The author of The Cake Bible, Rose Levy Beranbaum, dipped into the oceanic and complex world of bread baking with complete saturation of the subject matter.

The Bread Bible, like other cookbooks in the same comprehensive bread baking subject slot (namely Peter Reinhart’s The Bread Baker’s Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread, Maggie Glezer’s Artisan Baking, and Jeffrey Hamelman’s Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes, among other books), moves the baker, in step-by-step fashion, through every phase of the art–from pre-ferments, mixing, and kneading; to proofing, dividing, and shaping; and finally to finishing by slashing, glazing, baking, cooling, and slicing. Technical explanations abound, along with recipes for the likes of flatbreads, sandwich breads, sourdough breads, and those yeast-raised delights in the chapter titled “The Brioche Family of Breads.”

Let me go on in detail about one recipe, the Traditional Challah (page 516, and following pages), recently prepared in my kitchen. It appears in “The Brioche Family of Breads” chapter and it is, in a word, otherworldly. The bread has a silky crumb and tender exterior. Typical of a Beranbaum recipe, the phases are carefully explained in detail, and that accounts for the amount of text supplied with the ingredients and the number of pages it takes to impart the information. (Similarly, in my next book, Baking Style, there is a recipe for a laminated, yeast-raised pastry dough that has taken me years to craft perfectly and, likewise, the recipe is presented over several pages to secure the end-result–a batch of buttery, sugar-crusted pastries.) My Challah, a recipe in A Blessing of Bread: The Many Rich Traditions of Jewish Baking Around the World by Maggie Glezer (page 94, and following pages), was turned out in my kitchen that same week. In fascinating contrast, Ms. Glezer’s bread was superb, too, and resulted in a lovely, lovely crumb, yet this dough began with a somewhat firmer dough than Ms. Beranbaum’s (Ms. Glazer wisely alerts the reader to this at the appropriate stage) but baked up tender and moist, with a fine-textured interior and exceptional flavor. Both breads are long-keeping–if resistible.

About the images appearing in section inserts: The dramatic look of the breads tempt you to look up the recipes. The jars of sourdough starters and bowls of risen sponge starters are present for examination–look at their liquidy pull and webby network, then judge yours against them.

Bread hobbyists take note: Add this book to your library and read it thoroughly before assembling a dough. The reward for any one of your baking endeavors will appear cooling on your counter top, waiting for a smear of good salted butter and, perhaps, a glass of wine to salute the accomplishment.