Notes about Recipes in this book

• The Saturday white bread

  • Katti on November 18, 2012

    Dark, flavourful crust and an airy, moist and mild tasting crumb. Yummy :) The recipe was easy to follow, and the total hands-on time was minimal. Time does most of the work for you. I did have to plan my day around the baking schedule though. I've started substituting 15% of the wheat flour with rye flour, which I think improves the flavour

  • jifar on April 15, 2013

    I also found this recipe very successful. Beautiful thin crisp crust and silky texture to the crumb, v. happy.

  • twoyolks on January 01, 2019

    This bread produces a great crumb and a good crust but there really isn't much flavor in the bread itself. It's pretty easy but just too bland.

  • MmeFleiss on May 28, 2018

    Totally impressive loaf for so little effort. It made me excited to go back into bread baking.

  • Acarroll on January 18, 2023

    Simple and delicious. Not much flavor but good basic bread recipe.

• The Saturday 75% whole wheat bread

  • Katti on January 22, 2013

    Light texture for such a high percentage of whole wheat. Tasty crust.

  • Edkasky on April 09, 2021

    Wonderful, full-grain flavor. Easy recipe and the directions are very clear. I used white whole wheat for the white flour and added 20% botanical blend #2 from Sourdough School. A friend described it this way, "It tastes alive!"

  • Rebeccajwj on April 05, 2022

    Just ok for me. I will admit that I have struggled some with this book. I am more accustomed to crust and crumb or The bread makers apprentice. I have cooked many out of other books. This book makes a lot of sense to me and is very attractive but This is the second recipe that has not impressed. Maybe I’m doing something wrong.

• White bread with poolish

  • Katti on January 22, 2013

    Didn't quite live up to expectations, and the dough was very wet and hard to work with. I will try it once more in case I've made a mistake somewhere.

  • twoyolks on February 21, 2019

    I had good luck with this bread. It has a nicely developed flavor from the poolish. I got a good crust on my bread. The crumb is somewhat tight but still in a good way. I give a slight edge to the White bread with biga in the book merely because of a looser crumb.

  • JuneHawk on April 30, 2022

    I've had much more success with this recipe than with either the Saturday White Bread or the Overnight White bread.

  • Rutabaga on December 05, 2016

    I thought this bread was the best of the three I've made so far from Forkish's book. My only complaint was that it needed a bit more salt, but that could have been due to the kosher salt I was using. Since I haven't yet replaced the battery in my scale, I had to use Imperial measurements, so I chose to deliberately go lightly on the flour, then add more as needed when doing the final mixing to get the kind of consistency shown in the book. This technique seems to work pretty well for me. The loaves were airy and light, and the crumb even had a little sheen to it, just like Forkish mentions is a sign of a good bread! I can see how this would be a great dough for baguettes, and look forward to experimenting with it.

  • Rutabaga on January 22, 2017

    I made this again, this time weighing the ingredients. It is indeed a wet and sticky dough, but the flavor is excellent. Oddly, the crust on my second loaf (I have to bake them one at a time) wasn't as firm as it usually is, but the texture of the crumb was still good, so this didn't really bother me. I added 3-4 tablespoons of chopped rosemary and sprinkled the top with Maldon sea salt - delicious!

  • anya_sf on January 24, 2021

    Similar to the overnight white bread, but better flavor. Baked for the same amount of time (30 min covered, 20 uncovered), this one got crustier to the point of tasting almost burnt in a few spots, but those were easy to cut away. Lovely open, irregular, chewy crumb.

• Harvest bread with poolish

  • radishseed on August 16, 2019

    I added brandy-soaked figs and toasted hazelnuts to this recipe (inspired by Country-style hearth loaf with dried figs, cognac, and hazelnuts from "Bread Alone"). Great with butter, peanut butter, blue cheese, salads...

  • Rutabaga on January 20, 2017

    Another winner! This time I was able to use weights to measure the ingredients as I finally have a working scale again. While made primarily with white flour, the additional flours give it a a nice toasty flavor. Due to timing issues, my final dough proofed for around eight hours, but as it was not a warm day, this did not seem to be too long. We couldn't wait a full twenty minutes after it came out of the oven, and sliced it after only about ten minutes, but everyone loved the freshly buttered warm slices.

  • anya_sf on April 20, 2021

    Really flavorful, hearty (but not super whole grain), chewy bread. My kitchen is cold so the poolish sat for 16 hours overnight and the initial rise took close to 4 hours.

