First let me say this: I tried. I really, really tried. I wanted desperately for Gluten-Free Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day: The Baking Revolution Continues With 90 New, Delicious and Easy Recipes Made With Gluten-Free Flours by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoe Francois to measure up to its claims. I make a lot of gluten-free bread. I bake weekly. So when this book arrived I was captured by the beautiful photos of crusty artisan breads on the cover. I read other reviews — they sounded promising and I was excited to begin. While I never believed the five minutes a day (a complete misnomer), I was at least hoping to add another good gluten-free bread into the lineup.
I was disappointed. I tried these recipes on three occasions and could not make them work. I passed the book to a baker friend; she could not make the recipes work. The bread has a good flavor, but the finished product was a consistent brick-like loaf.
The book refers the reader to the website to address any concerns one might have about the recipes. Once at the website, the reader can quickly ascertain that a lot of people have trouble with the recipes and it takes a special kind of alchemy and the whispery touch of an angel to produce anything that would be considered edible by the average consumer. Not to mention that there is something wrong if a cookbook needs a supplemental tutorial to be useful. I went back to other reviews and then noticed that a lot of really strong reviews mentioned “still practicing,” “getting closer” and “almost there,” and were faulting their skills as bakers as the reason the recipes don’t work.
It’s time to break up with this book. It’s not me, Hertzberg and Francois, it’s you. This is a do not recommend. Don’t look at the pictures, don’t believe the hype.