Breaking Bread

"I bake because it connects my soul to my hands, and my heart to my mouth."—Martin Philip

A brilliant, moving meditation on craft and love, and an intimate portrait of baking and our communion with food—complete with seventy-five original recipes and illustrated with dozens of photographs and original hand-drawn illustrations—from the head bread baker of King Arthur Flour.

Yearning for creative connection, Martin Philip traded his finance career in New York City for an entry-level baker position at King Arthur Flour in rural Vermont. A true Renaissance man, the opera singer, banjo player, and passionate amateur baker worked his way up, eventually becoming head bread baker. But Philip is not just a talented craftsman; he is a bread shaman. Being a baker isn't just mastering the chemistry of flour, salt, water, and yeast; it is being an alchemist—perfecting the transformation of simple ingredients into an elegant expression of...