Bake This Book

Erik Fabian talks with Andrew Janjigian about his new cookbook, Breaducation: The Science and Practice of Baking Bread at Home.

Andrew Janjigian is the head baker at Wordloaf, the twice-weekly, IACP-nominated newsletter about bread, grain, and baking that he launched in April 2020. Before that he spent eleven years as a test cook and senior editor at Cook's Illustrated and America's Test Kitchen, where he developed more than a hundred recipes, including a good share of the company's best-known bread and pizza formulas. He has written for Serious Eats, King Arthur Baking, Epicurious, ChefSteps, Edible Boston, Anova, and Ooni; he self-published The Bread Baker's Pocket Companion; and he invented the sourdough starter whisk. He has lived and baked in Cambridge, Massachusetts for close to thirty years.

Breaducation is a complete guide to the science behind home bread baking, with more than fifty recipes. It follows one loaf's journey from flour to cooling rack.

We talk about a ton of tips for making better bread, the bread "truths" he found to be false, choosing the right words to teach baking, and how this book came to be after years of writing online.

Where to buy Andrew's books:

• https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/737132/breaducation-by-andrew-janjigian/
• https://shop.wordloaf.org/category/books

More about Andrew Janjigian:

• wordloaf.org
• IG: @wordloaf

More About Sourhouse:

• sourhouse.co
• IG: @lifeatsourhouse

What sourdough cookbook author should we talk to next? Send your feedback & suggestions to: [email protected]

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Download your free Sourhouse Community Cookbook: https://sourhouse.co/community-cookbook

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Bake This Book is a trademark of Sourhouse LLC. 

Erik Fabian talks with Edward Espe Brown about his classic guide to baking and Zen, The Tassajara Bread Book.

Edward Espe Brown is a Zen priest, meditation instructor, teacher of vegetarian cooking classes, and the author of a long list of books about food and Zen. He was the first head cook at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, the San Francisco Zen Center's mountain monastery and retreat center.

His teacher, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, ordained Edward as a priest in 1971. In the years since, Edward helped found Greens Restaurant in San Francisco, co-wrote The Greens Cookbook with Deborah Madison, and has written several other cookbooks, including The Complete Tassajara Cookbook and Tomato Blessings and Radish Teachings. He edited Not Always So, a collection of Suzuki Roshi's lectures, and in 2007 he was the subject of How to Cook Your Life, a critically acclaimed feature-length documentary directed by Doris Dörrie.

We gather to discuss his best-selling The Tassajara Bread Book. First published in 1970, it became the bread bible for a generation of bakers, and in 2025 it was celebrated with a 55th anniversary edition, with a new foreword by Sarah Owens.

We talk about tips for baking with mindfulness, the connections between baking and religion, feeding people at a monastery, the childhood experience that inspired him to bake bread, the book's impact over 55 years, and the pursuit of perfection in baking.

Where to buy Edward's books:

• https://peacefulseasangha.org/shop/

More about Edward Espe Brown:

• peacefulseasangha.org

More About Sourhouse:

• sourhouse.co
• IG: @lifeatsourhouse

What sourdough cookbook author should we talk to next? Send your feedback & suggestions to: [email protected]

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Download your free Sourhouse Community Cookbook: https://sourhouse.co/community-cookbook

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Bake This Book is a trademark of Sourhouse LLC. 

Erik Fabian talks with Andrew Coe about his new book, American Bread: A History.

Andrew Coe is a Brooklyn-based writer and independent scholar of American food history. He and his wife, Jane Ziegelman, wrote A Square Meal: A Culinary History of the Great Depression, which won a James Beard Award. His Chop Suey: A Cultural History of Chinese Food in the United States was a Beard finalist and was named one of the Financial Times' best food books of the year. From 2010 to 2014 he wrote the "Good Bread" column for Serious Eats New York, covering the city's artisan bakeries. American Bread: A History is out now from University of California Press.

American Bread traces bread in the United States from early European settlers' first encounters with corn to the pandemic sourdough boom. Along the way it explains how supermarket white bread came to dominate our tables, introduces the nineteenth-century reformer who launched the whole-grain movement, and makes the case for no-knead bread. It also includes more than a dozen historical recipes for home bakers.

We talk about how Andrew researches bread history, how sourdough has changed over the centuries, what it's like to bake from historical recipes, and how America's idea of the perfect loaf has evolved.

