In William Alexander’s humorous memoir, 52 Loaves: One Man’s Relentless Pursuit of Truth, Meaning, and a Perfect Crust, baking the perfect loaf of peasant bread becomes a year-long obsession as he bakes one loaf of bread a week in hopes of finding that elusive texture and taste he once relished decades earlier. 

Alexander takes readers on a wild, and sometimes calamitous, ride as he searches for the recipe and technique to replicate—from scratch—the “perfect bread.” We follow his quest as he tries his hand at growing, harvesting, and threshing the wheat, all the while unsure of what variety of wheat might yield this elusive perfect loaf. He recounts his adventures of attempting to build his own wood-fired brick oven in his back yard. 

While the wheat is growing, he finds bread-makers who will help him gain hands-on experience, attends a kneading conference in Maine, and even enrolls in a week-long bourlangerie class at the École Ritz Escoffier, the cooking school at the Hotel Ritz in Paris. 

“How can a nation be great if its bread tastes like Kleenex?”—Julia Child quote leading into the first chapter.

Along the way we learn that Jethro Tull (not the British rock band) invented the seed drill; that flour in France is very different from flour in the U.S.; how bread-making caused pellagra, a serious and potentially fatal disease caused by niacin deficiency; as well as other bits of arcane knowledge about growing wheat, making brick ovens, and baking bread on a large scale. 

After a brief side trip to Morocco, Alexander ends up at the L’Abbaye Saint-Wandrille de Fontenelle in Normandy, where he was invited to help the monks rekindle their bakery after their baker left. While there, he ends up creating a delicious bread recipe that works with the monks’ prayer schedule, so the monks could carry on their bread-making tradition.

Overall, our book group found much of the book quite humorous, especially the many tangents Alexander goes off on. Several readers, however, tired quickly or had no interest in the intricate details and chemistry of making bread. 

—Beth Bedell, UMRA Book Club I