17] Bread became one of the primary focuses of Volume 2, and the main source of tension between Beck and Child and their publisher, Knopf.
Volume 2 expanded on certain topics of interest that had not been covered as completely as the three had planned in the first volume, particularly baking. In an otherwise laudatory review of Volume 1, Craig Claiborne wrote that Beck, Bertholle, and Child had conspicuously omitted recipes for puff pastry and croissants, making their work feel incomplete.[17] Bread became one of the primary focuses of Volume 2, and the main source of tension between Beck and Child and their publisher, Knopf. Knopf feared that the bread recipes that Beck and Child were testing would be stolen by a competing publisher, and insisted Beck and Child cease their semi-public testing of the recipes to reduce risk, which Beck and Child agreed to reluctantly.[18]