Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread Book

Reinhart is like the Yoda of bread making: he's great if you're looking for a master to guide you through the dense fog of bread making and leave you a jedi on the other side. But if you just want to know how to make a decent bread in your kitchen, well, you don't need Yoda to get you there. This book is needlessly daunting, and given it's wide reputation as a standard text for bread making, it could easily scare off a reader who hadn't actually made a simple bread before. It does have some very helpful hints, but they're all buried in the aforementioned jedi fog he's guiding you through. Making bread is not that hard, which is probably why it was invented by people who could not have ever imagined an oil mister, an ingredient Reihnhart considers essential. Get Mark Bittman's no-knead bread recipe from the New York Times website and play with it. Then use the 300 hours you've saved for something productive, like sex or motorcycle repair.