Well that was something. The author is thorough. I’m trying to think of kind things to say regarding this cookbook but I’m having a hard time.

It just wasn’t for me. I love baking and this was a little ehh for me.

Not your standard recipe book - more a few recipes, some thoughts about life and reminiscences about family and belonging. Based on some other reviews this annoyed some people, but I didn’t mind it.

Very detailed step by step guid how to create a starter mother from organic raisins.

Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC.

I do apologize, but this cookbook was not for me. Way too much reading, not enough cooking. And too much specialty grains, although I do admire that some bakers can actually cook yummy things with those. I still use sugar! I just felt the book was not inviting. It looked like work from the start. I thank NetGalley and Nimbus Publishing for the advance read.

This felt like it was written by someone with a lot of time on their hands during the pandemic. Part memoir, part tribute to her deceased grandmother, part musings on life/cooking, and then some recipes between. There are good tips on making bread, a lot of wordy pages, and then a bunch of photographs of backlit grain fields.

The book breaks down as follows: devotion, baking as a whole, baking basics and tips, glossary, essentials of bread baking, the starter, rye, oats, corn, spelt kamut, buckwheat wheat. Topics under those headings include meanderings entitled: malted grains, the rise of an entrepreneur, land/oatcakes/family/ cookbooks, to come to know, building the oven, Nellie and the Passamaquoddy Bay, home is where Nan's oven is, living under one roof, sharing recipes to remember, the wild side, and a cold plunge conclusion.

There are roughly 30 recipes total. Examples of the variety are: starter, double chocolate rye cookies, nutmeg rye blueberry coffee cake, cardamom and date rye cake, Scottish oat cakes, oat milk, spelt plum crumble squares, spelt date pinwheels, kamut walnut tea ring, honey buckwheat brownies, seven grain sourdough bread, rustic pancakes, war cake, doughboys, soft vegan molasses cookies, wild blueberry pie, kamut gumdrop cake.

The recipes don't really have an introduction so much as several pages worth of musing beforehand. For each recipe, equipment is listed with ingredients on the left, short numbered paragraph steps on the right, and usually 1-3 photographs. Serving size, storage and nutrition information is not given.

The photographs are decent but kind of repetitive and not exactly imaginatively set up. E.g., there is an image of a torso, holding a brad loaf at the stomach level, and with a whisk in the pocket of the jeans, in front of a backlit wheat field. I'm sure it is supposed to look arty but honestly it felt clumsy and overstaged.

The recipes are solid and the final results are good. I had no problems making the items and appreciated that there are references for finding whole grains online. The tips were especially good and gave a lot of needed information on what goes right and what can go wrong while cooking/making whole grain products.

So my principle complaint is that I wasn't really in the mood for the philosophy and while it is sweet that this is an ode to her grandmother, it wasn't necessarily a compelling story to read. It felt like every recipe/small groups of recipes had to have a very wordy soliloquy relating to the author's life. Perhaps "Ode to gracious life giving golden grains and my grandmother" would have been a better title. Reviewed from an advance reader copy provided by the publisher.

To be honest, I found this book slightly ridiculous. I don’t even want to write this review because I feel bad that I didn’t like it. But it was pretentious, woke and really annoying. Definitely not for me.

Thank you NetGalley for the opportunity to review this.