Sourdough ─ Recipes for Rustic Fermented Breads, Sweets, Savories, and More

Sourdough offers 101 luscious recipes using natural, made-from-scratch sourdough starter for more nutritious, tastier results—going well beyond bread into a wide range of other baked goods.

Sarah Owens spent years baking conventional baked goods, only to slowly realize she had developed a crippling inability to digest or tolerate their ingredients. Unable to enjoy many of her most favorite foods, she knew she must find a health-sustaining alternative. Thus Sarah started experimenting with sourdough leavening, which almost immediately began to heal her gut and inspire her anew in the kitchen. Soon after, her artisan small-batch bakery, BK17, was launched, and with that, a new way to savor and share nutritious sourdough breads and treats with her Brooklyn community.

Sourdough and other fermented foods are making a comeback because of their rich depth of flavor and proven health benefits. InSourdough, Sarah demystifies keeping a sourdough culture, which is an extended fermentation process that allows for maximum flavor and easy digestion, showing us just how simple it can be to create a healthy starter from scratch. Moreover, Sarah uses home-grown sourdough starter in dozens of baked goods, including cookies, cakes, scones, flatbreads, tarts, and more--well beyond bread. Sarah is a botanist and gardener as well as a baker--her original recipes are accented with brief natural history notes of the highlighted plants and ingredients used therein. Anecdotes from the garden will delight naturalists and baked-goods lovers among us. Laced with botanical and cultural notes on grains, fruits and vegetables, herbs, and even weeds,Sourdough Baking celebrates seasonal abundance alongside the timeless craft of artisan baking.

SARAH OWENS is the head steward of the internationally celebrated rose collection and gardens at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, and the founder of BK17 Bakery, an artisan microbakery in Brooklyn. BK17 specializes in baking with sourdough. Sarah's customers get fresh baked goods delivered through a subscription serving Brooklyn and Manhattan. She has been featured inEdible Manhattan, on Gardenista, and on 66 Square Feet and has appeared onThe Martha Stewart Show.