I am sourdough fan, and have quite a few books on the subject, so the title of this book intrigued me.
To test the basic recipes in Modern Sourdough, I made both the Margot and the Geronimo. They were very successful and the Geronimo, packed with an interesting seed combination is definitely one to add to my list of favourite breads.
The initial chapter on making sourdough – processes from starter to final product are well explained and would a very useful starting point for anyone baking with sourdough. At this stage, I was questioning the title as the techniques described are traditional ; however the recipes that follow range from traditional baguette, focaccia, ciabatta to unusual variations like beetroot bread, apple raisin and rosemary bread, roasted red pepper, garlic and parmesan bread. There are a number of Jewish breads like challah and lepeshka, too.
I liked the layout of the recipes– complex recipes with clear division of ingredients for each stage. There are also useful photos for explaining complex processes such as shaping challah and babka, and the peppering of suggestions throughout the book such as the useful comment for proving a dough (in this case the laminated dough) at 24*C – “if the temperature is less than this, place a tray of warm water in the oven (not turned on) and place the dough inside”
Further chapters include making sourdough pastry (making laminated pastry) , sweet and savoury sourdough . I am not sure I would ever make muffins and scones from sourdough, though making pizzas from leftover focaccia dough does appeal. Again a lot of traditional recipes such as croissants, Danish pastries, hot cross buns, but also modern twists such as smoked cheese and beetroot pull apart bread and aubergine galettes.
The final chapter, Margot Specialities, includes some non-sourdough specialties such as gingerbread dinosaurs and salted caramel chocolate chip cookies. On first reading I found this chapter out of place in a book titled “Modern Sourdough” but then decided I was nit-picking. The recipes are varied and good, so why not include them?

Recipes include a ton of information and tips to help with successful bakes and the pictures are simple yet stunning!

This book came along at exactly the right time for me. I had a sourdough starter which I was using to make the same loaf of bread each week. This book gave me lots of inspiration for using it to make lots of new and interesting ways. The books also includes some recipes which do not require a starter. I was surprised by this but the recipes do look good so I will give them a try.

This book would make a great gift for keen bread makers.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for an advance copy of this title in exchange for an unbiased review.

This appears to be the be-all end-all book on sourdough baking. It starts with detailed directions to make your own starter, and continues on to give recipes for items I didn’t even know could be made with sourdough. The photos will make your mouth water and should inspire the baker inside you. Note: I did not try any of these recipes (as I don’t have a starter ready) so I cannot comment on how good the instructions are. There are some delicious sounding recipes for spreads and toppings also, and then some non-sourdough recipes at the end, including cookies. There is an astonishing assortment of sourdough recipes though, and if you’ve been watching The Great British Baking Show, you’ll definitely want to pull this book out to practice “Bread Week”.

I do wish the cover looked a little more up to date, it definitely does not convey “modern” to me, at all. But the inside is useful and inspirational.

Thank you to NetGalley and Quarto Publishing Group for allowing me an ARC in exchange for an honest review. I honestly hope someone makes some of these loaves (and bagels) and brings them to my house to share.

Margot Bakery is a popular bakery in East Finchley, London, and was opened in 2016 by Michelle Eshkeri, who supposed her friends would like to be able to purchase the specialties she had always baked at home. It happened that not only her friends wanted her baked goods, but people all over London wanted her baked goods. Because the bakery has been so popular, and customers have requested recipes so they could duplicate them at home, Eshkeri has published them in an excellent cookbook, Modern Sourdough: Sweet and Savoury Recipes from Margot Bakery.

Anyone who wants to learn the art of baking sourdough will want to purchase this excellent cookbook. It has step-by-step instructions on creating a sourdough starter, and then using the starter in dozens of mouthwatering recipes. The photographs (Patricia Niven has outdone herself) in the cookbook are excellent, and readers will want to stay home and bake for days.

