by Jim Lahey (Author), Rick Flaste (With)
When he wrote about Jim Lahey's bread in the New York Times, Mark Bittman's excitement was palpable: "The loaf is incredible, a fine-bakery quality, European-style boule that is produced more easily than by any other technique I've used, and it will blow your mind." Here, thanks to Jim Lahey, New York's premier baker, is a way to make bread at home that doesn't rely on a fancy bread machine or complicated kneading techniques.
The secret to Jim Lahey's bread is slow-rise fermentation. As Jim shows in My Bread, with step-by-step instructions followed by step-by-step pictures, the amount of labor you put in amounts to 5 minutes: mix water, flour, yeast, and salt, and then let time work its magic--no kneading necessary. The process couldn't be more simple, or the results more inspiring. Here--finally--Jim Lahey gives us a cookbook that enables us to fit quality bread into our lives at home.
Back Jacket
Praise for Jim Lahey and the Sullivan Street Bakery: Mr. Lahey s method is creative and smart. . . . What makes Mr. Lahey s process revolutionary is the resulting combination of great crumb, lightness, incredible flavor long fermentation gives you that and an enviable, crackling crust, the feature of bread that most frequently separates the amateurs from the pros. . . . With just a little patience, you will be rewarded with the best no-work bread you have ever made. Mark Bittman, New York Times The secret to baking a foolproof, nearly labor-free loaf that tastes as delicious as anything from a baker. . . . [Jim Lahey is] the most intuitive bread baker I have ever met. Jeffrey Steingarten, Vogue Jim Lahey . . . opened the Sullivan St Bakery in 1994 selling breads no one in the city had made before. . . . Sullivan St became the name to look and ask for, and . . . became . . . the place to go for the incredibly airy, oil-brushed, lightly salted pizza Bianca, which is even better than that of the bakery in Rome s Campo de Fiori, Lahey s model and mentor. Corby Kummer, The Atlantic It s bread above all that [Lahey] knows and loves. . . . The man can do wonders with flour and water, massaged or not. . . . He can do fluffy, crunchy, supple, dense. He can do pizza Bianca man, oh man, can he do pizza Bianca those salty squares of almost entirely naked crust. Frank Bruni, New York Times