Subject: 23. What about Ed Wood's latest edition of his book?
Ed Wood's new edition of his authoritative book on sourdough,(World Sourdoughs From Antiquity, Ed Wood, 1996, ISBN 0-89815-843-5, Ten Speed Press, $16.95 paperbound, approximately 9" x 7") is an attractive book, well laid out, with 185 pages and 8 pages of colour photos. Some of the colour photos could be helpful to the novice in learning some of the techniques of bread making. Other colour photos are from the National Geographic project on ancient sourdough and are interesting for their historical content.
The book opens with Ed's experiences in investigating with others on a team how man made his first leavened bread in Egypt, a project supported by the National Geographic. These experiences and discoveries were the subject of an article in National Geographic in 1995.
Ed continues with an expert and thorough introduction to sourdough cultures, their care and feeding, theory, and of course, the making and baking of sourdough bread.
The book has a good index and around 120 pages of a wide variety of interesting sourdough recipes, roughly one recipe per page, of standard and exotic breads, together with pancake and waffle recipes. This makes for a good book to have on hand both for the novice learning and the experienced sourdough hand looking for something different.
There is also a chapter on baking sourdough in bread machines. However, I agree with Ed that making sourdough in bread machines involves more art than science. No bread machine on the market that I know of is really designed for sourdough.
Ed's company, Sourdoughs International, which sells sourdough cultures, is on the web, and contact information is at https://sourdo.com/
-Darrell
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