 | |
| Author | Nathan Myhrvold, Francisco Migoya |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | The Cooking Lab |
Publication date | October 24, 2017 |
| Media type | Print (hardcover) |
| Pages | 2,500 |
| ISBN | 978-0982761052 |
| Preceded by | Modernist Cuisine |
| Followed by | Modernist Pizza |
| Website | modernistcuisine |
Modernist Bread is a 2017 cookbook by Nathan Myhrvold and Francisco Migoya. The book is focused on bread, its history and baking techniques, and a guide to the science behind baking.
Modernist Bread set consists of 5 volumes plus manual:[1]
The book received positive reviews. Tejal Rao of The New York Times praised the book, saying that it:
chronicles the history and science of bread-making in depth ("Baking is applied microbiology," one chapter begins), breaking frequently for meticulous, textbook-style tangents on flour and fermentation. Its recipes require a commitment to close reading, and to flipping back through the books for deeper explanations. But each has useful variations that work with many kinds of mixing and cooking methods, for both professional and home kitchens. Above all, the book is a call for cooks to rethink one of the world's oldest foods — to understand how bread is made, using more than their instinct and intuition, so they can push the craft forward.[2]
The reviewer was also impressed by a commitment the team made: "To reproduce the squat loaves, they procured a bronze Roman bread stamp (signum pistoris) from an antiquities dealer in New York (yes, he was horrified when he found out it would be put to use in a working oven) and called in a costume designer to dress a few of their bearded colleagues. What might sound like cute cosplay for bread nerds also sums up the spirit of Modernist Bread, a book that demands bakers look into the past without romanticizing it."[2]
Joe Ray of Wired praised the book too, saying: "There are stunning photos, images of gluten made with scanning electron microscopes, history, discoveries, science, and at this point you're either amazed by the whole idea or went glassy-eyed in that last paragraph, vaguely wondering "Five books about bread?" before finding a suitable spot on the floor to take a nap." and "There's no way to look at Modernist Bread and not be stunned. It's gorgeous, and Myhrvold goes around talking about how many pounds of ink it took to print each five-volume set. Also, the team has both come up with new techniques and refined scores of old ones."[3]
The Cooking World notes breadth of the book: "Another work that finds inspiration in a variety of sources, industrial as well as artisanal, offering a defense of high-fructose corn syrup alongside a guide to caring for wild sourdough starters, and debunking the idea that water purity affects the rise and flavor of the bread."[4]
The book is a winner of several awards:[5]