Buy The Book:

• Buy direct from University of California Press and save 30% with code: UCPSAVE30

More About Andrew Coe :

• IG: @andrewcoeauthor

More About Sourhouse:

• sourhouse.co
• IG: @lifeatsourhouse

What sourdough cookbook author should we talk to next? Send your feedback & suggestions to: [email protected]

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Download your free Sourhouse Community Cookbook: https://sourhouse.co/community-cookbook

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Bake This Book is a trademark of Sourhouse LLC. 

Erik Fabian talks with Samuel Fromartz about his 2014 memoir, In Search of the Perfect Loaf: A Home Baker's Odyssey, and how his baking has evolved in the 12 years since.

Sam Fromartz is a journalist who has spent four decades covering food, farming, and the environment. He started at Reuters in the mid-1980s, wrote for Fortune, Inc., the New York Times, and the Washington Post, and in 2011 co-founded the Food & Environment Reporting Network, the nonprofit newsroom he led as editor-in-chief until 2023. He is the author of two books: Organic, Inc. in 2006, and In Search of the Perfect Loaf in 2014, which won the IACP award for literary food writing. He lives in Washington, D.C., where he bakes all his family's bread.

In Search of the Perfect Loaf began in 2009 with a magazine assignment to work in a French boulangerie. That trip set Sam on a years-long pursuit: first of a better homemade baguette (one that eventually won a "Best Baguette of D.C." contest against professional bakeries), then of bread itself. He baked sourdough in California, rye in Berlin, and country loaves in the South of France, and talked with millers, farmers, wheat breeders, and fermentation scientists along the way.

We talk about tips for baking with freshly milled flour, why bakers are so fascinated by the baguette, how his baking has changed since writing the book, and what his perfect loaf is today.

 
Where to buy Sam's book:

• https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/309299/in-search-of-the-perfect-loaf-by-samuel-fromartz

More about Sam Fromartz:

• chewswise.com
• IG: @fromartz

More About Sourhouse:

• sourhouse.co
• IG: @lifeatsourhouse

What sourdough cookbook author should we talk to next? Send your feedback & suggestions to: [email protected]

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Download your free Sourhouse Community Cookbook: https://sourhouse.co/community-cookbook

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Bake This Book is a trademark of Sourhouse LLC. 

Join us for our third season of interviews with authors of sourdough cookbooks.

Erik Fabian, home baker, cookbook lover and co-founder of Sourhouse will be speaking with authors of both new and classic cookbooks this season. 

We will explore the history of baking bread in America, examine this slippery concept of the "perfect loaf" and as always explore new recipes and stories of how/why these cookbooks came to be.

Check out this trailer for a taste of what is to come.

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More About Sourhouse:

• sourhouse.co
• IG: @lifeatsourhouse
• Free Download: Sourhouse Community Cookbook

What sourdough cookbook author should we talk to next? Send your feedback & suggestions to [email protected]

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Download your free Sourhouse Community Cookbook: https://sourhouse.co/community-cookbook

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Bake This Book is a trademark of Sourhouse LLC. 

A bonus episode recorded live at the 2026 Kneading Conference in Skowhegan, Maine!

Erik Fabian talks with Rose Wilde about her cookbook, Bread and Roses: 100+ Grain Forward Recipes featuring Global Ingredients and Botanicals.

Rose Wilde is a Los Angeles chef and writer who grew up in Ecuador, trained as an actor, and practiced human rights law before turning to baking. In 2011 she founded Red Bread, a microbakery that started with bike deliveries and grew into a stand at the Santa Monica Farmers Market; she has since led pastry and bread programs at LA restaurants. She is a Master Gardener and Master Food Preserver, and she co-hosts the Kitchen Tape Podcast.

Bread and Roses was named a Best Book of 2023 by both the Los Angeles Times and Bon Appétit. It is a guide to "brown-flour" baking built on whole grains from around the world, with recipes organized by the regions associated with each grain and many that fold in flowers and other botanicals.

Erik and Rose talk about baking with whole grains and botanicals, training your palate to taste subtle flavors, using sourdough in pastry, and why learning to bake your own bread matters.

Where to buy Rose's book:

• Eat Red Bread Store

More about Rose Wilde:

• eatredbread.com
• Kitchen Tape Podcast
• Eat More Substack
• IG: @trosewilde

More About Kneading Conference

• kneadingconference.com
• @mainegrainalliance
• @mainegrains

More About Sourhouse:

• sourhouse.co
• IG: @lifeatsourhouse

What sourdough cookbook author should we talk to next? Send your feedback & suggestions to [email protected]

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Download your free Sourhouse Community Cookbook: https://sourhouse.co/community-cookbook

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Bake This Book is a trademark of Sourhouse LLC. 