This cookbook is not for those who are inpatient; rather, it is for those serious bakers who want to learn and are willing to put in the time (lots of time!) to make sourdough. I followed the instructions to the letter, and found that even though there was a lot of waiting time (even baking a loaf of bread involves not only the main starter, but another starter and then the shaped loaf has to sit in the fridge 12-16 hours before it’s ready to bake) the loaves turned out pretty good. Because I don’t live in London, I have had to adjust the recipes to work in my different altitude, using American flour, and a dry climate where I live. I’m happy to say, the patience has paid off and my loaves are starting to look better, and most importantly, taste amazing. The Cheddar and Paprika bread is presently in the fridge having a 16 hour sit before baking.

While sourdough is the main focus of the book, there are other excellent recipes for baked goods that aren’t sourdough, i.e., Lily’s Tahini Cookies and Hazelnut Friands.

While this cookbook is well-written and has mouthwatering recipes, it isn’t for everyone. It is for serious bakers who want to bake something a little outside of the box. Those willing to take the time will love it.


Special thanks to NetGalley for supplying a review copy of this book.

Fantastic cookbook! I struggle with the time and patience to make daily bread but I find the recipes inspiring. I have started and abandoned multiple starters but in-between have achieved some delicious sourdough creations. The pasties are amazing. I applaud those that can keep up with it everyday and I have this book picked out for a few such accomplished friends that will love this book. With that said for me personally this is the motivation to do a starter for a special occasion and keep up with it long enough to provide a delicious healthy creation for the holidays. Despite my lazy tendencies this will be an important addition to my cooking collection (for when I feel like going to the extra trouble). Believe me it is well worth it. I received this book from NetGalley for an honest review and I love it!!!

I had a six month obsession with sour dough before I let my starter go. I just don't have the patience and ability to bake bread daily. If I did. this would be the perfect book. There are many ideas of what to do with your sourdough starter, and many types of sourdough recipes. I will check it out again the next time I dive into sourdough baking.

Wow! what a fabulous book this is, beautifully presented, lovely photographs and easy to follow recipes. If you are into making breads, using your own sourdough started (instructions included), one can not go to far beyond this book. From making sourdough bread, savoury to sweet sourdough delights, it is all here and the variety is very impressive. At the end o the book there is even some beautiful jams and spreads.
Fabulous book

Modern Sourdough: Sweet and Savoury Recipes from Margot Bakery is a tutorial cookbook by professional baker Michelle Eshkeri. Despite the author being a professional (albeit self-taught) baker, this is a layman accessible real cookbook full of satisfying sourdough breads, both savory and sweet. The ingredients are easily sourced.

Released 10th Sept 2019 by Quarto on their White Lion imprint, it's 224 pages and available in hardcover format. My criteria when reviewing (most) cookery books is fairly simple: is it neatly and logically presented, does it contain usable recipes (for the book's intended audience), are the ingredients reasonably easily sourced, does it contain wildly expensive specialist equipment which I can't borrow, and are the recipes appealingly photographed? This book honestly ticks all the boxes for me.

The book starts with a short and interesting artist's statement including a little bit of what the author brings to the conversation in terms of gender, background, ethnicity, culture, and philosophy. The sidebar section includes numerous clear photographic still life action snapshots of the bakery and bakers. The author talks briefly about leavening sweet breads and vienoisserie with sourdough alone and that it's a worthwhile process, despite being more time and logistics intensive. Frankly, before reading this book, I didn't even know it was possible to leaven sweet breads with sourdough.

The recipe chapter begins with a solid introductory tutorial on how to make a sourdough starter. Everything is clearly and simply explained including time estimates for a finished culture from scratch. This section also includes very general information about loaf types and how to shape different traditional loaves.

The recipes themselves are varied and include many standard types: focaccia, light rye, challah, brioche, flatbreads, bagels, and many many more. The only small quibble I found was that there is not a comprehensive table of contents in the eARC I recieved, and that the recipes aren't arranged to be found quickly. There are chapters covering basic bread, pastry, sweet and savoury bakes, specialities of Margot bakery, and jams and spreads to accompany the breads. There is a comprehensive index included, but this remains a book to browse through to find recipes to try (and I think that was a conscious editorial/authorial decision).

