It's a crunch and aroma you can savor in your mind before you even take a bite: that perfect crust and that perfect crumb you can get only in bread baked with craft and care. <em>Artisan Baking </em>puts that bread within reach of every home baker; even the beginner now deftly will be able to turn out sourdoughs, pizzas, corn breads, and baguettes that are truly out of this world. Step-by-step instructions explain the best professional methods, and mail-order sources for ingredients and equipment simplify the baking experience. This is a book to bake from, to learn from, to read from for the sheer pleasure of encountering the generosity of spirit of the country's finest bakers as they share their abundant expertise. <br> <br>First published five years ago to glowing praise and awards, <em>Artisan Baking</em> is “a rare combination of clear writing, meticulous recipes, and abundant expertise” (<em>Fine Cooking</em>) and the cookbook that “those who live for and on bread have been waiting for” (<em>The New York Times</em>). It was picked by the editor of <em>Cookbook Digest</em> as the one book she would choose if she could have only one bread-baking book in her life. Reprinted twice in hardcover, <em>Artisan Baking</em> is now, at last, in an affordable paperback format with a new, easier-to-handle trim size.