Books: Flour Water Salt Yeast. Ken Forkish

My friend Sibylla gave me the perfect gift -- a cookbook about baking artisan bread. It turned out to be much more than a collection of recipes. It's an ode to bread! After Garlic and Sapphires this is the first cookbook that I read with such pleasure. Mr. Forkish renders the thrills of baking bread vividly and with love --the tactile nature of the work, the magic of the rising dough, the smell of the levain, the simple elegance of the cinnamon-brown pain de campagne and the fantastic aroma of freshly-baked bread in the morning...

Have you ever thought of what a bread-tasting event would be like? Mr. Forkish offers this experience in his bakery.

The book also perpetuates the glory of the life-style change myth - a man's dream of leaving everything behind and becoming a baker, or a wine-maker, or a restaurateur, or whatever... The author was adventurous enough to make that leap of faith himself. After 20 years in the IT business he started his own bakery in Portland. A very successful one at that!

Ah, the romance of waking up at 4 AM to bake bread....

Sibylla Chavdar's perfect hand-made bread photographed by her.