[Goldcraig]

Hi all, can anyone recommend the River Cottage Pickles and Bread books?
They seem to have good reviews on Amazon and RC Forum (obviously)...so would like an independant point of view...many thanks

[Hermit]

The preserve book is excellent, dont have the bread one . I make all my own bread but have umpteen of different ones. They are an excellent range of books and I highly recomend them

[Goldcraig]

Many thanks....

[Eve]

If you order it from Amazon, you can always send it back if you don't like it. 

[Dan]

If you order it from Amazon, you can always send it back if you don't like it. 

And if you buy them from the TAS bookstore we'll benefit too. 

[lachlanandmarcus]

Can recommend the bread book, have the pickles one too but havent tried that yet.

Can also recommend the bread making books by Richard Bertinet who has a bakery school in Bath. Very good.

[Padge]

Same here   have both preserves and bread from RC and would recommend both     along with the Richard Bertinet

[chairmanphil]

have been using the first book for the last 8 odd years since my old Dad brought it for me for my birthday.  have everyday and the river cottage yearbook which is very good at ideas to use glut produce to great effect! got the fish book but haven't used it yet. buy with confidence i say nice one Hugh and co!

[Anke]

I have almost all of HFW Rivercottage books, but only have the Preserves one of the Handbooks. Very good too, but I had a look at the other ones and thought they weren't as good. If you have the Rivercottage Cookbook - that is a very good starting point for smallholding - the meat section is excellent.

But you should get most of HFW books secondhand through www.abebooks.co.uk by now - and it will benefit independent second hand book shops (and not Amazon!)

[chairmanphil]

I have almost all of HFW Rivercottage books, but only have the Preserves one of the Handbooks. Very good too, but I had a look at the other ones and thought they weren't as good. If you have the Rivercottage Cookbook - that is a very good starting point for smallholding - the meat section is excellent.

But you should get most of HFW books secondhand through www.abebooks.co.uk by now - and it will benefit independent second hand book shops (and not Amazon!)

here, here!

[aliceinwonderland]

I have the bread handbook, and it's great for first-time bakers, in that it explains everything in detail. It really helps with the baking if you understand the whole process first. Never had a failure from it, which I was pretty impressed with!

Once you get the basics, you can then experiment further - I make a quite excellent roast pumpkin and walnut sourdough, based on the standard sourdough in the book. Just threw in some chopped up, slightly caramelised roast pumpkin and walnut at the last kneading stage (any earlier and the pumpkin will break up), works a treat. Pumpkin seeds on top make it look nice and pretty too.

Never used any other bread recipes, as I'm more than happy with what's in the river cottage book!