• Pain de campagne

  • radishseed on June 16, 2020

    This might be my favorite recipe in the book (so far). I usually make it with a higher percentage of whole wheat and rye flours, as he outlines in the headnotes.

  • twoyolks on March 12, 2019

    I was a bit disappointed by this bread. The crust and crumb were good but there wasn't as much flavor as I'd like.

  • jjankows on July 04, 2020

    I agree with radishseed - one of our favorites, and we always use the 70/20/10 proportions for white/wheat/rye noted in the intro.

  • Rebeccajwj on April 05, 2022

    I am used to more traditional bread cookbooks so maybe that’s the problem. I’ve been making bread for years so I understand how to do it. But the dough was too sticky. And it stuck to my proofing baskets and lost its lift. Also, I am having issues with preheating the 4 quart cast iron pots. I can’t seem to get the bread in there without deflating my dough. I do use a mixer instead of his hand method due to my wrists. Every bread I make out of my more advanced books comes out but so far the recipes in this book are just a struggle for me.

• Pain au bacon

  • radishseed on January 21, 2020

    Instead of bacon, I added roasted cherry tomatoes (about 100 g) and dried thyme and sesame seeds (about 1 T. total) to the dough.

• White flour warm-spot levain

  • radishseed on July 27, 2020

    I waited for a hot spell to try out this recipe, but despite the 90ºF+ temps, I had a hard time finding a "warm spot" that stayed consistently warm for the 27 hours needed to ripen the levain. It never rose as much or looked as active as the recipe indicated, and in the end I baked it one day later than the recipe's schedule. It still tasted good (great), of course.

• Overnight white bread

  • twoyolks on January 03, 2019

    This bread had a great crust and a great crumb. It also developed a decent amount of flavor during its long rise time.

  • Rutabaga on August 29, 2016

    This was my first time baking bread in a Dutch oven, and I have to say it really works. Although I didn't follow Forkish's instructions to the letter (my scale battery had gone out, so I had to measure by volume, I didn't mix the autolyse quite as well as I should have, and I didn't take any temperature readings), the bread turned out crustier, airier, and more flavorful than I could ever have hope to bake at home before. I think I cut into the loaf a little sooner than I should have, which crushed some of the lovely air pockets, but this was a fantastic first try.

  • anya_sf on January 11, 2021

    Despite doing several things wrong (let rise overnight in the fridge rather than room temp, then let sit at room temp several hours, room too cold for adequate proofing), I still got a beautifully risen loaf with a super open, irregular crumb and chewy texture. Just made 1 loaf and used a 6-quart square bucket.

• White bread with 80% biga

  • twoyolks on February 21, 2019

    This had a good flavor from the biga, a very nice, crispy crust, and a more rustic, looser crumb. This has been my favorite recipe so far in the book.

• Overnight straight pizza dough

  • twoyolks on February 22, 2019

    The dough had a very good flavor. The crust didn't hit the appropriate crispness for a New York-style pizza. The dough had a lot of air bubbles, many of which I popped manually, so the edge of the pizza puffed up considerably.

  • Rutabaga on March 19, 2017

    This recipe yields results comparable to the same-day straight pizza dough. Use whichever recipe best fits your schedule, and enjoy great pizza. These recipes are also useful for spreading your pizza-making out over two consecutive days, just don't do what I did this and store the dough balls under a tea towel in the fridge for an additional day. As one would expect, the tops my dough balls developed a dry crust under the towel, but fortunately I was still able to work the dough without too much difficulty. This is one of those cases where plastic wrap really serves its purpose.

  • anya_sf on July 24, 2021

    I scaled the recipe down for 2 skillet pizzas using half 00 flour (all I had) and half all-purpose. Since my kitchen is cool, I let the dough proof 15 hours, then chilled it 8 hours before baking. The chilled dough was easy to work with. The dough rose a lot in the oven, which was fine for skillet pizzas. Flavor and texture were very good.

  • jsewell on May 06, 2023

    My go-to pizza crust. Bakes well in an outdoor oven, 650 F (900 is too high for this with toppings). Don’t over fill the toppings and it will puff up nicely, chewy but not tough, fluffy and light. I freeze the extra and put them in the fridge the night before I want to make more.

• Smooth red sauce

  • twoyolks on February 22, 2019

    Nice, simple sauce that works well for a New York-style pizza.

• Overnight country blonde

  • twoyolks on January 08, 2024

    This had a pretty pronounced sour note but I liked it.

• Same-day straight pizza dough

  • Lulucooks on May 25, 2017

    I love this recipe. It tastes like old school pizza dough. Nice and crispy.

