The Art of Sourdough Cooking: a Beginner-to-baker Guide for Bold Flavor, Better Bread, and Everyday Mastery

THE ART OF SOURDOUGH COOKINGA Beginner-to-Baker Guide for Bold Flavor, Better Bread, and Everyday MasteryR. A. CalkinsSourdough is a craft built from simple ingredients and careful observation. This book gives a single, practical path from first starter to confident, repeatable baking. It strips away jargon and rigid timing, replacing them with clear principles and observable cues so you can judge readiness by feel, sight, and smell rather than the clock.Start with a complete, day-by-day starter program that builds strength and predictability. Learn what a healthy starter looks and smells like, how to feed and maintain it, and how to revive sluggish cultures. The book emphasizes small, high-value practices — a reliable feeding schedule, sensible temperature control, and the difference between activity and readiness — so beginners avoid common traps and gain dependable results quickly.Understand the three things fermentation does for dough: gas for rise, acid for flavor, and strength for structure. Practical chapters translate those ideas into the work of the hands: mixing and autolyse, gluten development, folding and shaping, bulk fermentation, proofing, and baking. Each step includes plain explanations, troubleshooting cues, and what to do when a loaf is underproofed, tight, or lacking oven spring. You will learn to read dough so that times become ranges and your judgement becomes the tool that guides a great bake.Recipes move methodically from foundational loaves to an expansive, everyday repertoire. You will find sandwich breads, rustic boules, dinner rolls, pizza dough, pancakes and waffles, biscuits, tortillas, crackers, cinnamon rolls, and selected fried sourdough preparations. Every recipe contains ingredient weights, concise step sequences, shaping diagrams, scoring notes, and practical variations for different flours and hydration levels. Where equipment helps, the book explains why; where it does not, the book shows how to succeed without it.Included are chapters on adaptation and resilience: how to adjust procedures for cool or warm kitchens, how to scale recipes up or down, and how to convert between room-temperature and cold retard processes. A focused troubleshooting section addresses common starter and dough problems and gives fast, real-world fixes so you recover a bake rather than repeat a mistake.Photographs and clear sidebars illustrate key moments and common errors so you can compare your dough to reliable examples. The tone is patient and encouraging: the goal is not perfection but consistent improvement. By learning to listen to dough and apply a handful of dependable principles, you will bake with judgment and joy.For home bakers who want bold flavor, a strong crust, and tender crumb without mystique, this is a compact, practical companion. Build a starter that works, master techniques that last, and expand your baking beyond bread into creative, sourdough-driven dishes that enrich everyday meals.