Wild Bread - Handbaked sourdough artisan breads in your own kitchen

Have you ever wanted to bake San Francisco sourdough, crusty French artisan loaves, dense Russian ryes, Italian ciabatta, Indian naan, pita bread, great homemade pizza crusts, soft whole wheat sandwich bread, bagels, sweet doughs, Ethiopian injera crêpes and much more?

This book explores what goes on inside dough as it is transformed from water, flour, wild yeast and probiotic bacteria into the kind of bread that makes your mouth water. You may never be satisfied with ordinary bread again. Once you learn what factors affect aroma, flavor, shape, crust and crumb, you too will be transformed into an artisan.

Wild Bread encourages your creativity and provides the basic principles you need to bake any bread you desire without needing a recipe. Wild bread also explores baking bread sustainably in solar cookers and wood-fired earth ovens. Wild Bread teaches you how to make authentic whole grain sourdough artisan breads that are easy to knead by hand and make in the variable temperatures and humidities of an ordinary kitchen.

• Part I explains the science and care of sourdough ecosystems, including how to capture your own sourdough culture from the air and where to buy authentic cultures from around the world.
• Part II explains how to make bread, including how to grind your own wholegrain flours and bake artisan-style breads in a home oven.
• Part III contains instructions for making a variety of artisan loaves, flatbreads, pan breads, batter breads, sweet rolls and more from wheat, rye and gluten-free whole grain flours.
• Part IV introduces you to the world of sustainable bread baking, with an exploration of energy-efficient solar cookers and wood-fired earth and brick ovens.
• Part V contains a variety of information to improve your bread baking, including commercial sources for authentic sourdough culture, bread troubleshooting tips, sources for sustainably-produced grains and flours, and books and DVDs on sourdough and artisan bread baking.

Lisa Rayner is an award-winning local foods activist and organic gardening author. Her interest in growing, preserving and cooking with locally-grown and fair trade foods goes back more than 25 years.  Her books are known for being thoroughly researched, expertly written and lavishly illustrated. (For much more about Lisa Rayner, see Amazon's Lisa Rayner page.)

Printed in Flagstaff, Ariz. (USA) on 100 % recycled paper. 170 Pages.

"This book is wonderful! I am so thankful to find a book that is more in line with our values than what is available on the mass market! Plus I would much rather support authors who are independently publishing or otherwise operating outside of the system."

-- Julie, Cultures for Health