The first 15 recipes from The Toasty Book of Bread are now in the Baker’s Archive. That has already taken the collection from a quick pan bread to an overnight loaf, with a steamer getting a turn along the way.
I started with the breads in the colourful TL;DR so that its shorter recipes would have full archive entries beside them. Focaccia, pol roti, mantou, arepas and damper opened the first week. Finnish rye, pita and Moroccan khobz followed, with chapati and tortillas joining them.
It makes a rather good reminder of how much the word bread can cover. A soft steamed bun, a coconut round and a rye paste have very different ideas about what a bowl of ingredients should become.
A slower set of loaves
This week added home-oven baguettes, pain de campagne, brown Irish soda bread, broa and ftira. The timings range from a short mix-and-bake method to a plan that begins the evening before.
Broa asks you to scald the maize flour before mixing. Ftira gives you two sourdough rings to open and fill. The baguettes are kept short enough for a domestic oven, which is a useful way to get several chances at shaping from one batch.
Each page has its ingredients, method, practical notes and source details. I wanted the archive entries to be useful on their own, so the shorter teasers still lead to complete formulas and cooking cues.
What comes next
The next batches will spend more time with rye, thin sheets, toppings and layered breads. I’m keeping the pace at five recipes a week, which leaves room to check each page rather than pour everything into the archive at once.
If you’re deciding where to begin, choose the equipment and time you have. There is already something for the oven, the pan or the steamer, and plenty of ways to turn the finished bread into a meal.