  • Rutabaga on February 06, 2017

    This turned out great, even though I didn't have time to let the dough balls rest long prior to baking. There wasn't time for the pizza steel to fully heat up, so I didn't use Forkish's oven/broiler method for baking the pies, but simply kept the oven at 525 F the whole time. The dough had a really nice chew, and good flavor considering it only had about ten hours of rise time. It's ideal when you decide you want pizza for dinner that same night.

  • Feelingsamtastic on June 25, 2023

    My new favorite same-day pizza dough. Start by 11am, and you'll have pizza by 7pm. The cook method worked well, but may add some oil to the crust prior to baking next time for additional color. Dough balls made pretty large pizzas

• Weeknight white bread

  • Rutabaga on November 10, 2017

    As expected, this was a wonderful bread, nicely chewy with large pockets of air, just like Forkish states in the recipe intro. The kids are mad for it; my oldest went so far as to say it was the best bread in the world (at six he's prone to hyperbole, but that's still high praise). My crust was a little tough, but that may have been because it sat out on the counter all day before we ate it. Toasting it fixes that issue handily.

• Overnight 40% whole wheat bread

  • Rutabaga on December 05, 2016

    This was my second bread from this book. It's understandably a little heavier due to the whole wheat flour, but was a great multi-purpose bread, suitable for toast or any kind of sandwich, and a great accompaniment to hearty soups. Compared with artisan bakery breads, the flavor is a little lacking here, but I think you have to move on to leavain breads to really get that hint of sourness I crave.

  • jjankows on April 20, 2020

    This was the first recipe I tried in the book, and it was a phenomenal success. With the price of the book, I'll certainly be making this over and over again. Particularly loved it with Nutella...

  • bwhip on January 26, 2020

    Really nice bread recipe. The crust is my favorite part, nicely crunchy and flavorful. The recipe is wonderfully detailed, and made me quickly feel like a bread baking expert. Looking forward to trying more breads from this excellent book.

• Field blend #2

  • jjankows on September 30, 2020

    This is one of our favorites in the book as well (along with Pain de campagne with the modifications suggested in the note). I don't have any issues with it not bursting at the seam, so proof in the usual manner.

  • HalfSmoke on February 20, 2017

    Terrible name, but my favorite bread from this book. The touch of rye and whole wheat flours give it great depth of flavor. One tip -- I find this bread doesn't burst at the seam on it's own like others in this book. I proof it seam side up and then score it with a lame before baking. Works great.

• 50% whole wheat bread with biga

  • anya_sf on December 14, 2021

    The biga and dough took much longer in my cool kitchen; I had to create a warmer environment and just be patient, but the loaf turned out well. Delicious and hearty with prominent wheat flavor. Super chewy and crusty. I should have checked early as my loaf got a little singed.

• Iron-skillet meat pie

  • anya_sf on July 24, 2021

    The dough stretched fine into a 10" skillet. I used leftover sauce from another recipe, more pepperoni (slices were small), and a pre-shredded mozzarella-provolone blend (not as good, I'm sure, but I had it on hand). After 15 minutes of baking, the pizza seemed too pale, but after 20 it was verging on too charred. I don't know why I didn't check it sooner. My family still enjoyed it quite a bit.

• Iron-skillet pizza with red grapes, mozzarella, and salami

  • anya_sf on July 25, 2021

    I used pre-shredded mozzarella rather than fresh, which I'm sure wasn't as good. I enjoyed this flavor combination, but my family wasn't convinced that grapes belong on pizza. The grapes on the edges caramelized and stuck to the sides of the pan.

• Walnut levain bread

  • jdjd99 on January 04, 2021

    One of the best breads I've made. Perfect crust, soft interior. Will definitely make again.

  • Rebeccajwj on April 16, 2022

    I bombed on this. My crust even turned white! The dough was so wet. Maybe I over proofed? But I turned the walnut bread into a decent rum raisin bread pudding so no real loss.

• Focaccia Genovese

  • Acarroll on January 18, 2023

    Delicious. We added tomatoes and dill.

  • Acarroll on December 25, 2023

    2nd time making this (topped with tomatoes and basil this time). For some reason the bread turned out too thick, chewy, and underseasoned.

• Food52

  ...stands out for its elemental techniques and straightforward instruction in yeasted and sourdough breads and pizzas.

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• Baking Bites

  ...instead of giving you a list of recipes and leaving you to your own devices, it gives you a comprehensive course in everything you need to know about baking bread.

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