Cookbook 196: 100 Great Breads

Never before have I been so disappointed by a cookbook. I know I have written about being disappointed by cookbooks before on this site, but this was THE most disappointing cookbook I have ever cooked from. To start with, zero stars. This book doesn’t deserve a single star, because it broke my heart and brain by being so incredibly wrong.

I suppose I should mention which book it is that I am disappointed in, and it’s Paul Hollywood’s 100 Great Breads. Paul Hollywood is supposed to be some kind of breadmaking genius and he may well be, he cannot, however, write a recipe to save himself. I made three different breads from this book and every single one of them had a point of failure in them. I wasn’t even looking for recipes to fail, but they all did. Steps were missing (important ones like kneading), or there was additional liquid that wasn’t mentioned in the ingredients, or the oven temperature/cook time was wrong. I’ll show you what I made and where it went wrong and you too can avoid this book like the plague. Paul, I expect an apology about how bad this book actually is (he doesn’t know this site exists, so I’m not likely to get one I know).

Ciabatta (makes 4 loaves)

Ingredients:

• 500g strong white flour, plus extra for dusting
• 325ml water
• 30g yeast
• 10g salt
• 30ml olive oil

Method:

• Put 300g of the flour into a bowl with the water and yeast. Using a hand whisk, whisk for 5 minutes, then leave to ferment for 4 hours.
• Add the remaining flour and water (I don’t know what water he’s referring to here), the salt and olive oil. Whisk briskly for 5 minutes, then leave in the bowl for 2 hours.
• Tip the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and divide into two equal pieces. Stretch each piece of dough into a 20.5 cm loaf, then allow to rest for 1 hour.
• Line two baking trays. Divide each piece of dough into two. Stretch each of the four loaves back to 20.5cm, transfer to the baking trays and leave to rest for 1 hour.
• Preheat the oven to 200C. Dust the loaves with flour and bake for 20 minutes (hahahah more like 40) until golden brown, then transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Notes on this recipe:

• Yes they tasted good, but the recipe was poorly written, I didn’t know whether I should or should not add the extra water, or even how much, and then I had to double the baking time because 20 minutes was clearly not enough. Complete fail

Potato Focaccia Pugliese (makes 1 loaf)

Ingredients:

• 500g strong white flour, plus extra for dusting
• 5g salt
• 20g yeast
• 300ml water
• 4 – 5 new potatoes, scrubbed and thinly sliced
• olive oil
• rock salt
• 2 springs of fresh rosemary, destalked

Method:

1. Put the flour, salt, yeast and water into a bowl and mix to form a dough. Leave in the bowl to double in size for about 1 hour.
2. Cook the potatoes in boiling, salted water for 2 minutes to soften. Drain
3. Line a baking tray. Tip the dough out onto the baking tray and flatten with your hands, then brush with olive oil and, using your fingers, make indentations over the surface. Layer the potatoes over the top, sprinkle with a little rock salt and stud with the rosemary sprigs. Leave to rise on the baking tray for 1 hour.
4. Preheat the oven to 230C. Bake for 25 minutes until golden. Remove from the oven and brush the loaf with more olive oil, then transfer to a wire rack and serve when cooled.

Notes on this recipe:

• KNEAD THE DOUGH FOR ALL THAT IS HOLY! Yes, the most crucial step in making bread is left out of this recipe. It goes at the end of the first sentence of the first step. You probably want to knead that bread for about 10 minutes or so. If you don’t knead it, then the texture is all odd, it looks like it does in my photo and it tastes a bit weird.

Tomato and Basil Bread (makes 1 loaf)

Ingredients:

• 500g strong white flour, plus extra for dusting
• 10g salt
• 20g yeast
• 60ml olive oil
• 275ml water
• 100g semi-sundried tomatoes, roughly chopped
• 30g fresh basil, roughly chopped

Method:

1. Put the flour, salt, yeast, oil and water into a bowl and mix gently by hand to bring them together. When all of the flour has been incorporated, tip the dough out onto a lightly floured surface and knead for 5 minutes. When the dough is pliable, transfer it to the bowl, cover and leave to rest for about 1 hour.
2. Line a baking tray. Add the tomatoes and basil to the dough and work in well. Stretch and squeeze the dough into a sausage at least 70cm long and tie in a knot. Place on the baking tray and leave to rise for 1 hour.
3. Preheat the oven to 230C. Bake for 30 minutes (please check at 20 minutes, or you will end up with overcooked bread like mine) until golden brown, then transfer to a wire rack to cool.

Notes on this recipe:

• It is super hard to incorporate slightly oiled tomatoes and basil into a dough. You’re probably better off soaking as much oil off the semi-sundried tomatoes with paper towel as possible in order to make it easier.
• As you can see from my photo, 30 minutes was too long (and yet not long enough for the other recipes)
• It tasted good, but was again another failure.