Join Erik Fabian for a (spring 2026) season 2 wrap up of the Bake This Book podcast.

What trends emerged this season?

Will there be another season?

Any final tips for bakers?

Give this final episode a listen and find out.

More About Sourhouse:

• sourhouse.co
• IG: @lifeatsourhouse

What sourdough cookbook author should we talk to next? Send your feedback & suggestions to: [email protected]

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Download your free Sourhouse Community Cookbook: https://sourhouse.co/community-cookbook

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Bake This Book is a trademark of Sourhouse LLC. 

2025 was the 15th anniversary of the publication of the Tartine Bread cookbook by famed baker Chad Robertson.

There is no doubt it is a popular and influential sourdough cookbook but does Tartine Bread still deserve its iconic status today?

Erik Fabian is joined by Tom Cucuzza (@the_sourdough_journey) and Eric Pallant, the author of Sourdough Culture, for a debate and discussion of the impact and legacy of Tartine Bread.

More from Tom Cucuzza:
- thesourdoughjourney.com
- IG: @the_sourdough_journey

More from Eric Pallant:
- ericpallant.com
- Sourdough Culture (available at booksellers everywhere) 

More About Sourhouse:
- sourhouse.co
- IG: @lifeatsourhouse

What sourdough cookbook author should we talk to next? Send your feedback & suggestions to: [email protected]

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Download your free Sourhouse Community Cookbook: https://sourhouse.co/community-cookbook

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Bake This Book is a trademark of Sourhouse LLC. 

Erik Fabian talks with Jennifer Lapidus about her cookbook: Southern Ground: Reclaiming Flavor Through Stone-Milled Flour.

Jennifer Lapidus is the founder and principal of Carolina Ground flour mill in western North Carolina. In 1994, she launched Natural Bridge Bakery just outside Asheville, NC, where she milled her flours in-house and baked her naturally leavened breads in a wood-fired brick oven for 14 years. Jennifer now sits on the board of Carolina Farm Stewardship Association and is co-organizer of the Asheville Bread Festival.

Carolina Ground offers a range of locally-grown and ground pastry, bread, and rye flour that are used in bakeries from VA to Florida and Louisiana and Mississippi and support a network of organic farmers, bakers, and millers invested in sustainable food systems.

Southern Ground traces the history of Jennifer's mill and the network she helped build. Celebrating the work of craft bakers from all over the South the book includes more than seventy-five recipes arranged by grain. It is a love letter to Southern baking and a call for the home baker to understand the source and makeup of their most important ingredient: flour.

We talk about tips for baking with fresh, stone-ground flour, creating community around projects and the history of the local flour economy in the Southeastern United States.

Where to buy Jennifer's book:

• https://carolinaground.com/flourshop/southernground

More about Jennifer Lapidus:

• carolinaground.com
• IG: @carolinaground

More About Sourhouse:

• sourhouse.co
• IG: @lifeatsourhouse

What sourdough cookbook author should we talk to next? Send your feedback & suggestions to: [email protected]

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Download your free Sourhouse Community Cookbook: https://sourhouse.co/community-cookbook

--

Bake This Book is a trademark of Sourhouse LLC. 

Erik Fabian talks with Miro van Vreckem about first cookbook: Sourdough Baking Book: From Sourdough Starter to Stunning Breads and Pastries. 

Miro van Vreckem is a Belgian baker at Norway’s Elt Bakeri...founded in 2022 in the mountain village of Sollia, on the edge of the Rondane, a national park, sells bread, pastries and pizza. In 2024, Elt was named one of the top bakeries in Norway.

His new book traces sourdough’s journey “from flour to crumb,” beginning with organic farmers growing grain and millers transforming it into flour. It provides step-by-step guidance for creating sourdough starter from scratch, with recipes for crusty loaves, pastries, and sweet and savory applications.

We discuss what inspired this Belgian baker to move to Norway, his path to founding Elt Bakeri in the mountain village of Sollia and how his book is helping create a new culture of bread in his adopted home...and of course his sourdough baking tips.

Where to buy Miro's book:

• www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Sourdough-Baking-Book/Miro-Van-Vreckem/9789059960725

More about Miro van Vreckem:

• eltbakeri.no
• IG: @eltbakeri

More About Sourhouse:

• sourhouse.co
• IG: @lifeatsourhouse

What sourdough cookbook author should we talk to next? Send your feedback & suggestions to: [email protected]

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Download your free Sourhouse Community Cookbook: https://sourhouse.co/community-cookbook

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Bake This Book is a trademark of Sourhouse LLC.