Bien Cuit:
The Art of Bread
Zachary Golper
One of the world's most celebrated bakers shares his insider’s secrets to making his delicious, artisanal bread that will have home bakers creating professional-quality products in no time—and inexpensively.
Bien Cuit: The Art of Bread is a work of art and has been specially produced and manufactured with an elegant, sophisticated design. This stunning package features an exposed spine, images from famed food photographer Thomas Schauer, and a beautifully designed interior.
New Edition Released November 17, 2020
Bien Cuit introduces a new approach to a proudly old-fashioned way of baking bread. In the oven of his Brooklyn bakery, Chef Zachary Golper creates loaves that are served in New York’s top restaurants and sought by bread enthusiasts around the country. His secret: long, low-temperature fermentation, which allows the dough to develop deep, complex flavors. A thick mahogany-colored crust is his trademark—what the French call bien cuit, or “well baked.” This signature style is the product of Golper’s years as a journeyman baker, from his introduction to baking on an Oregon farm—where they made bread by candlelight at 1 a.m.—through top kitchens in America and Europe and, finally, into his own bakery in the heart of our country’s modern artisanal food scene.
Bien Cuit tells the story of Golper’s ongoing quest to coax maximum flavor out of one of the world’s oldest and simplest recipes. Readers and amateur bakers will reap the rewards of his curiosity and perfectionism in the form of fifty bread recipes that span the baking spectrum from rolls and quick breads to his famous 24-day sourdough starter. This book is an homage to tradition, but also to invention. Golper developed many new recipes for this book, including several “bread quests,” in which he brilliantly revives some of New York City’s most iconic breads (including Jewish rye, Sicilian lard bread, Kaiser rolls, and, of course, bagels). You will also find palate-pleasing and innovative “gastronomic breads” that showcase his chef’s intuition and mastery of ingredients.
Chef Zachary Golper opened his bakery Bien Cuit in the Boerum Hill section of Brooklyn in July 2011. It was named Best New Bakery by the Village Voice and made Best of 2011 lists in both the New York Times and New York magazine. National publications Food & Wine, Saveur, Harpers Bazaar, and USA Today have honored the bakery as one of the Best Bakeries in NYC and Best American Bakeries. Bon Appetit also selected Bien Cuit’s baguette as one of the top ten in America.
Peter Kaminsky’s cookbooks include collaborations with Daniel Boulud, Michel Richard, Francis Mallmann, and Sheila Lukins. His outdoors column has appeared in the New York Times for more than twenty-five years. Kaminsky has contributed frequently to Food & Wine and is the author of Pig Perfect and Culinary Intelligence. He is also one of the creators and executive producers of The Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor.
Book Praise
“Might the meticulous instructions, set in easy-to-read white type on black (the book is even designed to stay flat when open!) take me from bread ingénue to virtuoso? I can hope.”
—Cree LeFavour, New York Times Book Review
“This is a serious book and not for the faint-of-heart baker, but it’s filled with an incredible amount of wisdom and knowledge. The book itself is stunningly beautiful, and the photos are pretty inspiring as well.”
—Claire Saffitz, bon appétit
“Bien Cuit’s owner, Zachary Golper, demystifies and adapts bread recipes for home cooks (and tiny New York City kitchens).”
—Alainna Lexie Beddie, T Magazine
“Innovative techniques from this beloved Brooklyn bakery rise naturally in an artistically bound book.”
—Vogue
“Zachary Golper is the epitome of the artisanal revival in North American baking, using his craft and patience to produce creative bread with soulful taste and texture. The smell of his delicious loaves will keep you going back to his Brooklyn Bakery, but now you can bake his recipes yourself at home.”
—Daniel Boulud
“The essentials of the magical mystery of the creation of truly excellent bread are revealed so precisely and so poetically that even a novice bread maker like myself can join the party. This tome is destined for dirty and torn pages out of maximum usage in the working library in my kitchen.”
—Mario Batali
“Chef Zachary Golper is both artisan and iconoclast, taking the best Old World techniques and infusing them with a radical spirit. Bien Cuit is a perfect addition to the bakers’ canon, and a beacon of the new bread revolution.”
—Dan Barber
“The design is rare for a cookbook—black pages, no spine—but it works. The whole package makes me excited to get baking.”
—Epicurious
“The overall design of the book is stunning, with the classy looks of an art book, but the usability of a treasured kitchen friend...”
—Village Voice
“Renowned baker Zachary Golper provides his insider secrets for creating artisanal breads that will have even the most novice of chefs churning out loaves that rival the local boulangerie in no time.”
—Libby MacCarthy, The Nest
“… a stunner, full of beautiful food porny close-ups of bread.”
—Laura Salkeld, Tasting Table
“The deal: If you're going to learn from someone, this James Beard Award-nominated baker isn't a bad way to go.”
—Meredith Deliso, amNew York
“It’s a stunning journey from the explanation of grains, techniques, and equipment to the creation of your own starters to the exploration and shaping and baking of truly great artisan breads.”
—Larry Novak, Leite's Culinaria
“The book design resonates with the bakery's raw and fiery aesthetic, its dark crusted breads, and the kind of flavor that fearlessness can bring to bread baking.”
—The City Cook