Dough

Each of the five chapters begin with a slightly different dough - white, olive oil, brown, rye and sweet - and from this 'parent' dough you can bake a vast variety of breads really easily. Though the doughs vary, the technique for making each one is identical. The beauty of it is that it takes no time at all to fill a bread board with, say, striking looking Fougasses, Breadsticks, Moroccan rolls etc (from the White Dough chapter) or Poppy Seed Stars, Sesame plaits and chunks of Pecan and Cranberry, or Cardamom and Prune bread (from the Brown chapter) and no one will guess that they are all part of the same 'family'. Richard Bertinet has been teaching bread making for several years and has his readers at heart throughout this modern look at an ancient art. Once you get the feel for the DOUGH, you can experiment with your own ideas. Most of the breads take less than 1 hour to bake and there are suggestions for how to make the bread in advance, use the freezer and, above all, comes the knowledge from a master-baker of how to make the perfect dough.