Whole Grain Sourdough at Home: The Simple Way to Bake Artisan Bread with Whole Wheat, Einkorn, Spelt, Rye and Other Ancient Grains

by Elaine Boddy

Make Delicious, Whole Grain Bread with Minimal Kneading
* Selected as one of the best cookbooks of 2020 by delicious. magazine! *

Baking a loaf of beautiful crusty bread can be intimidating when you want to include nutrient-dense whole wheat flour and other ancient grains that are famously harder to work with. Elaine Boddy is here to help. She has spent many years honing the science and art of baking bread with whole grains in her home kitchen. In Whole Grain Sourdough at Home , she shares all of her secrets with you. Elaine’s master recipe and philosophy for bread making are all about simplicity, flexibility and having fun. Sourdough does not have to be complicated or require a lot of hands-on work to be great. With one bowl, a handful of simple ingredients, minimal kneading and less than 24 hours, you can have a loaf of delicious whole grain sourdough bread on the table.

Elaine has mastered the unique nuances of nutrient-dense flours like whole wheat, einkorn, spelt and rye to create a variety of lovely breads―no dense whole wheat bricks here! Packed with a step-by-step sourdough starter guide, plenty of tips and tons of recipes for everything from sandwich loaves to focaccia, this book gives you everything you need to bake amazing whole grain bread today, tomorrow and beyond.

This book has 60 recipes and 60 photographs.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Nonfiction, Health, Food

192 pages, Paperback

Published September 8, 2020

About the author

Hi, I’m Elaine from Foodbod Sourdough, I am a sourdough baker, cookbook writer and teacher, but mostly a sourdough ‘simplifier’. The key focus of everything I do, and share, is to show how truly simply sourdough can be made. I remove the complication and unnecessary steps, and often the fear, that can come with making sourdough. I show bakers all over the world how they can easily make their own healthy, tasty bread, week in, week out, in their home kitchens, to suit their lifestyle and timings.

If I can help in anyway, get in touch.

Elaine

Reviews

[Trevor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elaine Boddy is a bread whisperer. She is inspiring and encouraging and above all, possesses the knowledge to create consistently exceptional bread in your home kitchen. An extension of her online community (Foodbod Sourdough -https://foodbodsourdough.com/) her premiere book walks you through the process of baking sourdough bread from start to finish. Including beautiful photos and well written narrative, "Whole Grain Sourdough at Home: The Simple Way to Bake Artisan Bread with Whole Wheat, Einkorn, Spelt, Rye and Other Ancient Grains" is a must have cookbook for your kitchen. This book will not sit on your shelf. You'll want to read it over and over along your bread baking journey. Pick it up, use it, earmark the pages, dust it up with flour and enjoy the process of baking exceptional bread in your own kitchen.

[Carolyn Theobold · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was introduced to Elaine Boddy's Facebook Group and web page by a friend in 2019. I'd already been baking sourdough with some success but Elaine's recipe and method were a revelation, totally transforming my baking. I now bake all our own bread with ease and delicious results. Her new book takes it to another level with interesting recipes and variants, all set out in her clear, no nonsense style. If you only buy one sourdough baking book, or are wanting to try and have been put off by the complicated methods elsewhere, this is the one!
(And if you are worried that "wholegrain" means worthy stodge, think again! This starts you off with a simple but delicious white loaf and gradually adds small amounts of whole and ancient grain flours until you can tackle a 100% wholegrain loaf with ease and success.)

[Jeannette · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was given to me with a starter and the utensils needed to make it; it's one of the most thoughtful gifts I've ever received. My starter (Duncan) is doing great and this book makes things so simple and versatile. I love that Boddy focuses on what you can do if you get interrupted in your proofing process and what changes you need to make based on how your starter behaves. 10/10

[Barbara · Rating 5 out of 5]

I’ve been baking whole grain sourdough for years- with about a 50/50 success rate. My family has eaten a lot of bricks. There are lots of books out there that will have you calculating hydration ratios, buying proofing boxes, and generally making it so complicated that one just wants to give up. Not so with this one. Elaine’s method is simple and straightforward. She tells you all of the whys and hows. She breaks down the process into easily followed steps that are flexible to suit any time schedule. There are also options for a same day loaf, and a lazy loaf. The book is full of great tips for what to do if you have to stop during the process and troubleshooting if something goes wrong. My starter is more active than it’s ever been, and all of my bakes are now a success. No more bricks!

[Andrzej Sielecki · Rating 2 out of 5]

How come this thing has higher rating than Hamelman, Reinhart or Forkish? I foolishly bought it hoping for some more whole grain recipes and variations only to find out that this is not really a "whole grain" book. Main recipe is for a full white wheat loaf, with variations changing portion of it to other flours, sometimes whole grain, but barely a few recipes have more than 50% of whole grain flour. Even the starter is white flour...

And also - for some reason author names all the breads "Master". There is of course a "Master recipe", but then it follows with lazy Master, spelt Master, whole wheat Master, etc... Quite confusing

[Angela · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful bread

I have used Elaine Boddy's master recipe with my own variations for the past nine months and we have eaten some awesome bread. This book has many wonderful sounding recipes and I am really looking forward to making them. I originally ordered the paper book but became impatient waiting for it so changed to the Kindle version instead.

[Nese Tuncer · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you will own one sourdough book, it should b3 this! You'll love baking bread, be careful tho, it's addictive :)

[SULTAN H · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great book and it made everything simple. It helps you bake professional level at home which I never thought possible. Thank you Elaine.

[Sherri · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yummy step by step of different kinds of sourdough. Great addition to your home library.

[Diana · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great recipes, though I've had to adjust a lot for the warm climate I'm in. The peanut butter batard is to die for.

[Heather Counsellor · Rating 5 out of 5]

Elaine is the best! She has made sourdough something so easy and almost therapeutic.

[Tracy Reed · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've been using her sourdough recipes from her website as my go-to for a while, so I got her book to see what else she had. I like her approach to it because it's the most flexible and schedule-friendly, making it doable to make the bread even around a daytime work schedule. Her book had some different measurements than the website so I wrote her and found out that the book is the most updated version, so I'll be trying that version next and see if there's any difference.

Anyway, if I were to recommend one sourdough book, it would be one of hers: this one if you're into whole grains or ancient grains, or a different one of hers if you prefer white flour.

[Katie Talbott · Rating 3 out of 5]

I did not end up keeping this. It worked a lot with ancient grains, but not "regular" whole wheat, which is what I was looking for. It was a lovely book, just not helpful for what I was needing it for.