What is it about bread? Why am I, here in the middle of my life, so enamored of French loaves? Two images kept cropping up: two French people sitting in a café for a long afternoon of eating thick hunks of bread and drinking cups of coffee, and a Frenchman on a bicycle with a loaf slung across his handlebars. These visions seemed to depict lives soaked in leisure, where there was time for the good things. . . . Then this thought ambled forth: It's the dailiness of bread, like a reliable friend. . . . My plan starts to billow forth. My project, as I imagine it, will be a natural history, an ecology of bread. The story of a loaf. Overcome by a passion for French bread, Sara Mansfield Taber travels to Brittany in search of a loaf, which like the lifestyle that must surely accompany it, is perfect in its simplicity. After many months of seeking, she tears off a hunk of pain trois rivières, made by Gold Medal baker Monsieur Jean-Claude Choquet of Blain, Loire-Atlantique. It "smelled like heaven and tasted a mile deep." It tasted honest. Here was her loaf. In Bread of Three Rivers Taber takes us deep into the grainy crumb, uncovering the four basic ingredients-the salt, water, wheat, and yeast-that when combined by M. Choquet make for a spectacular loaf. We learn of the marshy fields of Guérande where for hundreds of years salt, blessed with a unique mixture of microbes and minerals (that lend their flavor to the bread), has been harvested with the help of the sun. Then we're off to Moulin de Pont-James to meet the miller, who whispers to Taber that he actually uses strong American wheat from North Dakota to fortify the local harvest. Then to Nantes to engage the organic wheat farmer. In Nort-sur-Erdre we discover an ancient natural aquifer, composed of sand and limestone somewhere between 8 million and 50 million years ago. We end our journey in Lille at the Lesaffre Yeast Company, where the alchemy responsible for everything from American white loaves to Turkish flatbread is revealed. A deliciously satisfying mixture of history, science, travel narrative, and romance (could anything be more powerful than bread love?), Bread of Three Rivers reminds us that nothing, no matter how basic, is as simple as it would seem.

A look at the tradition of breaking bread for the Eucharist, providing over 75 home-baked bread recipes intended for the Eucharist, for fellowship, and for family tables. Bread truly for every occasion. Includes Communion-specific bread recipes, among them recipes for Communion Wafers.

The Tartine Way — Not all bread is created equal The Bread Book "...the most beautiful bread book yet published..." -- The New York Times, December 7, 2010 Tartine — A bread bible for the home or professional bread-maker, this is the book! It comes from Chad Robertson, a man many consider to be the best bread baker in the United States, and co-owner of San Francisco’s Tartine Bakery. At 5 P.M., Chad Robertson’s rugged, magnificent Tartine loaves are drawn from the oven. The bread at San Francisco's legendary Tartine Bakery sells out within an hour almost every day. Only a handful of bakers have learned the techniques Chad Robertson has developed: To Chad Robertson, bread is the foundation of a meal, the center of daily life, and each loaf tells the story of the baker who shaped it. Chad Robertson developed his unique bread over two decades of apprenticeship with the finest artisan bakers in France and the United States, as well as experimentation in his own ovens. Readers will be astonished at how elemental it is. Bread making the Tartine Way: Now it's your turn to make this bread with your own hands. Clear instructions and hundreds of step-by-step photos put you by Chad's side as he shows you how to make exceptional and elemental bread using just flour, water, and salt. If you liked Tartine All Day by Elisabeth Prueitt and Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish, you'll love Tartine Bread!

“You can almost taste the food in Bill Buford’s Dirt, an engrossing, beautifully written memoir about his life as a cook in France.” —The Wall Street Journal What does it take to master French cooking? This is the question that drives Bill Buford to abandon his perfectly happy life in New York City and pack up and (with a wife and three-year-old twin sons in tow) move to Lyon, the so-called gastronomic capital of France. But what was meant to be six months in a new and very foreign city turns into a wild five-year digression from normal life, as Buford apprentices at Lyon’s best boulangerie, studies at a legendary culinary school, and cooks at a storied Michelin-starred restaurant, where he discovers the exacting (and incomprehensibly punishing) rigueur of the professional kitchen. With his signature humor, sense of adventure, and masterful ability to bring an exotic and unknown world to life, Buford has written the definitive insider story of a city and its great culinary culture.

The pepperoni roll, a soft bread roll with pepperoni baked in the middle, originated in the coal mining areas of north central West Virginia when Italian immigrants invented a food that could be eaten easily underground. This spicy snack soon found its way out of the mines and into bakeries, bread companies, restaurants, and event venues around the state, often with additional ingredients like cheese, red sauce, or peppers. As the pepperoni roll's reputation moves beyond the borders of West Virginia, this food continues to embody the culinary culture of its home state. It is now found at the center of bake-offs, eating contests, festivals, as a gourmet item on local menus, and even on a bill in the state's legislature. The West Virginia Pepperoni Roll is a comprehensive history of the unofficial state food of West Virginia. With over 100 photographs and countless recipes and recollections, it tells the story of the immigrants, business owners, laborers, and citizens who have developed and devoured this simple yet practical food since its invention.

At long last, Sarah Britton, called the “queen bee of the health blogs” by Bon Appétit, reveals 100 gorgeous, all-new plant-based recipes in her debut cookbook, inspired by her wildly popular blog. Every month, half a million readers—vegetarians, vegans, paleo followers, and gluten-free gourmets alike—flock to Sarah’s adaptable and accessible recipes that make powerfully healthy ingredients simply irresistible. My New Roots is the ultimate guide to revitalizing one’s health and palate, one delicious recipe at a time: no fad diets or gimmicks here. Whether readers are newcomers to natural foods or are already devotees, they will discover how easy it is to eat healthfully and happily when whole foods and plants are at the center of every plate.

The story of an unexpected and terribly inconvenient Christian conversion, told by a very unlikely convert, Take This Bread is not only a spiritual memoir but a call to action. Raised as an atheist, Sara Miles lived an enthusiastically secular life as a restaurant cook and writer. Then one morning, for no earthly reason, she wandered into a church. She ate a piece of bread, took a sip of wine, and found herself radically transformed, embracing a faith she’d scorned and which would lead to feeding others in a way that she’d never imagined. Sara started a food pantry giving away literally tons of food from around the same altar where she’d first received the body of Christ, and providing hundreds of hungry families with free groceries each week. Take This Bread is rich with real-life Dickensian characters–church ladies, millionaires, schizophrenics, bishops, and gangsters – all blown into Miles’ life by the relentless force of her new-found calling. Here, in this beautiful, passionate book, is Christ’s living communion.