Rustic European Breads from Your Bread Machine

Book excerpt: From the award-winning authors of Bread in Half the Time comes a complete guide to making nearly 100 European-style breads with the indispensable aid of your bread machine. Nothing smells quite as wonderful as bread baking in the oven. Nothing tastes quite as good as a thick slice of fresh, warm homemade bread. And nothing can be quite as intimidating or time-consuming as mixing, kneading, raising, and baking that bread—until now! With a bread machine to do all the hard work, and experts Linda West Eckhardt and Diana Collingwood Butts as guides, anyone can turn out a perfect sourdough, raisin pumpernickel, focaccia, or any other variety of classic European breads featured in this book. The trick is to use the machine for what it does best-mixing and kneading the dough that produces the loaves we all love so much. After letting the dough rise in the machine, you shape it by hand and bake it to perfection in the oven. With Rustic European Breads from Your Bread Machine in hand, every home cook can become a master baker. Eckhardt and Butts provide not only an encyclopedic knowledge of their subject and foolproof step-by-step recipes, but also limitless, contagious enthusiasm. Their clear and thorough explanations will turn every home kitchen into an aromatic, appetite-satisfying European bakery. Linda Eckhardt and Diana Collingwood Butts authored Bread in Half the Time, winner of the International Association of Culinary Professionals Award for Best Cookbook of the Year in 1991. Linda Eckhardt, author of over a dozen cookbooks, writes the monthly column "What's for Dinner" in Cooking Light Magazine and hosts a weekly program called Pie in the Sky on National Public Radio. Diana Collingwood Butts is the proprietor of Sugarbakers, a company that makes and sells designer cookies for special order.