TITLE: Breaking Breads: A New World of Israeli Baking -- Flatbreads, Stuffed Breads, Challahs, Cookies, and the Legendary Chocolate Babka
AUTHOR: Uri Scheft
GENRE: Non-Fiction, Food & Drink, Cookbooks
PUBLISHED: October 18, 2016
RATING: ★★★★☆
PURCHASE LINKS: Amazon iBookStore
MOBILISM LINK: Read!
Description: Israeli baking encompasses the influences of so many regions—Morocco, Yemen, Germany, and Georgia, to name a few—and master baker Uri Scheft seamlessly marries all of these in his incredible baked goods at his Breads Bakery in New York City and Lehamim Bakery in Tel Aviv. Nutella-filled babkas, potato and shakshuka focaccia, and chocolate rugelach are pulled out of the ovens several times an hour for waiting crowds. In Breaking Breads, Scheft takes the combined influences of his Scandinavian heritage, his European pastry training, and his Israeli and New York City homes to provide sweet and savory baking recipes that cover European, Israeli, and Middle Eastern favorites. Scheft sheds new light on classics like challah, babka, and ciabatta—and provides his creative twists on them as well, showing how bakers can do the same at home—and introduces his take on Middle Eastern daily breads like kubaneh and jachnun. The instructions are detailed and the photos explanatory so that anyone can make Scheft’s Poppy Seed Hamantaschen, Cheese Bourekas, and Jerusalem Bagels, among other recipes. With several key dough recipes and hundreds of Israeli-, Middle Eastern–, Eastern European–, Scandinavian-, and Mediterranean-influenced recipes, this is truly a global baking bible.
Review: The importance of bread in everyday life in any form or type cannot be exaggerated enough. Every country in the world has it’s own version of it.
Mahatma Gandhi said, "There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread." Melissa Hill says, "Bread – like real love – took time, cultivation, strong loving hands and patience. It lived, rising and growing to fruition only under the most perfect circumstances."
Danish author Uri Scheft, who grew up in Israel and studied patisserie at Lenôtre, mixes traditional old recipes with modern methods and ingredients to create this labour of love; this book is his take on traditional Israel baking - while also sharing his vast experiences from Europe to Tel Aviv to finally New York.
"Rinat Tzadok, my life partner in and out of the kitchen, came up with this pure genius recipe. Just like Israel, it is a meld of cultures: challah “meets falafel. Rinat was several months pregnant and working in the bakery making challah when she saw some cooked chickpeas and was inspired to make a challah roll that had all of the spices and magic of falafel."
Uri’s shakshuka focaccia combines shakshuka, a Middle Eastern dish of eggs poached in a sauce with Focaccia, and Italian bread. Uri doesn’t complicate the bread-making procedures using technical terms such as protein percentages, temperature, humidity levels, rather he simplifies it so that even a non-baker can pick up the procedures rather easily.
Breaking Breads is divided into sections that delve into various varieties of Challah, Babka, Flatbreads, Brioche, Stuffed Breads, and Sweets & Cookies with some Middle Eastern classics such as Hummus, Tahina, Labne, Red & Green Z’hug, preserved lemons, etc.
Breaking Breads contains great step-by-step pictures for easy reference and very simple instructions for about 100 recipes. It has so many varieties of bread the reader might not have heard of them before reading this book. Definitely a feast for the eyes -- and taste.