Simple Sourdough: Make Your Own Starter Without Store-Bought Yeast and Bake the Best Bread in the World With This Simplest of Recipes for Making Sourdough

This booklet tells how to make the best bread in the world. You'll love this tasty, wholesome, easy-to-make bread from a tradition thousands of years old. In fact, it may spoil you for all other bread!

Mark Shepard is the author of several books on simple living and other alternatives.

CONTENTS

The Starter
The Ingredients
The Sponge
The Two Things You Must Always Remember
The Dough
The Rising
The Baking
Amazing Facts

My whole-wheat starter (as described in this book) is bubblier and more active than a starter I tried to cultivate with store bought dry active yeast! It takes much patience to make this work, but it's well worth the effort. I make the tastiest bread, for little cost or trouble, and my family loves the results.

Simple Sourdough is not a book of recipes; it's pages filled with a concept to sourdough bread making that can be expounded on with a cook's initiative and imagination. I would recommend this booklet to anyone who wants to make sourdough simply.


delivers what it promises   June 21, 2003
 40 out of 40 found this review helpful

WHAT IS THIS BOOK

First off, you should understand what you're buying: You're buying a PDF file that can be viewed in Acrobat, printed, etc. It will take several hours for your order to go through (why, Amazon??) and you will be sent an email with a download link. The document, this file, is 12 pages long. A total of 3 pages in this book will have nothing to do with making sourdough bread (cover, about the author, etc), so in fact, you're paying $ for 9 pages of information. This doesn't mean that you shouldn't buy the book -- it just means that this is a very small book (at a very low price), and that you should be aware of this up front so that you're not disappointed. Of these 9 pages, there is quite a bit of fluff (and I don't mean dough); I think these 9 pages could have easily fit in 5.

WHAT IS THIS BOOK NOT

This is NOT a cookbook, in the sense that you will not find dosens of recipes here. You will find only one recipe and the author will present you with several (simple) variations on it. There are many books on making sourdough breads that come with dosens of recipes. If you feel this is what you need -- skip this one. I didn't and I'm very happy I got it. Read on...

WHY I LIKE IT

Rather than merely listing recipes, this book TEACHES you all you need to understand about sourdough. You could say, "the theory of sourdough". It explains in great detail what is dough, why dough rises, what are yeast, what kinds of flour exist and how to pick the ones you want, what is sourdough, how a crust is formed, etc. If you read this book, you will actually learn a few things, rather than have some mindless recipes to follow. Once you understand this ONE SINGLE recipe, you will be able to improvise and invent and modify it to create countless delicious variations. All on your own, all without any additional help.

This book will make you independent:

- You only need four and water and salt. You don't need to buy yeast or sourdough starters. Ever.

- The recipe works. Period. I've made my third batch last week, and the results are getting more and more delicious with each try. I've been making some variations on the basic recipe from day one, and it's been wonderful.

- You do not need to measure or weigh ANYTHING: Not flour, not water, not sponge -- NOTHING. The book will show you how to use textures to figure out what's missing and with experience, nothing will be missing -- you'll be cooking like your great-grandmother probably did -- with your own intuition.

- There's no real substitute for understanding. Luckily, there's not much to understand: Reading 9 pages is something you can do in a matter of minutes. Personally, I'd much rather have a book with one recipe, that would show me how to create countless others, than have a book with basically a long list of recipes and no principles to guide me. This book is one of the shortest routes to making sourdough breads -- get it and you'll love the results!