Behind the Cookbook: Baking Artisan Bread and Baking Artisan Pastries and Breads

Ciril Hitz is one of the leading figures in artisan bread. Fellow baker Peter Reinhart, himself the author of several important works on this subject—and who previously taught alongside Hitz at Johnson & Wales University—calls him “a master craftsman and a true artisan”.

In this piece for our Behind the Cookbook series, the author describes how and why he wrote these books, and highlights a number of bread and pastry recipes that offer a good starting point for anyone looking to improve their bread baking skills.

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Newsletter: 🔥 BBQ bonanza! + celebrating Cinco de Mayo ⏰

We have a trio of books hot off the press and newly added to ckbk to freshen up your outdoor mealtimes. Barbecue chef Tony Ramirez draws influence from his Cajun and Filipino heritage, which is reflected in his book Backyard BBQ with Fire and Spice. Chinese-Malay BBQ chef and restaurateur Winnie Yee has released her debut cookbook, Chinese-American Barbecue. Finally, food writer, recipe developer and BBQ expert Brad Prose has combined two of his food obsessions to create Epic BBQ Sandwiches.

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🥪 Supersized sandwiches, spectacular salads + Cooking with Kids: Part 3 🚌

New season, new recipes! You were looking for fresh new ideas, and we have them in triplicate with these books added to ckbk hot off the press.

Nina Cherie Franklin is a wellness expert and founder of the blog and brand ‘That Salad Lady’. In her 2025 book ‘The Build Your Bowl Salad Cookbook’ she shares her expertise and the recipes that she uses to make food an effective part of wellbeing.

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Newsletter: 🧑‍🍳 The influential chef Shaun Hill in profile + how to harness spice and smoke 🔥🌶️

“The concept is Thai curry meets Texas barbecue, but at its core, Curry Boys is the beautiful amalgamation of three individuals, our unique perspectives, and ultimately, our expression of what we enjoy smoking, cooking, and eating! And honestly, that is what we want you to take away from this book: to unapologetically be yourself when it comes to smoking and barbecuing. As long as you respect the craft and the cultures, you’re free to make the food your own.” Sean Wen, co-founder and co-owner of Curry Boys BBQ

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Author Profile: Shaun Hill

There are chefs who chase fame, and there are chefs who quietly reshape how food is cooked, served and understood. Shaun Hill belongs firmly in the latter camp. Across more than half a century, he has built a reputation not through spectacle, but through clarity: of flavor, of thought, and of purpose. Ramona Andrews caught up with him to look back on a magnificent career.

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Newsletter: 🐣 Easter goodies galore + a supersized offering for your Cookbook of the Month 📚

Easter—this year celebrated across the long weekend of April 3 to 6—is the Christian festival commemorating Christ rising from the tomb. A festival that has come to be symbolic of the beginning of Spring, with all its new life and green shoots—hence the abundance of eggs, lambs, bunny rabbits and chicks, including all those chocolate ones.

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Newsletter: 🌿 Fresh spring foraging + cooking across Spain with Hemingway 🇪🇸

For Scottish chef Clare Coghill, spring is when the landscape around her on the Isle of Skye bursts with new life, and is the perfect time for foraging. As she puts it:

‘We call Spring ‘an t-earrach’ which literally means for plants to spring forth from the ground. And the ground is exactly where I look when I start foraging for the year.’

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An t-earrach – Spring on the Isle of Skye

Chef Clare Coghill runs Café Cùil on the Isle of Skye. She is a native, born and bred on the Scottish island, where her family have run a hotel for more than 100 years. Skye is blessed with ane exceptional range of seasonal local produce, and at Café Cùil, Clare and here team make the most of this, including foraging for wild ingredients which grow locally. If you have never tried a wild gorse flapjack (or latte) you don’t know what you are missing.

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Newsletter: ☘️ Cook with the luck of the Irish for St Patrick's Day + Korean Food Made Simple🥘

With Saint Patrick's Day approaching on Tuesday 17 March, there’s every excuse to lean into the generous, comforting cooking of Ireland. It’s a cuisine that knows how to turn humble ingredients into something worth celebrating: potatoes, cabbage, butter, good bread and perhaps a splash of something warming in the glass. Just the sort of food that feels right while the weather still has a bite to it—and the kind that invites everyone to gather round the table and stay a while.

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Newsletter: 🇺🇦 A collection of treasured Ukrainian recipes from Odesa + magical umami potatoes🥔

Congratulations to food writer Maria Kalenska on the publication of her brand new book Cuisines of Odesa: A Ukrainian Cookbook. We are thrilled to have it added to ckbk simultaneous with publication. An ambitious and heartfelt project, the book’s recipes tell the stories of their creators, and are arranged into sections reflecting Odesan life—eg. On a Sunny Morning: Breakfasts and Bites, and From the Garden: Fermenting, Pickling and Preserving.

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Newsletter: 🎊Ramadan recipes + fresh new ideas for vegetarians, lobster lovers, and real bread fans 🍞


Lifetime resident of Indiana, photographer and food writer Shelly Westerhausen Worcel has been vegetarian since the age of twelve. She charts her kitchen adventures in her blog Vegetarian Ventures, and in her books—such as Every Season is Soup Season. Newly added to ckbk, Vegetarian Heartland: Recipes for Life’s Adventures, a love letter to the Midwest, and an invitation to cook and eat vegetarian food along with her.

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Behind the Cookbook: Ramadan Express—Memory, Migration and the Modern Ramadan Table

Lebanese cook Lina Saad’s first cookbook, Land of White, which featured the cooking of her homeland, won a World Gourmand Cookbook award. Her second cookbook, Ramadan Express, has just been added to ckbk.

Around the world, starting on Tuesday 17th February, Muslims will observe a fast during daylight hours to mark the holy month of Ramadan. In this feature, Lina tells of her own personal experience of Ramadan, and how the dishes she brings together in Ramadan Express, eaten either in the evening after the fast breaks, or in the early morning before it begins, are central to the ritual of Ramadan for her family.

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