Thanks to Page Street Publishing for the complimentary copy of Sourdough Every Day: Your Guide to Using Active and Discard Starter for Artisan Bread, Rolls, Pasta, Sweets, and More. I’m excited to share my honest review of this gorgeous new cookbook.
A note from the publisher about Sourdough Every Day
55 Creative Recipes for Your Daily Dose of Sourdough
Take your sourdough baking to the next level with Hannah Dela Cruz’s innovative recipes for rustic loaves, soft sandwich breads, flatbreads, crackers, pasta, breakfast favorites, desserts and more, using your active and discard starter in SOURDOUGH EVERY DAY: Your Guide to Using Active and Discard Starter for Artisan Bread, Rolls, Pasta, Sweets, and More. A self-taught home baker herself, Hannah guides you easily through all the steps of sourdough baking, from how to create and maintain your starter, to how to bake your first loaf, to making an incredible range of breads and more. She’ll even show you how to transform your extra discard into delicious sourdough-inspired treats.
Use your active starter to make classics like the Whole Wheat Country Loaf and twists on traditional flavors like the Mexican Hot Chocolate Rye Loaf or the Semolina Chili-Cheddar Loaf. Add an extra-special touch to your lunchtime sandwich with Honey Butter Rolls, and savor filled breads like Sweet Potato–Cardamom Buns, Garlic Butter Couronne and Cherry-Chocolate Babka.
Not to mention, Hannah’s brilliant discard recipes are the perfect waste-free solution for sourdough lovers who hate throwing away the extra discard after they feed their starter. She shows you how to use your discard in breakfast treats, cakes, cookies, snacks, pasta dough, dumplings and indulgent desserts, all enhanced with that signature sourdough flavor. With so many options for beginners and experienced bakers alike, this collection will get you excited to bake sourdough every day of the week!
- Paperback 176 pages
- Publisher: Page Street Publishing (December 15, 2020)
SOURDOUGH EVERY DAY is separated into 12 parts:
- Let’s Get Started
- Your First Loaf
- Crusty Rustic Breads
- Soft Sandwich Loaves and Fluffy Rolls
- Flavor Filled Breads and Buns
- Flatbreads From Around the World
- Fermented Pasta, Noodles, and Dumplings
- Crispy Crackers and Breadsticks
- Breakfast Favorites with a Sourdough Twist
- Easy Decadent Cakes
- Irresistible Cookies and Brownies
- Buttery, Flaky Sourdough Pastries and Tarts
My thoughts on Sourdough Every Day
Like many, my sourdough baking journey began in 2020. Since then, I have enjoyed learning not only how to make and keep a starter fed and happy but how many amazing ways you can use the natural leaven to make superb baked goods. So when Hannah’s book arrived I was thoroughly excited to dive in.
She does a great job running through the basics of building your starter, understanding how to use it, and learning the fundamentals of making your first great loaf, but I appreciate that she doesn’t spend half of the book on this section. The beginning section is helpful for new sourdough bakers with nicely detailed photos of what your starter should look like as you build it, but it’s wonderfully succinct so you can get on your way to making all of the delicious baked goods.
Though there are many delicious recipes for using an active, bubbly starter in this book, I especially appreciate Hannah’s recipes for using sourdough discard in particular. As a sourdough baker, I always seem to have an excess of sourdough discard sitting in my fridge just begging me to use it in something. Not only does Hannah provide ample opportunity to use my sourdough discard, but there are also a wide variety of recipes from sweet to savory for me to choose from. I can’t wait to dive into the Pork-Ginger Gyoza (pg 97) and the Moroccan-inspired Chicken Empanadas (pg 166), but I knew my first recipe out of this book needed to be one of her seriously delightful cookie recipes.
White Chocolate-Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies
Oatmeal cookies were the first baked goods I ever made. I still remember the mind-blowing pleasure of biting into a warm cookie fresh from the oven for the first time. Sweet white chooclate chips and tangy cranberries are the perfect complement to the savory notes sourdough discard brings to these cookies. – Hannah Dela Cruz, pg 148
A good oatmeal cookie will always have my number, so it was easy to choose Hannah’s White Chocolate-Cranberry Oatmeal Cookies as my first bake from Sourdough Every Day. I happened to have some dried cranberries on hand from Christmas baking and had just picked up some lovely Valhrona white chocolate fèves from our specialty market, so it felt kismet. Though Hannah’s recipe calls for white chocolate chips, the white chocolate fèves made for an easy swap when broken apart.
These cookies were seriously easy to put together and I loved that they included brown butter, which wasn’t apparent from the description, but I quickly realized when I actually started making the recipe. I firmly feel that brown butter makes everything 10x more delicious and this is especially true for cookies so I appreciate that it was included in this recipe.
Hannah’s recipe suggests scooping your cookie dough into portions of 2-3 tbsp for 20 large cookies. My cookie scoop is just shy of 2 tbsp so I ended up with 30 nicely portioned medium-sized cookies. I did choose to leave mine in the oven for a few extra minutes as well because we prefer a crunchier cookie outer, but the insides stayed nicely soft for several days. And when I say several I mean exactly three, because the cookies didn’t last beyond the third day before being completely devoured.
These cookies were nicely sweet with a lightly crunchy outer and soft, chewy insides you expect from a good oatmeal cookie. The flavor of sourdough was light at only 56 g (1/4 cup) in the recipe, but served to compliment the other lovely flavors in this recipe nicely. I can’t wait to try the rest of Hannah’s cookie recipes as well as her other gorgeous bakes now!
Who this book is a good fit for
Sourdough Every Day is a great choice for anyone starting out on their sourdough journey and wants to learn the basics or seasoned sourdough bakers who want to dip their toe into fresh and new ways to use their sourdough starter and sourdough discard in both sweet and savory bakes.
PURCHASE LINK – AMAZON
About Hannah Dela Cruz
Hannah Dela Cruz is a self-taught baker and founder of the baking blog Make It Dough, winner of the Saveur Blog Award for Best Special Interest Blog in 2019. She lives in Tucson, Arizona.
Check out her blog, Make It Dough, and follow her on Instagram and Facebook.
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