What does it take to create truly great bread? Jonathan Stevens, co-owner of ‘Hungry Ghost Bread’ in Massachusetts, USA, has pondered this question over thirty years of baking, and he answers it in his new book The Hungry Ghost Bread Book, which is a window into one artisanal baker’s craft and a guide to the wonderful, awe-inspiring world of sourdough.

Stevens believes that great baking is more than just process; it is a ritual that demands attention, physical proximity, close observation and continual adjustment, connecting us with a 10,000-year-old craft.

Sourdough, declares Stevens, is not a style of bread. It is bread.The humble sourdough starter – the microbial community used to inoculate bread dough – transforms flour into something truly digestible by humans, unlocking the nutrients that are otherwise inaccessible. Stevens’s unique approach to working with sourdough can be summed up by three ‘Mores’ – More Hydration, More Fermentation, and More Heat in the oven.

Inside The Hungry Ghost Bread Book you’ll find tools, techniques, insights, short-cuts, ingredients, warnings and a handful of haikus. Stevens shares instructions for creating and nurturing your own sourdough starter, as well as formulas for a variety of loaves, flatbreads, crackers, folds, scones, bagels and more, including:

• Eight-Grain Bread
• Fig & Sage Bread
• Potato-Thyme Fougasse
• Sesame-Spelt Crackers
• Rosemary Walnut Scones

 

For the adventurous home baker and small-scale commercial baker alike, The Hungry Ghost Bread Book offers stunning results: bread that bites back, heels worth chewing on and scraps worth toasting.