Flour Power: The Practice and Pursuit of Baking Sourdough Bread

"This worked perfectly for me because I was one of those people who picked up sourdough baking in 2020 when we were locked down. People were just finding something new to do, but this is not a flash in the pan for Tara. She’s a longtime bread-baker and baking instructor, and that really comes out in this book. She is an excellent teacher. She teaches lots of in-person workshops, and this book is really written like she is teaching you how to bake bread—specifically sourdough. “We’re still riding that 2020 wave, when a lot of people got into bread baking” This is the book I wish I had when I started trying to make sourdough, which did not go well at first. It’s a great book because you can come at it as a beginner and you can come at it if you’re more experienced. If you’re a beginner, you learn how to make your sourdough starter, feed it and care for it, and do some easy loaves. If you’re a more experienced baker she has different types of starters that you can play with, not just with regular white flour. She has a rye starter and she has this other one called ‘desem,’ which you start cultivating in dry flour, before bringing it to life. She teaches you to use a lot of different grains, especially whole grains. She has a lot of reference charts. As someone who writes and reads a lot of recipes, I think she does a very good job with those. She gives you that kit of information at the top, which isn’t always easy to find in bread recipes—a brief overview of the advanced prep, how long it’s going to take, and the loaf you’re going to get. Being able to quickly flip through the book and see that is really helpful. There are also recipes for sourdough discard, for when you have extra stuff. You can make cookies, crackers, other things with it. I think anyone who’s into bread should check this one out."