This is not an after-effect of too much Halloween!

If this bread rising from the mists seems a little eerie - you're right! Please meet pan de muerto, Mexico's bread of the dead, a soft yeasty bread  specially prepared for Día de los Muertos (day of the dead). It’s lightly sweetened and often flavored with anise- and orange-blossom water, giving the bread a delicate taste and enticing aroma. Before baking in the oven, the dough is typically rounded, topped with bone-shaped pieces of dough, (ah, now do you see the skull pattern?) and dusted with sugar.

It is just one of the recipes in the world's biggest bread cookbook, Modernist Bread: the Art and Science is now available for pre-ordering and will be on sale from May 2017.

When Modernist Bread debuts, it will be the most in-depth bread cookbook published. 

The world is large, and bread is universal, so this exhaustive treatment of one of cookery's most fascinating subjects is not just one cookbook. It totals over 2,300 pages that span five volumes plus a kitchen manual, presented in a fingerprint resistant stainless case. The set covers the science and global history of bread making, in addition to traditional and Modernist techniques, ingredients, and recipes. 

The volumes reflect more than four years of independent research by Nathan Myhrvold, founder of The Cooking Lab and lead author of Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, Modernist Cuisine at Home, The Photography of Modernist Cuisine, and this forthcoming book. To do this, he worked with a team of chefs, scientists, photographers, and editors, as well as collaborating with and communicating closely with industry leaders around the world that included historians, grain experts, scientists and expert bakers.

Francisco Migoya leads the Modernist Cuisine culinary team as head chef. Together with Nathan Myhrvold, he directs culinary research and the development of new techniques and recipes for The Modernist Cuisine culinary team which developed more than 1,500 new recipes for the book, rigorously testing each loaf in professional and home ovens to ensure accessibility for all types of baker.

Nathan Myhrvold, founder of The Cooking Lab, routinely pushes the boundaries of culinary science as a chef, scientist, photographer, and writer. He has had a passion for food and photography since he was a boy. At a young age he consumed cooking books and invested in new cameras and lenses—even while doing postdoctoral cosmology work with Stephen Hawking.

While working as the chief technology officer of Microsoft, he took a leave of absence to earn his culinary diploma from École de Cuisine La Varenne in France. Myhrvold retired from Microsoft in 1999 and inspired by the void in literature about culinary science and the cutting-edge techniques used in the world’s best restaurants, Myhrvold assembled the Modernist Cuisine team to share the art and science of cooking with others, hoping to pass on his own curiosity and passion for the movement.

More details....

(all pictures in this section courtesy of The Cooking Lab, LLC)