Book Review: Let’s Make Bread! A Comic Book Cookbook

 Reviewed by Christina Pasqua, University of Toronto

Ken Forkish and Sarah Becan. Let’s Make Bread! A Comic Book Cookbook. PenguinRandomHouse, 2024. US$22. https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/697048/lets-make-bread-by-ken-forkish-and-sarah-becan/

When my husband and I started grad school, we got tired of having to regularly buy bread. We were already baking cakes and other sweet treats, so why not try the most essential item on our weekly grocery list? We started with Julia Child’s white sandwich bread and a friend’s recipe for peasant loaf, then dinner rolls, baguettes, challah, and brioche buns. Pizza dough and focaccia were already in our back pocket, thanks to my Italian grandmother, so by the time the pandemic hit, we were baking bread regularly enough that the shift to sourdough made sense. After a few years of trial and error—and with the help of Ken Forkish’s earlier book, Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast (2012)—our sourdough starter and boule baking skills are still going strong. Reading Let’s Make Bread!, co-authored by Forkish and Sarah Becan (illustrator of Let’s Make Dumplings and Let’s Make Ramen), I am reminded that our relationship with sourdough is not an uncommon one. Making bread is a long-term project that requires regular attention and care, is rarely perfect on the first attempt, but always worth the effort, and this comic book cookbook helps explain why.

 

Let’s Make Bread is approximately 150-pages and is divided into five main sections: The First Rise; Basics & Methods; Levain; Recipes; and The Final Proof. “The First Rise” is a short overview of who the co-authors are, what the book will cover, and what you’ll learn by the end of it. The “Basics & Methods” chapter, however, provides more extensive instructions on the equipment, ingredients, and techniques you will need to get started on your sourdough baking journey. For example, it explains how to weigh and mix ingredients, how to work the dough and shape it for either a loaf pan or a dutch oven, how to proof and bake your bread, and what to look out for when determining whether your loaf is done. I particularly enjoyed seeing the anatomy of a wheat berry and learning about the science behind how the dough’s moisture levels and environmental factors, such as time of year and temperatures in your baking area, can affect the outcome of your bread making process.

 

The “Levain” chapter is perhaps the most practical and reflective of Forkish’s bread making philosophy, beginning with a definition of the term: “Levain is the French word for sourdough. Because I don’t want my breads to taste sour,” the cartoon Forkish explains, “I usually use the word ‘levain.’ Both words mean the same thing: a wild-yeast culture made up from many feedings of just flour and water” (44).

 

 

In addition to this lesson on yeast cultures, the chapter includes step-by-step instructions for getting your levain started, how to store, maintain (i.e., feed), share, and reactivate it (especially if you’ve left it in the fridge for a while), all while explaining the fermentation process at the cellular level. The next chapter gets right to the good stuff—Forkish’s tried and true recipes from the simple “Saturday Bread” you can make and enjoy in a single day to more labor-intensive (i.e., multi-day) recipes like the “Country Bread” or “fruity” pizza dough. Tips and tricks for shaping your pizza dough, making the perfect sauce, and choosing toppings are also thoughtfully included, amping up your culinary skills. Many helpful charts are also listed throughout the chapter highlighting everything from essential ingredients to a schedule of day-to-day tasks to ensure success for each recipe. One of my favorite pages from this chapter follows the “Bacon Bread” recipe. I love it not only for its vibrant use of color but also because it extends the reader’s bread making skills to the inevitable (and most important) step in baking: eating.

 

 

This page wonderfully showcases the flavor profile and versatility of Forkish’s bacon bread recipe, teaching the reader how best to serve it through simple kitchen hacks. Who doesn’t love a homemade crouton!? Finally, the book wraps up on a light summative note in “The Final Proof,” reiterating some of the main takeaways: that baking bread is delicious, rewarding, and fun!

 If this is sounding like an instruction manual, it’s because in many ways it is. As an avid reader of narrative comics, I found I was craving a bit more “story” out of this comic book cookbook. There are some elements of this scattered throughout, but it’s not as detailed as some of the food histories that you get in Becan’s other illustrated cookbooks. For this reason, I would say Let’s Make Bread is a companion piece to Forkish’s Flour, Water, Salt, Yeast, which goes into much more detail about the author’s career and relationship to bread making, as well as the history of sourdough and its key ingredients. Nonetheless, this comic stays true to the basics of Forkish’s philosophy. Visually, the color palette is simple, but the blue and green accents play nicely off the golden yellows and browns of the breads and the white background used in much of the panel design. The artist’s attention to detail is scrupulous. Every texture, stretch, fold, and crackle of the dough is accounted for, making this a very useful guide for the various sensory elements of sourdough baking.

 

I do less of the bread making and more of the bread eating in my household, so I appreciate how this book helped me understand the basic elements of baking without the pressure to do it for myself or, if I were to attempt these recipes, to be good at it. Instead, Let’s Make Bread! revels in the experimentation process. This comic book cookbook would make a perfect gift for an aspiring bread baker, old or young, especially visually oriented folks who prefer illustrated instructions when learning something new. It’s full of humor, great recipes, and yummy illustrations that will have you baking (and eating) bread in no time.