Fast Breads: 50 Recipes for Easy, Delicious Bread

Fast Breads: 50 Recipes for Easy, Delicious Bread (2010) Elinor Klivans and Susie Cushner

As much as I love my Kindle, I can’t say I’ve had much of a desire to read cookbooks on it. But this was a deal I could hardly resist, so I went for it.

Yes I did, in fact, read this like a book. I enjoy reading cookbooks–there’s always something new to learn, especially when it comes to baking. And as far as reading, the Kindle was fine for this.

Today, however, I decided to make “Crusty Artisanal Bread” and I can’t say that my keyboard Kindle was good for those. Since today was the first part of the recipe, tomorrow I’ll try following the rest of the recipe on the Fire, or even my laptop, and see how that turns out. But since I like having my recipes on one page (or two facing pages) having a recipe go over six Kindle screens was rather crappy.

None of which has anything to do with the content of the book.

The authors are promoting fast and easy breads. And by fast and easy they don’t necessarily mean “20 minute meals” fast, they mean little hands on time fast. Which is precisely what I was looking for today.

These are recipes that you can start while you’re cooking dinner or cleaning up, put the dough in the fridge, and the next day or the day after, finish baking the bread. That’s precisely what I’ve been wanting, since, now that it’s warm, I’m not content to spend my weekends at home baking.

Obviously, I won’t know more until I bake the bread tomorrow, but the initial method is quite different from what I’m used to–mix together the try ingredients, then add the water all at once. It was kneading in the mixer for ten minutes before I was allowed to add more flour–which of course it did need. It also put the dough into a floured–rather than greased–bowl.

There were also recipes for biscuits and other quick breads, many of which I bookmarked. (As much as I didn’t love trying to bake from the Kindle, I adore the ease of making bookmarks.)
Rating: 7/10

Published by Chronicle Books

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