Bien Cuit: The Art of Bread (Features an Exposed Spine)

One of the world's most celebrated bakersshares his insiders secrets to making his delicious, artisanal bread that will have home bakers creating professional-quality products in no timeand inexpensively.

Bien Cuit: The Art of Breadis a work of art and has been specially produced and manufactured with an elegant, sophisticated design. This stunningpackage featuresan exposed spine, images from famed food photographer Thomas Schauer, and a beautifully designed interior.

Bien Cuitintroduces a new approach to a proudly old-fashioned way of baking bread. In the oven of his Brooklyn bakery, Chef Zachary Golper creates loaves that are served in New Yorks top restaurants and sought by bread enthusiasts around the country. His secret: long, low-temperature fermentation, which allows the dough to develop deep, complex flavors. A thick mahogany-colored crust is his trademarkwhat the French callbien cuit, or well baked.This signature style is the product of Golpers years as a journeyman baker, from his introduction to baking on an Oregon farmwhere they made bread by candlelight at 1 a.m.through top kitchens in America and Europe and, finally, into his own bakery in the heart of our countrys modern artisanal food scene.

Bien Cuittells the story of Golpers ongoing quest to coax maximum flavor out of one of the worlds oldest and simplest recipes. Readers and amateur bakers will reap the rewards of his curiosity and perfectionism in the form of fifty bread recipes that span the baking spectrum from rolls and quick breads to his famous 24-day sourdough starter. This book is an homage to tradition, but also to invention. Golper developed many new recipes for this book, including several bread quests, in which he brilliantly revives some of New York Citys most iconic breads (including Jewish rye, Sicilian lard bread, Kaiser rolls, and, of course, bagels). You will also find palate-pleasing and innovative gastronomic breads that showcase his chefs intuition and mastery of ingredients.

Golpers defining technique comes at a time when American home cooks are returning to tradition-tested cooking methods and championing the DIY movement. Golpers methods are relatively simple and easy to master, with recipes that require no modern equipment to make at home: just a bowl, an oven, and timethe dough does most of the work.