While one of the oldest loaves of sourdough bread was excavated in Switzerland, dating back to 3700 BCE, it is believed that the recipe originates from Ancient Egypt. Sourdough is a type of bread that is naturally leavened, which means you won’t have to use yeast from the supermarket to make it rise. Instead, to make it rise, you use a “starter” made from water and flour, which contains wild yeast and helps grow good bacteria.
The process may seem challenging and more involved than just making bread using commercial yeast. However, with the right recipe in front of you, it’s actually not too difficult. You just need to follow the steps, and the recipe will turn out perfectly. Here are a couple of books from which you may draw your inspiration.
Sourdough bread is naturally vegan—flour, water, and salt transformed into extraordinary, delicious bread. Ed Tatton, vegan chef, artisan bread-maker, and co-owner of the popular vegan café and bakery BReD with Natasha Tatton, has been baking and refining his recipes and techniques for naturally leavened sourdough for many years—including a wide array of boules, baguettes, loaves, flatbreads, buns, and pizza. As required, he uses plant-based alternatives in some savoury and sweet sourdoughs that would traditionally include dairy (butter, milk, or buttermilk) including panettone buns, hot cross buns, sticky buns, cinnamon buns, English muffins, brioche, and babka.
Inside BReD, you’ll find these perfected recipes to start your journey in bread-making; along with a detailed sourdough starter guide with step-by-step visuals on making and maintaining a sourdough starter, levain, mixing, shaping, and baking methods.
BReD is a complete plant-based book for bakers that goes beyond just making bread. Experienced bakers and novices alike can take their baking to the next level with gorgeous vegan baked goods from cakes, muffins, and scones to biscuits, cookies, and tarts. Passionate about a vegan lifestyle for the benefit of all people and the planet, the book also includes gluten-free recipes (bread and other baked goods), discard starter recipes to further zero-waste efforts, and an offering of dips, spreads, and accompaniments to complement the breads.
Sourdough is a book that will make you crave bread by the time you reach the end of it. Published by the baking duo Martin Ivar Hveem Fjeld and André Lugg from Norway, the book was released in 2017 and offers step-by-step recipes on how to bake bread.
The recipes in the book are short, yet very simple to follow and without needless clutter. You have various fun sourdough recipes to go through, such as the “Friendship Bread” or the “The Most Wonderful.” It is the perfect book for beginners, as all the steps are straightforward to follow.
This book is excellent when it comes to covering the basics of making sourdough bread. Written by Emmanuel Hadjiandreou, the book showcases the writer’s passion for artisan bread using natural ingredients. You can find all kinds of recipes for bread in this book, from whole grains to flavoured rye, ancient grains, and sweet treats.
Not only does this book have traditional recipes, but it also has some fun, novelty recipes. The recipes are detailed but not too complex, ensuring that they are still accessible for beginner bakers. The info on making sourdough starter is also very in-depth, which is appreciated by the readers of the book.
Read our related blog: can climate change affect sourdough starters?
This book is a compilation of recipes by Chad Robertson, the co-owner of the Tartine Bakery and the man whose bread is being sold all over the United States. Most of the recipes in this book were created because of Chad’s two years of experience, where he experimented with a variety of recipes.
The recipes are detailed, including several pictures to make the baking process much easier to follow. It is a great book with lots of info and directions that are easy to follow. Tartine Bread would be the recommended choice for bakers that fall somewhere between the beginner to intermediate level, who want to experiment with different bread recipes.
Written by Swedish bakers Göran Söderin and George Strachal, this book plays with a variety of flours and ingredients to bake bread with rich flavours and a crispy crust. It contains multiple tips on how to achieve the perfect sourdough bread, and the steps are very easy to follow.
There are multiple sourdough bread recipes you can try in this book. You can mix different types of flours, create apple and raisin bread, hazelnut and carrot bread, and a variety of other interesting doughs. It allows you to be creative and experiment with the boundaries of sourdough bread.
Emilie Raffa is a cook, bread maker, and artisan that received her training at International Culinary Center. She published this book to prove that sourdough bread is relatively straightforward to make, requiring only three ingredients to get started: flour, salt, and water. After that, it is mainly a matter of following the instructions.
The doughs in the book do not require kneading – you just have to mix the right ingredients and leave them during the night to rise. It also features recipes with step-by-step pictures so you can verify that you are following every step right. There are multiple recipes in this book that you can try out as well, such as roasted garlic and rosemary bread, cinnamon raisin swirls, and multigrain sandwich bread.
Bryan Ford is a baker and artisan that grew very popular on Instagram with his delicious-looking fermented bread. The book contains step-by-step instructions and pictures of every dough mix, various baking techniques, and shaping tips. The book contains multiple different ways to make sourdough starter and breaks things down in a way that is easy to understand.
There are numerous recipes that you can try out here, from regular bread to birote, pan de coco, bagels, beignets, and many more. All the recipes in this cookbook are vegan yet use practical and accessible techniques to make the bread.
If you are a fan of rustic fermented bread, you may want to consider investing in this cookbook. Written by Sarah Owens, the book represents the author’s desire to bake health-sustaining alternatives to regular bread. The purpose of these recipes is to heal the gut while tasting delicious.
The book features a total of 101 recipes, including basic sourdough, whole-wheat types of bread and sweet bread that aims to tickle your tastebuds. The recipes use seasonal ingredients, allowing readers to create Cherry Bread, Chocolate Currant Cinnamon Babka, Blood Orange Tartlets, or Coconut and Lychee Cupcakes. Pictures accompany each recipe to make sure that you’re on the right track throughout the baking process.
Sourdough bread is delicious, vegan, packed with fibre and is prebiotic! It’s the kind of bread you can feel good about eating, and it can feel even more satisfying when you bake your own using one of these sourdough cookbooks. That said, sometimes you’ll want to leave it to the experts. Check your local bakery to see if they bake fresh sourdough bread and ask them for tips on making your own.
Why not come visit our sourdough bakery in Whistler!
