Modern Sourdough is wonderful for the aspiring homemade bread maker. I've always wanted to become this kind of woman! I understand sourdough bread making is difficult, but I was able to follow the instructions with good results. The book also had wonderful pictures.

I like sourdough, but making it is always a challenge for me, even with my experience with baking. I thought this was a great title on tackling sourdough, and thought the sourdough processes were explained very well - which is tough to do with some cookbooks.

Some great ideas for those who are already well versed in sourdough and want to see more ways they can use it or play with wild yeast. Not recommended for beginners.

I found this book to be too complicated for me unfortunately so I wasn’t able to test and review it to my standard for being able to recommend it. Thanks

I cannot speak highly enough about this book and my obsession with it! I have always loved sourdough bread and wanted to have my very own starter. I had read that you could send off for some, but did not know if that was still possible, and I did not know anyone who had it themselves. This book gave me a great way to find out how to begin my own starter and how to keep it going. This book had something that I have said before is a true indulgence of mine and something that I always crave, no pun intended, pictures! I always want beautiful pictures of what I am making and this did not disappoint. The recipes are so delicious and if you are lucky, come out looking just like the pictures. I do not say you have to have luck, but sometimes mine are not always perfect. I get creative, but do not worry, they all taste amazing! This takes an art that can seem incredibly intimidating, and make it easy to understand and take away your worries. Get ready for bread that will instantly become a favorite, make your mouth water, and be a go-to recipe. Thank you to the author for sharing her talent, the publisher, and Netgalley for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I love my sourdough starter (which has been handed down for generations), but I needed more ways to use it. This book had excellent recipes for additional ways to utilize sourdough in all sorts of delicious ways!

I LOVED this! I have been working to improve my baking skills and enjoyed trying new recipes - will use again to perfect a few.

Coming from a part of the world were 'bread' in the western context is rare in kitchens at home, I was completely unaware of what sourdough actually was till a few years ago. Since learning about its existence, the taste and idea of it have had a meteoric rise in my personal list of favourites. When I saw this available, I had to try and read it. 

The book is very detailed and almost perfect for a beginner like me. I am actually planning to start and invest some time in making my own starter later next week, and hopefully, I will be patient enough to see it through. The first step is an introduction to how to make a starter and to maintain it under different circumstances. Then follow basic and more complicated recipes using the previously mentioned starter. The actual effort seems to be in timing it all correctly, and the well-described and extremely detailed instructions should suffice to make a passable piece of bread, but it remains to be seen how well I work with those instructions. I have picked up a lot of tips from this book, and it has encouraged me to take a stab at experimenting with sourdough, and I have a feeling it would tempt anyone even remotely interested.

I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers, but the review is entirely based on my own affinity to sourdough bread and my reaction to the recipes included within the pages.

I have toyed with sourdough over the years, never getting it quite right, never quite grasping the whole process, never finding all the information in one place. And finding the recipes limited and bland.

This book has changed all of that for me . It really is a modern guide to sourdough.
Covering all the important aspects such as starters, folds and hydration,
It has a brilliant selection of sourdough bread recipes, including brioche, focaccia, ciabatta, flatbread, bagels and a wonderful selection of others including all combination or herbs and fruits.
There is also a pastry dough, a sweet dough a speciality , a jam and spread section too.
So many mouth watering recipes and photos.
A brilliant collection and everything you could wish to know or bake with sourdough.

I voluntarily read and reviewed this book, all thoughts and opinions are my own.

A beautiful and attractive, step-by-step guide to Sourdough. Offering a range of flavor profiles and pastry techniques, Modern Sourdough invites you in for an adventure. Can't wait to try the recipes!

When Michelle Eshkeri moved to North London in her 20s, all she wanted was a really good loaf of bread. When she realized that there was nowhere within walking distance with that bread she wanted, she decided to make it herself. And then she decided to sell it to others, and Margot Bakery was born. Her new cookbook, Modern Sourdough, is a reflection of over 100 recipes that the bakers and customers love.

Eshkeri has developed a way to present sourdough breads in ways that are unusual and flavorful. Her bakery offers savory and sweet varieties, with something for everyone who comes in the door. But she doesn’t just sell bread. She doesn’t just bake bread. She thinks baking is also good for the soul, so she offers up these recipes with the exhortation that anyone can learn to bake good bread. One of her favorite thing about sourdoughs is that even a baking disaster can usually teach you something about the process, and you can still eat your work.

Before you start baking, you need a sourdough starter, and she walks you through the day-by-day process of growing your starter, maintaining it, and using baker’s percentages with it to create some tasty breads. After getting you started with a basic sourdough, she takes you through recipes for Brown Bread, New York Light Rye, Geronimo (a 5 seed bread), Brioche, Focaccia, Baguettes, Challah, Bagels, and so many more.

