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.

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.

Golper’s defining technique comes at a time when American home cooks are returning to tradition-tested cooking methods and championing the DIY movement. Golper’s methods are relatively simple and easy to master, with recipes that require no modern equipment to make at home: just a bowl, an oven, and time—the dough does most of the work.

Chef Zachary Golper moved to New York City to open his bakery Bien Cuit in the Boerum Hill section of Brooklyn. In the thirteen years prior to opening Bien Cuit, Chef Golper trained in bread and pastry across the continental United States and France. Since Bien Cuit opened its doors in July of 2011, it has quickly become both a neighborhood staple and a notable destination for some of the finest breads and pastries the city has to offer. By the end of 2011 it was named as 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 and 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. Chef Golper was chosen by Dessert Professional as one of the top ten bakers in the United States in the fall of 2012. In the spring of 2014 the New York Times covered the bakery extensively in its bread issue, talking about both the retail and wholesale businesses, the thought process behind long fermentation, and the inherent value in artisanal baking.

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.