Breadsong: How Baking Changed Our Lives

Product Information

Breadsong is also a cookbook full of Kitty's favourite recipes, including: - the Comfort loaf made with Marmite, and with a crust that tastes like Twiglets - bitesize queue nibbles, doughnuts with an ever-changing filling to keep the bakery queue happy - sticky fika buns with mix-and-match fillings such as cardamom and orange - Happy Bread covered with salted caramel - cheese straws made with easy homemade ruff puff pastry - the ultimate brown butter and choc chip cookies with the perfect combination of gooey centre and crispy edges. From there I learned she’d written a book (together with her father), describing her journey from suffering of anxiety to becoming a baker. I started off feeling a bit concerned as although the book sounded interesting and relevant to me, I really wasn't in the mood for reading a non fiction book. One part inspirational memoir, one part delicious and rustic recipes, combined to make a wholesome and inspirational cookbook that I’m proud to display on my shelves.

But the first half has so much heart in it that it makes you appreciate what goes into the recipes that much more.The first 152 pages of this book are absolutely not my thing; they're well written, but simply don't interest me.

I deeply appreciated the honesty that Al in particular presents here - that he and his wife did not see what was happening at the start, that they were bewildered by the change in their youngest daughter, and that they struggled to figure out what to do. I'm the person who normally skips all the backstory when all I want is the recipe, but this story was worth reading.I recommend this book to anyone who likes autobiography or memoirs, real life stories, triumph over adversity, community spirit and of course baking or consuming baked goods. Breadsong is exactly the kind of cookbook I love to curl up with - uplifting, inspiring, heartfelt and with wonderful recipes to boot. The first half is the most beautiful story about a daughter and her father and how baking bread taught them so much much about life and the second half is like a beautiful artisan scrapbook of recipes. I have read an awful lot of cookbooks over the years, some chock-a-block full of recipes such as Jamie Oliver or Mary Berry, and some with a more story-like feel, like Nigel Slater, but I’ve never read a cookbook with as much heart and soul and passion written in every word as this one.