Then things get sweeter, with pastry recipes for tasty treats like Croissants, Pain au Chocolat, Rugelach, and Danish Pastries, among others. Her sweet sourdough recipes come next, to tempt you with Sourdough Pancakes, Crumpets, Babka, Cinnamon Buns, Hot Cross Buns, Doughnuts, Panettone, Stollen, Sourdough Banana Bread, and Sourdough Rye Brownies, to name a few.

Then it’s back to Savory Sourdough, to feast on Pumpkin Scones, Sourdough Pizzas, Pesto Flatbreads, Onion Focaccia Tarte Tatin, and Aubergine Einkorn Galettes, and so much more. She finishes her sourdough recipes with Margot’s Specialties, from Gingerbread Dinosaurs to Salted Caramel Chocolate Chip Cookies, from Banana Split Muffins to Blood Orange Polenta Cake, from a Blueberry Bundt with Fondant Icing to Cheese and Onion Pie.

She also includes an entire chapter of recipes for all the things you need to pair with these sourdoughs to make the most delicious meals: Creme Patissiere, Almond Frangipane, Lemon Curd, Simple Syrup, Jams and Marmalade, Slow Roasted Tomatoes, and a Fermented Red Pepper, Tomato and Chili. Basically, you have everything you need to make a basic sourdough for a base and add anything that speaks to you.

Modern Sourdough is all about the soul of bread, about the warmth of handmade pastry, about the feeling of sharing something you have taken the time to make with the people you love the most. It’s a lovely cookbook, and as I am not close enough to Margot Bakery to buy some of these delectable items, I will just have to make some of them myself.

Galleys for Modern Sourdough were provided by Quarto Publishing Group-White Lion Publishing through NetGalley, with many thanks.

I want to be the sort of person who makes sourdough, but I just can't. I'll bake loaves of bread, cakes, biscuits and pies, but beginning and maintaining a starter seems daunting. Reading Modern Sourdough almost changed this for me. Eshkeri sets out the steps in a clear, precise way and I became so close to jumping up to get my starter going. I still might.

This contains a lot of recipes that requires a starter, but there are many to enjoy otherwise. I can't wait to try the lamingtons, Marina's apricot lavender slice and the goat's cheese, pear and walnut galette.

The photographs are beautiful, the recipes are detailed and there a plenty of new ideas to satisfy any baker.

This is, hands-down, the most exciting recipe book I've read in a long, long time. I now deeply, deeply want to go dough. Brb, buying loads of mason jars so I can make starters and stuff.

I received a free copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. As someone who has kept a sourdough starter and made bread before, what I love about this book is that there are many recipes other than bread. The rye sourdough brownies have caught my eye, Im also going to try the pumpkin scones, cheese scones, panettone, and sourdough banana bread. I have some digestive problems and fermentation makes it easier for me to digest foods. All of these recipes for scones, cookies, and even pizza with fermented dough give me the ability to enjoy treats I can’t always have. The book is beautiful as well as informative for beginners to sourdough. There is a section on starting and maintaining your own sourdough.

Modern Sourdough is FANTASTIC!!

SO many incredible recipes - simple, delicious, fantastic! A definite must-read for anyone who... well... likes bread!

I'll be using the recipes from this book for years to come!! Thank you!!

I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, so I know and love sourdough. I was delighted to see this particular cookbook at one of my book review sites, and I knew I had to check it out. The author owns a bakeshop in north London called the Margot Bakery. This book is simply divided into an introductory section which gives you basic skills and techniques required for sourdough baking, and this is followed by the recipe section which starts off with breads before going into other sweet and savory sourdough options (including pastries!). The book ends with a collection of specialties from the bakery that don't include sourdough starter.

As someone who has worked with a sourdough starter, I found her introductory section helpful. If someone was interested in working with sourdough starters and the resulting goods made from them, this would be a good primer for sourdough baking. In very detailed steps, she tells how to make a starter. Other information includes how to care for and bake with starters and the dough process. After this introductory section, she dives right into the recipes. Most of the recipes in the bread section are the standard and typical breads from various countries around the world as well as favorites of different ethnicities. Probably most cultures that enjoy leavened bread are represented here. Of course, there are a lot of French and Italian breads, like brioche and ciabatta; however, there are a few surprises as well, like Lepeshka (Jewish) and Jachnun (from Yemen).

Things start to get interesting when the book moves on to pastries. In all my time working with sourdough starters, I had never considered making pastries. There's even a laminated dough recipe that you use to make croissants, pain au chocolat, and several other pastries. There are definitely recipes that will get you thinking about sourdough baking in a completely different way. I love that. There’s a sweet sourdough section separate from the pastries; some interesting cultural staples like babka, panettone, and stollen. The savory sourdough section had more unusual delights, like Pugliese Potato Focaccia and Onion Focaccia Tarte Tatin. Some recipes from the basic bread chapter are repurposed in these later chapters. For instance, the brioche dough is used to make a recipe called Brioche Feuilletée and the focaccia dough is used to make Sourdough Pizzas. The author even gives some ideas to do with day-old breads, like stuffed twice-baked croissants and a bread pudding.

