The Sourdough School: Sweet Baking: Nourishing the Gut & the Mind

by Vanessa Kimbell

A companion volume to the bestselling The Sourdough School focusing on sweet - but not sticky sweet - recipes that are not only delicious but also gut-friendly

' It is impossible to read this book without wanting to scuttle off into the kitchen.' -   Nigella Lawson

The benefits of sourdough are well known - the slow fermentation process creates a healthier and lighter dough that is easier to digest - but until now they have been mainly linked to bread. If it rises, however, it can be made with sourdough, and in this ground-breaking new book, Vanessa Kimbell focuses on sweet sourdough bakes that not only nourish the gut but also improve your mood.

Using a variety of flours, including chestnut, spelt, and einkorn, as well as blends you can make up yourself, the classic recipes and new ideas for flavor combinations cover everything from cakes, tarts, and biscuits, to donuts, brioche and pretzels, and rely on natural sweetness wherever possible.

Recipes include Morello Cherry Shortbread, Chocolate, Tangerine & Pistachio Cakes, Carrot & Walnut Cake, Doughnuts and Mille-feuille as well as vinegars, compotes, cultured creams, butters, and ghee. There is even Chocolate, Almond & Hazelnut Spread and Sourdough Vanilla Ice Cream.

Vanessa also explains how sourdough helps to maintain the health and diversity of your gut microbiome. From understanding the benefits of having diversity in your diet to the amazing work of enzymes, this book is about understanding the connection between our food, gut microbiome and the potential impact on our mental health. New studies are unveiling links between the microorganisms in our gut and our mood and behavior, and Vanessa is at the forefront of this research.
 
'Britain's queen of sourdough.' -  Telegraph

'Vanessa Kimbell wants to change the bread we eat, one loaf at a time. She's the real a total inspiration.'  - Diana Henry

' Just five years ago if someone said to you that they were writing a book about sourdough bread and mental health you would have thought they needed psychiatric help. Today nobody is laughing as the latest science tells us that microbes are the key link between food and the health of our mind and bodies .' - Tim Spector, author of  The Diet Myth

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, Nonfiction, Food

192 pages, Hardcover

Published September 8, 2020

Reviews

[Yaaresse]

DNF @ maybe 15% and a bunch of skimming after that.

I will do a lot of things in the kitchen the "old fashioned" way, but there are some things I simply am not going to do. Milling grain is one of them. Running around trying to find whole grains to mill that haven't been sitting on a shop shelf for two years is another. Ordering whole grains on line in amounts to feed a small army at insane shipping costs is a third. Spending three days and having to make three sub-recipes before I can begin that actual recipe I was looking at, well, that's a fourth. Oh, and buying a cookbook that doesn't give a detailed TOC of the recipes in the FRONT of the book is a fifth.

The first 40-50 pages of this book are a treatise on gut health. The next chunk is on milling grain and basically singing the praises of a plethora of whole grains your average not Whole Paycheck, not Organic Trendy Market An Hour Away, not specialty food store won't have. Even my one local "When the world ends, I'll have my ammo stash and all the prepper food" store staffed by people whose religion says they have to stockpile food doesn't carry some of the grains discussed in this book. (They do, however, have every nut known to man. Literal nuts, not metaphorical ones...although their customers seem to include a few of the metaphorical type.) As for the recipes, when I FINALLY got to them somewhere around page 120-130, they didn't entice me.

I wonder how many people raving about this book have actually cooked anything from it? I've got plenty of time and pretty good baking skills, and I thought these recipes were a long damn trek to nothing all that special.

[Hilary · Rating 2 out of 5]

A baking book that is centered around gut health. Lots of 'science' parts about how sourdough is full of probiotics. Sourdough starter is full of probiotics but sourdough bread isn't because of the cooking process. I listened to a radio 4 programme investigating this frequently made claim. Obviously the probiotics are killed in the baking process although scientists have found there is some evidence that people who make sourdough absorb some of the probiotics through their skin whilst kneading but you won't get them by eating baked sourdough bread.

The other part of this book that didn't sit well with the 'health' element is that these are sweet recipes that contain refined sugar. There are recipes such as deep-fried donuts. Some of the donuts pictured are so dark I would be concerned about eating them due to the acrylamides that can cause cancer.

I don't see how the recipes are linked to 'Nourishing the Gut and Mind'.

[Emily · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ok I really did like this book! It was well-researched and interesting! However, it did not feel accessible to me and I wouldn’t consider myself a beginner. If you don’t have a background for understanding biology or nutrition this will make your head spin. If you don’t mill your own grains or plan to or have access to some of the obscure ingredients you might feel lost or be unable to fully participate. I don’t know if this fully committed approach to baking with high biodiversity and a wide range of fermented foods is for me but I’ll definitely try to incorporate some of what I learned into my baking. Also the chocolate rye hazelnut donuts in this book are at the top of my try list because they look amazing!!!

[tricialing · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is at the far edge of the sourdough world and it makes me question a bit about the food that we are consuming and how we are all mostly consuming/cooking with a single grain source which is actually not natural at all. Meaning the caveman(people from before industrialization)wouldn’t have just eat one strain of rice/wheat in a week, they will eat whatever grain & veggies & berries they found that are in season.

We are so distanced from our food source that we never really think about how flour comes to be.

It’s good to be aware of the how minimal variations we have on our day to day food. It helps me to make some conscious decisions when choosing food.

[Valerie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have not yet baked anything out of this book, and I am not sure I am up for milling my own botanical blends of flours, but I liked many of the recipes, and the focus on building a healthy gut biome.

I will say that some of the recipes look a little too earnest. I like coconut sugar, and fruits, and less processed, refined...but sometimes it just isn't as tasty... so I'll update this review after I've tested a few recipes.

[Szava · Rating 3 out of 5]

this is definitely the kind of cookbook you can only use regularly if you work from home or have multiple free days in a row, not just the weekend, and I haven't mentioned the various types of grains/flours that are needed.

I definitely want to try a lot of the recipes, but i will need to do a lot of preparing and planning.

[Eileen Zhou · Rating 1 out of 5]

Not so Simple

It's a complicated cookbook. I love simple straight forward recipes. It's good for others, were some of the ingredients can be found and more intricate equipment used in this book.

[Bette]

Extensive writing on gut health and the intricacies of fermentation.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very interesting book about gut health.

[Angie · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maybe it’s that my sourdough skills aren’t there yet, but I’m less enthused about trying the recipes in this book compared to her other one. I also don’t do very many sweet bakes these days.

[Renee · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was super informative on how the gut, mind, and food is all together. The actual recipes are probably too out of my skill range, but overall a really informative and interesting read.

[Kari · Rating 4 out of 5]

The recipes in this book are modern, nourishing and inspiring. This is not a book for the beginner baker, but for someone who's a homemilling and sourdough enthusiast and who has the budget and will to try out new ingredients.

I've tested:
- Carrot and walnut cake with malted orange labneh (good, could up the sweetness a notch though)
- Chocolate brownie cake (good, but watch so that you don't bake it too long)
- Ethiopian honey and buttermilk bread (watch so that you don't ferment it too long, mine turned out too sour)
- Four-apple pie (this is a wonderful pie dough that also makes excellent biscuits)
- Raspberry slices (probably my favourite recipe in this book; these are great!)

In addition, I've made two of the diversity grain blends. Some of the ingredients are seriously difficult to source though.

[ASMR Cortercat · Rating 5 out of 5]

good foundational chapters, some nice recipes. haven't made many of them yet.