The Hungry Ghost Bread Book
An Offbeat Bakery’s Guide to Crafting Sourdough Loaves, Flatbreads, Crackers, Scones, and More
by Joanthan Stevens
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Pub Date Nov 14 2024 | Archive Date Nov 04 2024
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Description
For the adventurous home baker and small-scale commercial baker alike, The Hungry Ghost Bread Book is a delicious guide and a pious devotional to the wonderful, awe-inspiring world of sourdough.
What does it mean to take on the practice of bread? Jonathan Stevens, co-owner of Hungry Ghost Bread in Massachusetts, has pondered this question over thirty years of baking sourdough bread. Baking is a ritual that demands attention, physical proximity, close observation, and continual adjustment. It begets sustenance, fosters community, and connects us with a 10,000-year-old craft.
The Hungry Ghost Bread Book is a window onto one baker’s artisan approach to sourdough bread—the culmination of his time in the tide of dough.
Sourdough, declares Stevens, is not a style of bread. It is bread. The sourdough starter—the microbial community used to inoculate bread dough—transforms flour into something truly digestible by humans, unlocking the nutrients that are otherwise inaccessible. Stevens’s unique approach to working with sourdough can be summed up by three tenets, each of which begins with “more.” More hydration, more fermentation, and more heat in the oven.
Inside these pages, you’ll find tools, techniques, insights, short-cuts, ingredients, warnings, and a handful of haikus. You’ll find instructions for creating and nurturing your own sourdough starter, as well as formulas for a variety of loaves, flatbreads, crackers, folds, scones, bagels, and more. The results are quite fantastic: bread that bites back, heels worth chewing on, and scraps worth toasting. A return to real Wonder.
Advance Praise
“A beautifully written book by a true artisan. . . . Easy to read and likely to inspire, this book will take your bread-making to the next level.” Sandor Ellix Katz, fermentation revivalist; author of The Art of Fermentation and other fermentation bestsellers
“It’s impossible to read through the recipes in The Hungry Ghost Bread Book without being inspired to scoop out some sourdough starter and get mixing.” Maurizio Leo, author of James Beard Award–winning The Perfect Loaf
“More than any baker I know, Jonathan embraces the unpredictability of bread-making. Indeed, as revealed in the pages of this book, he makes these challenges into a kind of poetic partnership. The dirty little secret is that we professional bakers are in constant dance and strife with uncooperative grains, reluctant ovens, and either stilted or exuberant fermentation. Our victory is that we manage, by hook or by crook, to have things looking mostly right when the bakery door is unlocked. This beautiful book will serve as both guidance and reassurance to the aspiring baker that we are all aspiring bakers.” Barak Olins, James Beard Award–winning baker, ZU Bakery
"...you should read this book just for the exhilarating high you’ll be floating in when you set it down. The author knows his stuff, but he’s not just teaching—he’s doing. He’s wrapping his arm around you and slipping you into his bread-woven life. I truly think he’s something of a witch (the fermentation he conjures definitely has the aura of enchantment). Go put a handful of unbleached flour into a bowl and wet it with a good splash of well water—and see who comes calling . . .” John Thorne, food writer; author of James Beard Award–winning Pot on the Fire
"Stevens flavors [this] book with unique phrases, wit, and a sprinkle of philosophy . . . As enticing as warm, buttered bread straight from the oven, The Hungry Ghost Bread Book is an alluring and playful invitation to get started on some sourdough." Foreword Reviews
Available Editions
EDITION | Paperback |
ISBN | 9781645022602 |
PRICE | £20.00 (GBP) |
PAGES | 208 |
Available on NetGalley
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