There is also a pictorial tutorial which is frankly the best I've found for braiding a traditional challah. Clear photos and simple to follow. More generally speaking, the photography throughout is delightful and beautifully presented. Each recipe is photographed in colour and reading through the recipes themselves made me hungry and left my fingers itching to recreate them in my own kitchen.

The author has a wonderful sense of humor, wit, and honest love for her craft and it shines through clearly in the text.

Wonderful book and the ideal book for sourdough enthusiasts. Five stars.

I spent many years yearning to bake bread and feeling intimidated by yeast. I went to work at a bakery, I thought to make cake, but no, I made bread. Trial by fire. I am no longer intimidated by yeast and have now been baking bread professionally and at home for 15 years. Sourdough, though, remains intimidating. I have never successfully kept a starter going long enough to actually bake a loaf of bread. When I saw Michelle Eshkeri’s Modern Sourdough on NetGalley, I knew it was time to try again. This is an honest review.

I completely fell in love with this cookbook. The photographs and the recipes made me believe that I could do this, that I could make a sourdough starter and bake beautiful sourdough breads and pastries. I might be able to someday, but not with this cookbook.

I pulled out my digital scale and patiently followed the starter instructions and after 12 days I felt like I had a healthy starter. Both of the loaves I attempted were complete failures. I don’t know if I did something wrong, if there was a problem with the recipes, or if the difference between existing in London and existing in Austin, Texas – the temperature, the humidity, the ingredients. Or, maybe it was some combination of all these things.

Initially, I was going to go right for the sourdough croissants, but then I then I realized I needed to bake a loaf of bread first. So my first bake, once I got a starter going was the Finchley Sticks. Finchley Sticks were what Margot Bakery created when they were learning to shape baguettes. the ugly loaves got olives put on top and then baked in all their misshapen glory. This seemed like a good place for me to start. It was not a good place to start. I haven’t had this disastrous a bread bake in a couple of decades. The recipe called for the dough to sit in the refrigerator for 12 – 36 hours. I suspect that my American refrigerator was too cold for the wild yeast colony. When I pulled it our 18 hours later, it was limp and lifeless. My Finchley Sticks baked into very dense, chewy flatbreads.

The second bake was brioche dough. The starter looked great, the first and second refreshments looked great. Once I mixed the flour, egg and second refreshment, it looked very dry. As I added the butter the dough became more like a dough, but the hard little pellets of flour created by too little moisture never integrated into the dough. It was inedible and an unpleasant waste of butter. Clearly there was insufficient moisture, but again, I don’t know if my starter was drier that Margot Bakery’s, if the drier atmosphere of an air conditioned house made the flour drier, or if there was something missing from the recipe.

I gave up on the sourdough and tried two of the non sourdough recipes near the end. I decided to make Perlette’s Apple Cake. I have been making a different gateau aux pommes for 20 years, so this would be an interesting change. The recipe calls for 6 pounds of apples, 4 of which are cored, peeled and roughly chopped and then cooked in a medium pan. What I would consider a medium pan was insufficient to hold the apples. The apples also produced a lot of liquid and the recipe doesn’t make clear whether that liquid should be incorporated or strained off. I ended up draining the apples, which left me with a lot of sugary, cinnamony apple liquid. The recipe said to bake at 325 F for 70 – 90 minutes. I baked this cake for almost 2 hours before the tester in the center of the cake came out cleanish. Once cooled enough to slice, I found that the texture ranged from under baked custard in the middle to over baked custard at the edge. It was really more like a cake sitting uneasily on top of a pie. The coarsely chopped apples cooked in sugar and cinnamon were tasty, though extremely cinnamony. The layer with the thinly sliced apples and batter on top had an unpleasant texture. The batter under the coarsely chopped apples seems to have just given up. I am not an amateur baker, so I feel pretty confident that the problem is the recipe. I was left with a cake I don’t want to eat and would never serve to a guest.

