Rating: 
Summary: An amazing reference an adventure
Review: This book is not only useful and practical and full of amazing recipes, it is easily within reach of the home baker. I've had my culture alive for several years now. It continues to make breads of wonderful character and texture. I swear by this book and find it hard to stray to other works on bread baking. The start up effort is well worth the reward.
Rating: 
Summary: Time-intensive but a good read
Review: This book was very interesting to read - particularly about why wild yeast, resting the dough, and other bread-making processes are so important. It fired me up to make bread as my summer project. I spent the requisite 15 days making starter that appears to be bubbling and healthy. Alas, none of the 3 batches of bread I have made with the first, simple recipe will rise! I am willing to chalk this up to beginner's difficulty, but Nancy does not provide a trouble-shooting section that could help me tweak my process to get optimal rising. This is frustrating and a great loss of money in terms of the flour invested!
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Summary: Nancy Silverton's Breads from La Brea Bakery
Review: This is a book for retired professional bakers who get up at 6 AM and retire at 12 midnight. How does the author expect any real person who is not Exphedra or other stimulants to keep her schedules on a one person/baker basis? If I had professional bakers working around the clock, I would not need her cryptic recipes. I would live in Malibu!
Sad sticky fingers down!
Rating:
Summary: Nancy Silverton's Breads from La Brea Bakery
Review: This is a book for retired professional bakers who get up at 6 AM and retire at 12 midnight. How does the author expect any real person who is not Exphedra or other stimulants to keep her schedules on a one person/baker basis? If I had professional bakers working around the clock, I would not need her cryptic recipes. I would live in Malibu!
Sad sticky fingers down!
Rating: 
Summary: A Definite MUST for Your Bread Baking Library...
Review: This is a definite MUST buy for your bread-baking library. That being said, I would not recommend this book for the first-time baker or for an individual not planning on building a bread-baking library. I gave the book four stars only because it is so specialized; had it provided alternative formulas so that the breads could be baked using commercially available yeast, I would have given it the fifth star. Nevertheless, the book is extremely well written; I read it with a highlighter because there were so many helpful nuggets buried in the text. While I may never bake sourdough from starter, the information gleaned from this book's pages has definitely allowed me to correct mistakes made using other well known bread books. Those books, well written and highly recommended as they might have been, did not address all the issues I encountered and did not provide answers to problems that arose during the process. Put this one on your wish-list or treat yourself, it will be a welcome and useful addition to your cooking library.
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Summary: High-quality recipes,but too impractical for most home cooks
Review: This is a handsome and informative "coffee table" cookbook, but unless one cares to schedule one's life around breadbaking, this will not be a much-used volume. In "Best Bread Ever" Charles Van Over shows the way to craft identical-quality bread with a fraction of the effort.
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Summary: A wonderful book in a [bad] binding
Review: This is a wonderful book for the baker interested in sourdough in the true sense of the word. After I finished fermenting my first starter and baked a true sourdough loaf I was thrilled. I am looking forward to the rest of the recipes. The only problem is the first 80 pages of my book are falling apart. What a shame to put such a great bread book in such a [bad]binding. I still bought her pastry book (in the same...binding) and it's great, too.
Rating:
Summary: For the hardcore, the dedicated and the driven
Review: This is an excellent book for those who wish to pursue baking bread armed with technical and practical information in addition to their own yeast starters. I have yet to encounter a book that provides so much information on the making of bread and using of natural yeast starters. This is not a book for those who expect to do quick breads. For the person who wants to know how to make artisan breads at home this book is for you. The use of starter yeasts is extensive covering white, rye, and wheat. The only other book that gives you more information about "creating" starters and sourdough is _World Sourdoughs From Antiquity_ . The design of the book is pretty simple. Description of ingredients in detail; tools used; yeasts, starters and sourdoughs; recipes which are broken down by which type of starter used. The recipes themselves are broken into multi-day sections so that the process is more clear. Example would be the challah which is a 2 day bread. The steps themselves don't take that long but you learn the value of planning. In essence to get something close to your favorite artisan bread you must spend time and a certain amount of patience. This book is quite honest about that and does not use shortcuts at the expense of the quality. But what about the bread? It is good. Sometimes not as picture perfect but even the "failures" have been tasty. A must for the baker's library. A wealth of information and interesting recipes too. Not bad for a book that is 251 pages (not counting sources and index).
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Summary: Nancy Silverton knows how to make a loaf of bread
Review: This is the difinitive reference for sourdough (or natural yeast) bread. Ever since I first ate a slice of the sourdough boule from La Brea Bakery, I have wanted to reproduce it. Now I can. I must admit, though, that although I am a professional baker and have baked the boule dozens of times, I do not always produce a perfect loaf. No one complains about eating my mistakes, though. I have tried several of these recipes, but the first recipe alone is worth the price of the book.
Rating:
Summary: interesting but not practical
Review: While it did enjoy reading and learning from this book, I think that it is impractical for the average home baker. I would really like to try some of the bread recipes in the book but feel that if i do not go through her 2 week process of catching wild yeast that I should not try. There are many great bread books out there that use a preferm method. Also I got the impression from the book that the only great bread is bread using wild yeast and that bread using some other kind of yeast is not really bread. nice and informative book but snoppy and impractical.
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