Mother Grains

"I am a pretty passionate baker and this book really spoke to me. Her focus is on whole grains that people want to bake with for nutritional and ecological reasons. She takes a lot of recipes that you might otherwise make with regular flour and uses different grains in them. So, you’ll see things made with barley, buckwheat, corn, rye, sorghum. She also talks about wheat, which is obviously what most of us use, but she focuses on whole grains, wholewheat and local varieties that aren’t as processed and don’t require the same kinds of resources. This is a great book for both cooking and reference. She divides it up into chapters that are headlined by each of the grains. She gives you a lot of great information: history, how to buy them, how to store them and how to use them. I didn’t actually realize until I read the book that she has a background in journalism, which really comes through—it’s very well-researched. There are sweet and savory options, everything from cakes and cookies to salads and stews. They all feature the different types of grains that she talks about. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter It’s also got great reference material in the back, which for someone who geeks out on baking, I found extremely appealing. There are charts about weights and measurements. What’s also really awesome is she has a page that breaks out the recipes that appeal to specific diets, which is sometimes hard when you’re looking at a cookbook. If you’re someone who’s vegan, or gluten-free, you don’t have to look through all the recipes and figure out which ones you should use. She’s got a page that says, ‘these ones are vegan, these are gluten-free.’ She also offers lots of alternatives in the recipes to switch the grains and see which ones you like better. So it gives people permission to experiment with stuff a little bit."