From the bestselling author ofThe New Complete Book of Breadscomes the thirtieth anniversary edition of this classic baking book, now in trade paperback. In this exhaustive volume, you'll find recipes for every imaginable type of bread, from white and rye to cheese, herb, French, and Italian breads. Croissants, brioches, flat breads, and crackers are covered in depth as well. Home bakers will find an extraordinary range of variety, nearly enough to supply a new bread a day for a year. There are wheat breads -- Honey-Lemon, Walnut, Buttermilk; sourdough breads; corn breads; breads flavored with herbs or spices or enriched with cheese or fruits and nuts; and little breads -- Kaiser Rolls, Grandmother's Southern Biscuits, English Muffins, and Popovers, to name a few. For the baker who observes the holidays with a fresh loaf there are Challah and Italian Panettone.Clayton also covers topics like starters and storing and freezing breads, and devotes an entire chapter to "What Went Wrong -- and How to Make It Right." Perfect for all levels of bakers, this book walks the novice through the steps and encourages the advanced baker to try new variations on recipes.Devoted fans of Bernard Clayton will be thrilled with this easy-to-use paperback edition and delighted to see old favorites and try new ones. This is the definitive edition of the classic baking book that every good cook should own.

Award-winning author Bernard Clayton Jr. began his career as a reporter and foreign correspondent; baking and cooking were his hobbies. He has been writing cookbooks for more than thirty years. When Mr. Clayton travels, he investigates historical and regional recipes, conversing with cooks and bakers around the world. He is the author of numerous cookbooks, including Bernard Clayton's Cooking Across America, The Complete Book of Pastry, and The Breads of France. He lives with his wife in Bloomington, Indiana.

INTRODUCTION "This is a working cookbook." Those words were written more than thirty years ago as the preamble toThe Complete Book of Breads.The aim of the book then, as it is now, was to encourage anyone to make a loaf of delicious bread and enjoy doing it, as well as serving bread at the table. It has succeeded far more than I could have dreamed. (I thought at the time I would be happy if the publisher would print at least enough copies so that I could give them to my family.) Little did I realize that it would become a classic among cookbooks. It would lead a revolution in bread-baking at home, and encourage a rebirth of traditional artisan bakeries. My words of encouragement thirty years ago are unchanged. Baking bread is a relaxed art. Unlike the precise steps in making pastries, bread baking allows a comforting margin of error. There is no step in the bread-making process that cannot, in some way, be delayed or moved ahead just a bit to make it more convenient to fit into a busy schedule. If the dough you are kneading gets stubborn, pulls back, and refuses to be shaped, as is its wont -- walk away from it for a few minutes. It will relax, and so will you. Many wondrous things happen in bread baking, and some not so wondrous. The most wondrous is infusing life, literally, into the dough with tiny grains of yeast, and watching the dough grow and mature before your eyes. A miracle. On the other hand, a less-wondrous thing is forgetting to add yeast, as the dough just sits there waiting for you to do something to help (which, at this point, can't be much). I have been asked by many how the son of a country newspaper editor who had many careers in writing got into cookbooks, especially one about bread. I grew up in a family of dedicated butter-and-cream cooks, and married one. I knew my way around a kitchen and I knew what pots and pans and skillets were for. Moving to Indiana from the West Coast changed all that. It was a particularly cold and miserable winter -- especially so after living in California and Hawaii. I felt trapped in my apartment which, fortunately, had a kitchen with all of the requisite tools. One day, I read inTimemagazine about a cookbook by three women, including one named Julia Child, on mastering the art of French cooking. I bought the book. I even remember my first endeavor: a slice of ham with mustard sauce. Across the top of the recipe I wrote the date -- March 16, 1967 -- and what I thought of the results. I gave myself an A. Before that moment, it never occurred to me that I could do well in the kitchen beyond frying an egg or grilling a steak. Breads intrigued me. We had just returned from a lengthy bicycle, canal boat, and gypsy-wagon trip across Ireland, England, and the Continent, and were enamored with the wonderful country breads we ate along the way. I could bake them at home. Or so I thought. When I started to look for recipes for these breads, as well as the necessary ingredients, I found almost nothing. The few books on breads were not well written and were difficult to follow. I had to drive a hundred miles to a big-city flour mill for bread flour and rye and whole wheat flours, which came only in 50-pound bags. Some of my baking pans I made from black-metal stove pipe I got from Honey Jones at his country trading post south of town. (I still use them.) Honey and I traded (because Honey had no teeth, for a length of pipe I baked a whole-wheat loaf with a soft crust). Since then, there have been literally hundred of cookbooks on baking. Ingredients and equipment abound, in catalogues and in kitchenware shops. A variety of flours is only minutes away in the market across town. In a recent King Arthur Flour catalogue (one of the best), I could order not only every kind of American and Canadian hard, soft, and in-between wheat flours, but also flou