Babette's Bread

A Globe and Mail Best Cookbook of the Year

"This primer on bread from Babette Frances Kourelos is for new bakers and pros alike." —Town and Country Magazine

From crusty baguettes to bubbly focaccias and robust sourdoughs, Babette’s Bread is a comprehensive and unpretentious guide to bread-making, with useful advice on how to make fresh homemade bread fit into even the busiest of schedules.

For Babette Kourelos, the happenstance baking of a humble cottage loaf completely changed the trajectory of her life, leading her away from a career in law to answer a different calling: bread. Before long she’d begun to fill orders from friends and neighbours. Seeking more comprehensive training, she undertook an apprenticeship with renowned French master baker Gerard Rubaud in the woods of Vermont. Bringing her newfound skills back to her native South Africa she opened a wildly successful bakery in Johannesburg’s Maboneng Precinct, which she operated until moving to Canada in 2020.

Babette’s Bread is an accessible primer dedicated to demystifying and simplifying this nourishing staple skill. In her introductory chapter, Babette guides home bakers through each stage of the bread-making process, from sourcing quality ingredients to fermentation, shaping, baking, and storing. She then moves into chapters on straight dough breads, pre-fermented, cold fermented, sourdough, sweet and enriched, rye, whole grain, steamed, and quick breads.

With her simple, unpretentious approach, Babette provides newbie and seasoned bakers everything they need to take back this affordable, soulful domestic practice. From a basic white sandwich loaf to, pizza dough, koulouri, challah, hot cross buns, stollen, beer bread, cornbread, pitas, bagels, pretzels, and buttermilk rusks—Babette’s Bread takes inspiration from around the world and offers a range of mouth-watering breads to try.

With more than 60 recipes, accompanied by photos of delectable loaves and sun-filled work spaces, and interspersed with anecdotes from Babette’s childhood, her apprenticeship in Vermont, and the day-to-day running of her bakery, this is a complete guide to fitting bread-making into your life.