Nancy Silverton's Breads from the La Brea Bakery: Recipes for the Connoisseur

Bread is beautiful when it is made with time, care and honest ingredients; the same is true of cookbooks, and this is a beautiful cookbook. Silverton, a world-class pastry chef and owner of L.A.'s Campanile restaurant and La Brea Bakery, offers breadmaking instructions so meticulous that one gets the feeling she's divulging valuable trade secrets. Her breads are sourdough breads that depend on sourdough starter, a simple combination of flour and water left out where it can catch wild yeasts. Silverton explains the 14-day, once-in-a-lifetime process of creating the starter and the ongoing process of maintaining it. She then describes the starter and its variations and shows how they can be incorporated into a variety breads. Specialties include Walnut Bread, Rustic Olive-herb Bread, Chocolate Sour Cherry Bread and Red Pepper Scallion Bread. Lists of equipment and sources of supplies are included. Her beautifully designed book will appeal to dedicated cooks and perfectionists who are patient and brave enough to make mistakes along the way to breads, rolls, focaccia, pretzels, bagels, waffles and even-woof-dog biscuits. (Mar.)