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Nathan Myhrvold was Chief Technology Officer at Microsoft before building his own research laboratory for cooking, and in 2017 he and pastry chef Francisco Migoya published Modernist Bread in five volumes. This is the distilled version, designed to sit within reach in a home kitchen rather than to be consulted as a reference work.
What sets it apart from other bread books is that everything has been tested. They baked the same bread again and again to find out what actually affects the result, so you learn why a step is there rather than simply being told to do it. There are more than 1,100 photographs, over 60 step-by-step sequences and practical advice such as how to rescue dough that has been left to prove for too long.
Bread is also defined more broadly than usual. Alongside sourdough, rye bread, ciabatta, focaccia, brioche and bagels are bao, appam and idli, fermented breads from China and India that rarely find a place in Western bread books.
If you own Tartine or Richard Hart Bread, you already have the intuitive school, where feel and experience lead the way. This is its opposite, and that is precisely why it belongs beside them.
Format: Hardback
Number of pages: 592 + 172
Language: English
First published: 2024
