I made my first poolish Saturday night. I could just as well have made a biga, or a pâte fermentée, but I went with the poolish. I like how it rhymes with foolish.

This past week I've been living in the land of home-made bread. This land is a long way from regular cooking. To get to this land you first have to spread flour and corn meal on every surface of your kitchen, including the floor. You need to assemble implements and ingredients, and you must be able to read. It also helps to have a lot of time on your hands, not just sticky dough.

Research at a local bookshop indicates there are two basic kinds of bread books. Books such as Beth Hensperger's Bread Made Easy demonstrate shortcuts and overtly encourage beginners.

The other kind of bread book is much more demanding, but also friendly to beginners. A stand-out is Peter Reinhart's award-winning Crust & Crumb. Absolutely no short cuts here.

The formulas in Crust & Crumb (the author calls them formulas; everyone else would call them recipes) take days to complete.

In order to make my first loaves of ciabatta bread, I followed the formula for a poolish-style sponge made with flour, water and yeast, and refrigerated it overnight. On day two I made the dough and beat it up. On day three I prepared the loaves and baked them. It was not as easy as it sounds, either.

The results were excellent. I now have created three loaves, one burnt, two underdone, plus a tasty focaccia, with another focaccia waiting to bake. Even the burnt loaf -- my very first! -- tasted good, except for the burned parts.

Reinhart, who once was known as Brother Juniper (his original Brother Juniper's Bread Book is still in print) reassures the potential baker that "You really can make world-class, conversation-stopping bread at home without feverishly waking up in the middle of the night to feed your starter."

That's good to know, Peter. Still, you have set me on a path that involves a lot of worry. Did I leave my poolish in the refrigerator too long? Why did it separate into gunk and brown soup? It's three in the morning. Should I start over?

Reinhart "began making bread every day" while cooking for the seminary of a Christian order in San Francisco. "Sometimes the results were disastrous," he writes, "especially when I strayed too far from what I now know to be common bread sense.

"However, when the bread came out right -- even accidentally -- when the crust crackled and then dissolved into sweet, roasted wheatiness and the interior felt cool and buttery even without butter, I was hooked."

In his earlier books, Reinhart concentrated more on the spiritual aspects of making bread than on practical considerations. In this one he wants to describe "the actuality of bread. I want this book to be an object poem that takes you deeper into the subject as it broadens your experience," he writes.

I can highly recommend Crust & Crumb to any courageous person setting out to make no-compromise, satisfying loaves of bread. If you read it carefully, this book will take you from beginner to competent amateur in just a few days. But the process is not particularly easy.

If you want easy, Beth Hensperger's book is the one, and her breads taste good, too. In contrast to Crust & Crumb, Bread Made Easy presents a simplified and more reassuring method to start your bread-making journey.

Hensperger is eminently practical. When she describes four kinds of sheet pans, see the accompanying photo: perforated, nonstick, jelly-roll, and unglazed ceramic. At last, I understand sheet pans.

Crust & Crumb by contrast has technique illustrations by Ellen Sasaki. These are clear and useful, but not abundant.

Oven spring. Poolish. Cloche. Extensibility. Hydration. Valence. The Maillard reaction.

So much to understand. And for most of us, so little time. But it's worth it when your beautiful, crusty loaf emerges hot from the steamy oven. All the mess, the slashing, the burning -- when the neighborhood trick 'n' treaters come 'round again offer them a fresh slice of homemade bread.

So, please pass the jam, ma'am, I'm in the mood for a ham spam and jam san. Home made!

Aired Sunday December 10, 2006 at 10:55 am and Wednesday December 13, 2006 at 1:00 pm

Orders/Information:

Crust & Crumb: Master Formulas for Serious Bread Makers by Peter Reinhart. Ten Speed Press paperback $18.95. ISBN 1580088023.

This book was first published in 1998, and won the James Beard Foundation Book Award. It is new in paperback this year.

Bread Made Easy: A Baker's First Bread Book by Beth Hensperger. Ten Speed Press paperback $17.95. ISBN 1580081126. In print since 1999, now with updated web references.

There is a kind of doughy violence in the Made Easy book. "Pinch the bottom seam" leads to the scene in which you are advised to "slam the dough hard against the work surface" and later, "slash the tops" with a razor. Yikes.

Crust & Crumb refers to the latter as "scoring," and describes it as "the strategic cutting of dough to improve its appearance and to enhance oven spring." Sweet.

Where Crust & Crumb suggests a gentle dimpling of the risen loaf "with moistened fingers," Bread Made Easy suggests you "punch a floured fist into the dough." Ouch.