The second non sourdough recipe I made is the Cheese and Onion Pie with hot water crust. I don’t have access to Lancashire cheese, so I used a good cheddar. The onions cooked with butter and thyme looked and smelled amazing. As with the apple cake, the direction that I cook the onions in a medium pan was laughable. Also, as with the apple cake, the onions released a ton of liquid, with no direction about what to do with it. I know pastry well enough that I knew better than to They weren’t as jammy as the caramelized onions I make regularly, but I would make it again for other recipes. My heart sank when I got going on the hot water crust. When I attempted the brioche dough, the problems started when I mixed the second refresh with the flour and egg. It wasn’t enough liquid and I ended up with concrete pellets. The same thing started to happen with the crust dough. I deviated from the recipe and added the melted butter and water before the flour and egg were well mixed. I still had to work out some hard clumps. In the end, this was a lovely savory pie. I didn’t worry about making the top of my crust beautiful. It was tasty warm and it was tasty the next day cold. So yay! Something worked. I’m not sure I would actually make this particular pie again, but I will use the hot water crust recipe again. And the onions.

The tl/dr version of this is, I fell in love with the possibilities of this cookbook, but ultimately it doesn’t work for me. Part of the issue may be my lack of experience with sourdough. But, the issues I had with the non-sourdough recipes make me wonder how well these recipes were tested for the cookbook. I would not buy this cookbook unless what you want is a decorative cookbook with great photos. I wish the recipes had worked better.

Thank you Netgalley for a review copy of this book.

A complete beginner to making sourdough this book has lovely recipes in it but it was a little too detailed for me. Not many pictures of the techniques either

Firstly I would like to acknowledge that anyone can start out with nothing, this has been beautifully shown in the pages of this book. The beautiful illustrations and pictures throughout this book make you want to bake every recipe! The instructions can be followed easily and every recipe has a story behind it.
Will become a favourite on many bookshelves!

Gorgeous book! All the recipes are so appealing, the photography is scrumptious, the recipes are in metric (YAY!), I just love this book. I think from a design point of view it is the epitome of how I like my recipe books to look and read. A very sincere 5 star review and I want to make ALL THE THINGS!
I received a complimentary kindle copy via NetGalley but will be rushing out to buy a paperback straight away. All opinions expressed are my own.

Good mix of recipes and photos as well as the inspiration behind them. Lots of tasty-sounding things to make, looking forward to getting started with my starter and making some.

A must read book for bread lovers and for bakers.

It is definitely a book that I would happily return to in the future.
Being Italian, it is easy to say I could not live without my daily bread and I would love to be able to bake it by myself.

The author is the owner of Margot Bakery in London and she has learned how to create amazing savoury and sweet treats by herself.It has to be said that baking requires patience and love but the author’s passion for this art is evident throughout ‘Modern Sordough’.

The book contains detailed and step by step recipes.I particularly appreciated how a recipe for starter sourdough is presented in the very beginning of the book.
Being a beginner, I was not aware of the initial process to bake a sordough book.

I loved the fact that so many different delicacies are included such as pain au chocolate,focaccia and muffins.
The pictures are amazing, they really make a difference in the book and they literally made me salivating!

There are many ideas I would like to try and experiment and I am really thankful to the author for making them accessible.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for the ARC in exchange of an honest review.

White Lion Publishing and NetGalley provided me with an electronic copy of Modern Sourdough: Sweet and Savoury Recipes from Margot Bakery. I was under no obligation to review this book and my opinion is freely given.

The recipes contained within the pages of this cookbook highlight the offerings at Margot Bakery, a highly successful shop in London. The cookbook is divided into sections: Introduction; Bread; Sourdough Pastry; Sweet Sourdough; Savoury Sourdough; Margot Specialties; Jams and Spreads. Modern Sourdough starts out with the most important part of the whole cookbook, how to make the sourdough starter. There is a great step-by-step guide, as well as a detailed description on how to prepare and form the bread.

