Open Crumb Mastery, 2nd Edition (With “Forward”)

Okay, I know this is long overdue. Almost comically so. But hey, better late than never, right? Right?

The original edition of “Open Crumb Mastery” was published in November of 2017, and the second edition was published in July of 2019 — almost 2 years later. But I never did write a post about the updated edition. By that time, my old website “Breadwerx’ was already suffering from long neglect. Instead of offering a satisfactory explainer for the second edition, I basically just made a few announcements about the update on Instagram and left it at that. I’m such a slacker.

So here I am now — over 3 years later — finally getting around to it. And on an entirely new website no less. I guess that’s just how I roll. But since I still get so many questions regarding the differences between the first and second editions, I figure I might as well just write up the post I should’ve written years ago. I’ll try and keep it brief . . .

First off, the reason I wrote the second edition is because the original was such a rough and incomplete thing — at least in my opinion. Even though it took me 2 years to write, from start to finish, a large chunk of it was completed in a very short span of time and under the gun (maybe I’ll talk about it someday). So it always felt rushed and unfinished to me. And as sometimes happens when one rushes through a project, mistakes were made and important info was left out.

Even though the book was successful beyond my wildest dreams, I always had the nagging voice in the back of my head telling me it could (and should) be better. In fact, it’s popularity actually made things worse. Knowing that so many folks were reading and recommending it — even though I never felt it was quite up to snuff — became a discomfort I could no longer tolerate. I had to remedy the situation.

Thus was born the Second Edition.

Writing the second edition was my chance to correct mistakes and incorporate all the additional information that I felt should’ve been there to begin with. The second edition is a far more complete book than the original. Let me elaborate . . .

The second edition contains almost 100 pages of new content. Specifically, I included 2 new crumb analyses (focused on bulk retardation), a discussion of whole grain flour (in particular, why texture is more important than openness of crumb), and an entirely new section that centered on the topic of loaf shape, height and volume — and their relation to dough structure and crumb. And I included many, many more pictures since the original edition was so bare.

But it was the addition of that new section which was of most importance. That’s what completed the book for me. It closed the loop. It tied together all of the concepts that I had discussed earlier, and really brought home the importance of dough structure and how it relates to each and every loaf of bread. I titled that section, “Piecing the Puzzle Together” because that’s what it does. When you’re new to bread baking it seems like one great mystery — one big puzzle. The purpose of my book was to demystify baking — to help solve the puzzle — and the addition of that final section is what does the job.

So now that I’ve explained a bit about the differences between the two editions — and why there was even a need for the second edition in the first place — I figured I’d take a page out of my old playbook and offer a sneak peek into the thinking that went into this second edition. When I released the first edition, I published the preface to it on my website so that folks could see exactly what they were getting into if they decided to purchase my book.

I prefer customers be informed before they buy.

With that in mind, I’ve decided to publish the forward to the second edition here on my new site in order to provide a bit of context regarding the work as a whole. Enjoy!

Forward to the Second Edition

Before anything else, I want to thank you; each of you who took a chance purchasing this odd little ebook written by some unknown baker in some tiny town in Vermont. If not for you, this book would have quickly disappeared into some forgotten corner of the internet. But it didn’t. This book has continued to spread throughout the bread baking community entirely because of peer-to-peer recommendation. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the best endorsement I could ever ask for. 

So for that, I thank you.

It’s an interesting thing, if you think about it. This book is definitely more of an underground product than it is a proper publication. It is not some perfectly produced coffee table book. It seems obvious to me that folks aren’t buying this for the production value – it is just an ebook, after all. Rather, they are buying it solely for the information it contains. And like any good underground product, it spreads primarily through word of mouth.

Yet, as much as I’d love to take all the credit, I think the success of Open Crumb Mastery is more a testament to the lack of originality found in the publishing world today. There are many great bread books, no doubt. But they all tend to follow the same formula: introduction, description of ingredients and equipment, explanation of method, and long recipe section. Replete, of course, with spectacular glossy photos of bread.

It’s not that this is a bad formula, per se. It’s just that once you’ve read a few bread books, you’ve basically read them all. Each new book must be written with the novice in mind, and so each book covers the same exact information . . . over and over again. In their need to pack all the relevant information into the limited space of a book, they necessarily leave out any real depth of information. They simply do not have available space to provide context or truly flesh out their ideas. 

In short, they do not provide the insight that is so desperately craved by the baking community. I know, because I myself have a long history of buying every new bread book on the shelf. And I’m certain that I’m not alone. We repeatedly buy these books – even though we know full well that most of the material will simply be a review of information learnt long ago – hoping for just a small nugget of insight here and there. Something new and useful that we can add to our working knowledge. If we come away with even a small handful of new information, then we feel it was money well-spent. 

I didn’t want to write that kind of book. I wanted to write something that would flood the reader’s head with new information. Something filled with insight on each and every page. Something that would leave a mark. And by virtue of self-publishing, I had that luxury. 

Of course, that comes at a cost. Self-published books tend to be quirky – a reflection of the author’s unique personality, undiluted and unfiltered. This book fits that bill. It has not been sanitized by slick professional editing. It has not been stripped of personality in a sad attempt at mass appeal. Simply put, it is what it is. Now personally, I like quirky books. They seem more genuine. But publishers don’t like to take risks; once they hit upon a successful formula they tend to run with it . . . until they run it into the ground. 

Fortunately (for me anyway), it seems that bread bakers are less risk-averse than book publishers. The success of this book has been community-driven from the start. It was something new and different, but bakers took a chance. And judging by the response, it seems to have hit the spot. I attribute that success to its one-of-a-kind nature. To the fact that it filled a void in the collective wisdom of the baking community. There is a hunger for insight – for wisdom gained through long experience. But there is little available to satiate that hunger. 

In this book, I have tried my best to provide that insight. It is no easy task to condense a career’s worth of experience and observation into a few hundred pages. Especially considering the esoteric nature of the subject. Perhaps it’s even foolish to make the attempt. But then, how else can we pass on what we have learned? 

My goal with this work was not just to provide information, but rather, to share a way of approaching the craft. As such, it is just as much about mindset as it is about bread. It is not some dry textbook. It was written from a highly personal viewpoint – a perspective that has evolved over many years spent elbow-deep in dough. 

Perspective is useful because it provides solid ground from which to orient yourself. Information is useless without context. And it takes a long time to really develop context and perspective; to form a useful working knowledge from all the random and scattered bits of information one picks up over the course of a career. It’s a challenging puzzle, and my goal is to help speed the process for those who wish to solve it. 

If I can save you even a few of the years it took me to acquire this information — and to sort it into something useful – then you’ll have a head start, and you can take the craft even further. I think that would be fitting . . . perhaps even delightful.

Trevor J. Wilson