NPR logo NPR Books

In Search of the Perfect Loaf

A Home Baker's Odyssey

by Samuel Fromartz

Hardcover, 306 pages, Penguin Group USA, List Price: $26.95 | purchase

Purchase Featured Book

Title
In Search of the Perfect Loaf
Subtitle
A Home Baker's Odyssey
Author
Samuel Fromartz

Your purchase helps support NPR Programming. How?

Book Summary

The creator of the popular Chewswise blog documents his 2009 assignment to work in a French boulangerie and subsequent travels through America and Europe to learn bread history and science while perfecting his award-winning recipes. 25,000 first printing.

NPR stories about In Search of the Perfect Loaf

Sourdough loaves made by Fromartz with a bolted white flour from Anson Mills in South Carolina that he says reminded him of the wheat he'd tasted in southern France.

Sourdough loaves made by Fromartz with a bolted white flour from Anson Mills in South Carolina that he says reminded him of the wheat he'd tasted in southern France. Samuel Fromartz hide caption

itoggle caption Samuel Fromartz

The Salt

To Make Bread, Watch The Dough, Not The Recipe

One man's quest for the perfect loaf took him to Paris, Berlin, California and Kansas. What he learned can't easily be captured in words. It's a feeling in your fingers that comes from experience.

Listen Loading… 4:23
NPR logo NPR Books