Rux Martin/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Poilâne: The Secrets of the World-Famous Bread Bakery

I spent the summer looking forward to the release of this book and I’m pretty disappointed. It’s a PR job for the great bakery and gives nothing of substance away. The simple bread recipes are shockingly bad and won’t produce anything nearly as good.

I have many bread & baking books, but this book although absolutely beautifully photographed and designed is actually dull.The recipes are flat. it is also bulked out with many non-baking recipes, such as rice pudding, chocolate truffles. pesto and how to make sandwiches, croutons and perfect toast & bread crumbs? Really? It's maybe a French thing .. but it is patronising.I read it raring to bake something, and yet I just wasn't inspired. several of the bakes look underbaked - the brioche on page 94 looks studio baked and could have done with another 10 minutes in the oven. It reads like a PR exercise to the author. It is weirdly soulless, as though she doesn't actually bake. It is and styled in such a way it looks as though it has had a ghostwriter and an art director have taken photos of the bakery and then gone back to a studio to create this book.I guess what I am trying to say is that this book feels fake.There are far better books than this.

Honestly, the hatred expressed in some reviews seems to me completely excessive. The book is filled with interesting tips and suggestions which if read properly could enhance anybody's bread baking. Admittedly, it is not a primer on how to make good sourdough bread; people in search of that would do far better with either Jeffrey Hamelman or any of the Tartine books. But the ways forward it offers in reusing old bread, making breadcrumbs, and constructing tartines and other bread-based foods are well worth the purchase price. There are also excellent essays on bread to be enjoyed.It is actually fairly common for professional bakers in France to use a mix of sourdough and yeast; people who don't believe this could look at the many books of Eric Kayser. While I am not a fan of using yoghurt as a starter, it is sensible to note that if people are beginning to bake sourdough for the first time, they might struggle to capture enough wild yeast to kick a starter into life just from flour. I would say that yoghurt is a better choice than raisins, which are sometimes advised, and which in my experience lead to mould growth.All in all, this is an immensely attractive adjunct to any bread book library

This book does not show you how to make Poilane bread. It does not reveal the secret of how to make it. It shows you how to make a loaf using bakers yeast and sourdough starter quickly, cutting out the stages that would make great flavour and texture. Quite frankly, misleading.

Such a lovely book. Bought this for myself for Christmas and it's a mix of history, technique, insight, ideas and a handful of recipes, plus some beautiful photographs. Makes me long for a big brick oven but I shall make do, as suggested, with a Dutch oven for my sourdough! It's taught me to think again about my breadmaking, and to give bread the love and attention it deserves for the best result, using the five senses and understanding much more about the art and craft. I've learned so much, and shall be spending more time developing my breadmaking skills. There are plenty of bread recipe books, but this one has a mix of everything and is so much more because of it.