High Anxiety

As some of you know, the manuscript for Breaducation is due at the end of June, which is less than three months from now. I wish I could say that I'm just casually trotting toward the finish line, but that's not at all the case. I've been running (and baking) as fast as I possibly can for months now—years, really—and while I've been making great progress, particularly lately, I'm also deeply anxious about completing it all in time. I've been searching in vain for a metaphor to describe it, and the best I've come up with so far is this: Imagine running a marathon but instead of making slow, steady progress, you run in concentric circles just past the starting gate for hours and hours, with the belief that you'll somehow generate enough momentum to catapult you to the finish line in a matter of minutes. It feels something like that (and I won't know for sure if I've got the momentum I need until 7/1 rolls around).

All that anxiety is one reason I haven't talked about the book much here lately. I'm sure I'll have more to say once (if) it is done, but I thought maybe today I'd share some of my remaining to-do list with you all, so you can see what I am working on right now (and to remind myself what I need to work on).

Recipes

• Finalize 100%-hydration focaccia:

This one is close, though I need to work out some process details. The crumb in the one above is too tight, especially compared to ones I've made before.

• Finalize durum slab bread/ciabatta:

This one too is very close. It's a twofer that gives either a pavé (slab bread) or individual ciabatta rolls.

• Finish naan recipe:

Lately I have been working on flatbreads, and I have a naan formula I am very happy with, though I need to split the difference between the two above formulas, one that was too low in hydration, the other too high.

• Finish matnakash/barbari bread:

Another twofer, a single dough that can be made into a few different 'fingerprint' flatbreads, including Armenian matnakash, and Iranian barbari bread.

• Finish durum sesame sub roll:

I've also been working on buns and rolls, including a sesame-coated durum flour submarine roll.

• Nail down a banh mi roll

And a crackly banh mi roll. I haven't worked on this one in a while, but the last test more than a year ago was very close.

• Nail down sweet starter formulas: shokupan, brioche, and choreg

I plan to include a handful of sweet starter sourdough enriched breads in the book, an "easy" one using a liquid sweet starter (shokupan, pictured above) and a couple using Ian Lowe's stiff sweet starter: a brioche and choreg (Armenian Easter bread), the latter of which is ideal for it, since it is so high in sugar.

• Develop a vegan brioche formula

I really also want to include a vegan brioche that is as good as my non-vegan one, and so far it has eluded me. Making leaner enriched breads like shokupan and challah—which is halfway to being vegan already, since it uses oil and not butter—is pretty straightforward, but getting a stable emulsion to form in the absence of eggs with 20% fat and above is another story. This one is a maybe, but I plan to do a few more tests before time runs out.

Recipe cross-testing

I've sent out some 30 recipes to my cross-testers—all of whom have been amazing (thank you!)—so far, out of 75–100 recipes total. Some recipes are variations on a theme, so all won't need to be cross-tested, but I have a long way to go here. The good news is that as long as the recipes are "done" on my end, I'll have a few more months to work out any kinks while the book is being edited, and the goal is to have all of them cross-tested by the end of September.

Front matter

I've now written the "front matter"—all the intel in a cookbook that comes before the recipes—three times over, and yet it is some 75k words/125 pages too long for the space allotted, so I have a lot of work to do yet to whittle it down without losing all the important stuff I think needs to be in the book. One solution I've come up with to retain "advanced" information that I consider essential for people to at least have access to is to create a website to launch alongside the book. There will be links in the text letting people know where to go to find more info on topics that there wasn't space for in the book itself. It will also include videos illustrating some of the methods, especially those that are challenging to capture in still images. The good news here is that I can work on the website after the book is done completely (at the end of the year).

Aside from hacking down the front matter, there are a few sections in it I have yet to write, including:

• Write chapter on flavorings in breads
• Write chapter on getting color into breads
• Write chapters on working with rye breads, enriched breads, sweet starters

Photography

The photographs for the book—both "beauty" shots of the loaves and process shots—are not due until the end of September, which means I'll be spending my summer shooting them. Fortunately, I worked out a system where I take a photograph of recipes as soon as they are finalized, so most of the beauty shots will be done before the manuscript is complete. (There is no way I'd want to have to make and photograph nearly a hundred breads all in one go.) There are a lot of process shots to do, so even so I'll have my work cut out for me.

Artwork

The book will also include illustrations, hopefully made by my friend Johanna Kindvall. Sorting out what sections will need illustrations can't happen until the manuscript is complete, but we won't have a ton of time to get them done, so another big task waiting for me once it is.

Spring Break

To make a big push toward getting the front matter edited down, I am going to take a two-week break from the newsletter after this Friday's Bread Basket. I have a pile of posts already in the queue for when I return, and I'll also start sharing some of the recipes from the book for paid subscribers (and outtakes, including a new pizza dough formula that is related to the flatbread recipes I've just sorted out).

—Andrew