My Bread: The Revolutionary No-Work, No-Knead Method by Jim Lahey, Rick Flaste (With)

From Barnes & Noble

"Minimalist" New York Times food journalist Mark Bittman credits Jim Lahey with a historic breakthrough. "Innovations in bread baking," he wrote, "are rare. In fact, the 6,000-year-old process hasn't changed much since Pasteur made the commercial production of standardized yeast possible in 1859. The introduction of the gas stove, the electric mixer and the food processor made the process easier, faster and more. I'm not counting sliced bread as a positive step, but Jim Lahey's method may be the greatest thing since." In My Bread, New York baker Jim Lahey describes his discovery and development of no-knead bread and shares recipes for the method that revolutionized the bread-making world. Cutting-edge bread news.

From the Publisher

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

The New York Times - Christine Muhlke

Lahey offers a few spins on his flawless boule: carrot bread, coconut-chocolate bread, olive bread, fennel-raisin bread. And there are recipes for things to make with said bread, fresh and stale. But the second-best thing about this book is that Lahey demystifies the pizzas that made his name when he opened his first bakery in SoHo.

Publishers Weekly

While the subtitle sounds like a late-night television infomercial, Lahey's quick bread-in-a-pot method garnered attention from foodies and critics after appearing in Mark Bittman's New York Times article. With co-writer Flaste, founding editor of the New York Times's dining section, Lahey, founder of the Sullivan Street Bakery and the New York pizzeria Co., presents his touted no-knead bread recipe, along with a collection of recipes building on the method. With only five minutes of labor (along with 12–18 hours of waiting/rising time), the authors promise the results of artisanal Italian-inspired bread. Lahey's down-to-earth tone and straightforward technique, along with instructional photographs lead home bakers through chapters including “Specialties of the House,” with such recipes as coconut-chocolate bread and pancetta bread; “Beyond Water,” breads made with carrot or apple juices and peanut butter; and “Pizzas and Foccacias,” featuring less-than-traditional toppings such as celery root, cauliflower and fennel pizzas. Additional sections on building sandwiches and what to do with stale bread—everything from soup to dessert—round out this innovative title. (Oct.)

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