use? What exactly does gluten have to do with the texture and rise of the dough? How do the different types of gluten interact? Do different types of sugars cause yeast to behave differently? This book covers all the science, does it thoroughly (diagrams, chemical reactions, citations of studies, history of research/understanding, etc) and does so in a way you can understand, even if you don't have a science degree. It may take a few times through to get all the details, but if you want to know the "why"s behind baking, this is absolutely hands-down the BEST book I've ever found.My only complaint - it doesn't have enough of the "how"s. One section suggests that too little or too much fat can hamper the formation of gluten, but it doesn't show actual numbers/ratios, so I can't directly apply that to my next recipe. However, with the extensive citations, I could probably go back through the research and find the numbers myself.

Thank you for writing the book. It explains phenomena I know well from years of baking but never completely understood. It's a fairly fast read. Dr Buehler (or her editor) has made it easy to jump around in the Kindle edition. Hand-drawn pictures of molecules along with a description of the history of how the information was ferreted out make it fascinating. Did I learn new techniques? No, not a one. Did I learn why the techniques I use sometimes succeed and sometimes fail? Absolutely. Her opening argument speaks volumes to me, and describes the nature of the book: "The obvious way to make bread is to find a recipe in a book and follow it.
Chances are it will work well enough, but making bread this way confines the baker to one recipe, gives him or her no understanding of how to fix problems that arise … The alternative method explored in this book is more akin to what our ancestors might have done, working with basic recipes to learn about the process of bread-making, with the added benefit of decades of scientific research enabling us to understand the inner workings of the process."

If you want to bake better bread at home, read this book. The author doesn’t waste time with personal anecdotes or travel stories. Rather, the book presents reliable information in a readable format. This book is highly recommended to beginning and experienced home bakers.

I found this book really interesting and very helpful. I have a chemistry degree and so, the chemistry detail didn’t put me off. It’s worth persevering though, as it really helps to understand what’s going on when you bake bread. The author has done a lot of hard work in reading and condensing lots of scientific papers to make it fairly easy to digest. I bought it on kindle as it was very expensive to buy as a paper copy. Reading it on the app on my iPad means you can see the illustrations too - they are all black and white but, in general, were very helpful.I would definitely recommend it if you are serious about baking bread.

If you or your partner make bread, then this book is a must to explain what's going on in the dough and how you can make better bread. Some of the science is quite advanced but it's well explained and gives you an understanding of the processes involved.

A great book, the first third is pretty dense chemistry and science which I only partially understood but it gives a great background knowledge of how and why things happen when you make bread.The rest of the book is really great though. Going into lots of easy to follow details about why you do each step when making bread and the recipes are really easy to follow.

Good book! It’s concise and explains the basics of what goes into making bread from a chemical perspective...but in layman’s terms. It makes bread recipes easier to understand wrt what is actually happening and how, possibly, to fix and improve your own bread making technique.

An excellent book for those who want to understand why bread making techniques are as they are. The chemistry and biochemistry elements are interesting to the scientifically trained but without these your breadmaking will undoubtedly still improve. The improvement in my bread in terms of flavour, shaping and rise has been remarkable. My best acquisition in quite a while.