This cookbook is not for beginning bakers and is certainly not for those who are pressed for time. Making sourdough is a detailed process that cannot be rushed through. There are great step-by-step instructions with accompanying photographs where necessary, like for the Sourdough Challah, as the braiding of the loaf can be complicated.

There are wonderful variations of sourdough like Roasted Red Pepper, Garlic, and Parmesan Bread, and sourdough pastries like Croissants, Pain Au Chocolat, Rugelach, and Sourdough Pancakes. Modern Sourdough has a good blend of recipes from the more simple to the more challenging, with all of the finished dishes awe inspiring and delicious. I would recommend this cookbook to the more experienced baker, as the art of baking bread can be frustrating to beginners.

Holy smokes this book is not only drool-worthy it will make a great baker companion book.

I’ve been baking most of my life and at fifty I have collected hundreds of cookbooks and baking books, but there is only a handful I use every week and I could see myself using this one all the time. I love sourdough and have been using King Arthur Flour method for many years and have been happy with it, but I am limited with recipes I can use my sourdough in so before I know it the sourdough is gone and I have to make it again so I need to broaden my horizon and have more recipes I can use sourdough in and this book would most defiantly do that for me.

Not only does this book offer chapter after chapter of recipes for your sourdough, but it also offers specialties recipes for things such as cookies, cakes, muffins and there is also a jam and spreads.



Each recipe offers step by step instructions and wonderful images.

Modern Sourdough by Michelle Eshkeri

The author of this book opened a bakery because she realized there was a need for such a shop in her neighborhood. She is self-trained and has learned much over time and in this book shares some of what she has learned. That her bakery is thriving is something that does not always happen in this economy. And I applaud her for opening the shop and sharing her wisdom and recipes with the world.

Why did I want to read/review this book? First, I have a sister who can only eat sourdough bread at the moment and I thought that if this book was easy to read and had good directions I would recommend it to her since she said she might take up bread baking again and pursue sourdough bread making since that is what she can eat. Second, I have made sourdough in the past while living in countries where I could not find yeast or when I wanted to just see if I could make it and make bread from it. Third, I like cookbooks.

This book has over 100 recipes and I was amazed at how many types of bread can be made with sourdough starter. I loved the idea that so many varieties are out there and all doable with sourdough.

What I liked:
* The gorgeous photographs
* The specific instructions
* The details on making the sourdough and keeping it alive
* The ease with which I could visualize the process by reading the instructions
* The information about recipes in the book – especially those from other countries
* The way I could almost taste the bread as I looked at the photos
* The desire I had when I finished to start making sourdough starter

From muffins and pancakes to laminated pastry and from a daily tasty loaf to tiny filled delicacies this book will have something for everyone. That said...I am off to write to my sister (or her son) to recommend this is purchased for her to read and try baking from. I can see her pizza making husband also enjoying this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and Quarto Publishing Group-White Lion Publishing for the ARC – This is my honest review.

5 Stars

I love sourdough bread; the crunchy, thick crust and the tangy, soft bread are delightful. When my boys were little, we made a batch of sourdough starter, but we were not successful at keeping it going for long. In Modern Sourdough, author and baker, Michelle Eshkeri, provides a relatively easy recipe and process for making and maintaining a sourdough starter. Along with the starter, she provides many recipes in which to use the starter.

Beautiful photos accompany the recipes, and this was enough to have my mouth watering! The bread recipes all seem easy enough that even an amateur baker such as myself could produce an edible loaf of bread. The sweet baked goods recipes that utilize the sourdough starter are especially intriguing. I have never thought of using a tangy starter to create sweet rolls or cookies. As soon as my starter is ready, I plan to try Ms. Eshkeri’s cinnamon bun recipe!

The recipes range from bread, pizza, focaccia, sweet rolls, panettone and stolen to cookies, brownies and muffins. There is something for everyone!

Klar gegliedert, reich bebildert, ein paar Infos und los geht es mit dem Rezept. Sehr ausführlich und dennoch übersichtlich.
Durch backen Abwechslung auf den Tisch bringen.