After so many sourdough wonders, I was surprised at the Margot Specialties section, but I am glad the author included it. Salted caramel chocolate chip cookies, what's not to like? And there are also other cookies and yummy sounding (and looking) recipes like Custard Tart with Caramelised Breadcrumbs and Blood Orange Polenta Cake. Fun stuff!

When I initially flipped through the book for my BookTube review, I had noticed there were both Imperial and metric measurements. However, I hadn't realized that, for the breads at least (not toppings and extras), these are actually done as weights not as dry measures. I will admit I don't even own a kitchen scale. I am a dump cook most of the time and cup-and-spoon measurer when baking. So, be warned, if you are interested in this book, you will need a kitchen scale and be willing to work with the weights of ingredients. The recipes look so good that I may be upgrading my kitchen tools.

Another thing that I noticed is that all of the sourdough recipes require either two or three refreshment stages before the bread (or good) can actually be made. The first refreshment stage is done with the entire starter that you have. Then 8-12 hours after that, there are one or two other stages. It seems that most of the sweeter breads had two refreshment stages, the second stage being one in which sugar was added to the starter. So making any recipe from this book would be a time commitment. It takes mere seconds to do a refreshment of a starter, but timing it around busy lives and schedules is what makes it tricky. And, of course, there is something about our modern human nature that wants results NOW!

The book is well photographed. If you love bread, you’ll be wishing you could jump on a plane to London and try some made by the hands of the author who created the recipes. Every recipe has a photo and truly gives a sense of what these breads and other baked goods look like. The author also included some detailed photos of more complex techniques, like braiding challah.

If you are already an experienced sourdough baker, you will be thrilled with the possibilities that this book opens up for you. If you are new to sourdough baking, this book provides good foundations and explanations as well as recipes that you can use in the early stages of learning as well as ones that will challenge you later.

I am sourdough fan, and have quite a few books on the subject, so the title of this book intrigued me.
To test the basic recipes in Modern Sourdough, I made both the Margot and the Geronimo. They were very successful and the Geronimo, packed with an interesting seed combination is definitely one to add to my list of favourite breads.
The initial chapter on making sourdough – processes from starter to final product are well explained and would a very useful starting point for anyone baking with sourdough. At this stage, I was questioning the title as the techniques described are traditional ; however the recipes that follow range from traditional baguette, focaccia, ciabatta to unusual variations like beetroot bread, apple raisin and rosemary bread, roasted red pepper, garlic and parmesan bread. There are a number of Jewish breads like challah and lepeshka, too.
I liked the layout of the recipes– complex recipes with clear division of ingredients for each stage. There are also useful photos for explaining complex processes such as shaping challah and babka, and the peppering of suggestions throughout the book such as the useful comment for proving a dough (in this case the laminated dough) at 24*C – “if the temperature is less than this, place a tray of warm water in the oven (not turned on) and place the dough inside”
Further chapters include making sourdough pastry (making laminated pastry) , sweet and savoury sourdough . I am not sure I would ever make muffins and scones from sourdough, though making pizzas from leftover focaccia dough does appeal. Again a lot of traditional recipes such as croissants, Danish pastries, hot cross buns, but also modern twists such as smoked cheese and beetroot pull apart bread and aubergine galettes.
The final chapter, Margot Specialities, includes some non-sourdough specialties such as gingerbread dinosaurs and salted caramel chocolate chip cookies. On first reading I found this chapter out of place in a book titled “Modern Sourdough” but then decided I was nit-picking. The recipes are varied and good, so why not include them?

Recipes include a ton of information and tips to help with successful bakes and the pictures are simple yet stunning!

This book came along at exactly the right time for me. I had a sourdough starter which I was using to make the same loaf of bread each week. This book gave me lots of inspiration for using it to make lots of new and interesting ways. The books also includes some recipes which do not require a starter. I was surprised by this but the recipes do look good so I will give them a try.

This book would make a great gift for keen bread makers.

Thank you to the publisher and Netgalley for an advance copy of this title in exchange for an unbiased review.

This appears to be the be-all end-all book on sourdough baking. It starts with detailed directions to make your own starter, and continues on to give recipes for items I didn’t even know could be made with sourdough. The photos will make your mouth water and should inspire the baker inside you. Note: I did not try any of these recipes (as I don’t have a starter ready) so I cannot comment on how good the instructions are. There are some delicious sounding recipes for spreads and toppings also, and then some non-sourdough recipes at the end, including cookies. There is an astonishing assortment of sourdough recipes though, and if you’ve been watching The Great British Baking Show, you’ll definitely want to pull this book out to practice “Bread Week”.

I do wish the cover looked a little more up to date, it definitely does not convey “modern” to me, at all. But the inside is useful and inspirational.

Thank you to NetGalley and Quarto Publishing Group for allowing me an ARC in exchange for an honest review. I honestly hope someone makes some of these loaves (and bagels) and brings them to my house to share.