Southern Ground
Reclaiming Flavor Through Stone-Milled Flour [A Baking Book]
-
- $14.99
-
- $14.99
Publisher Description
A groundbreaking tour of Southern craft bakeries featuring more than 75 rich, grain-forward recipes, from one of the leaders of the cold stone-milled flour movement in the South.
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR BY GARDEN & GUN • “I felt like I was there, on the journey with Jennifer Lapidus herself, as I read her beautifully written book.”—Peter Reinhart, author of The Bread Baker’s Apprentice
At Carolina Ground flour mill in Asheville, North Carolina, Jennifer Lapidus is transforming bakery offerings across the southern United States with intensely flavorful flour, made from grains grown and cold stone–milled in the heart of the South. While delivering extraordinary taste, texture, and story, cold stone-milled flour also allows bakers to move away from industrial commodity flours to create sustainable and artisanal products.
In Southern Ground, Lapidus celebrates the incredible work of craft bakers from all over the South. With detailed profiles on top Southern bakers and more than seventy-five highly curated recipes arranged by grain, Southern Ground harnesses the wisdom and knowledge that the baking community has gained. Lapidus showcases superior cold stone-milled flour and highlights the importance of baking with locally farmed ingredients, while providing instruction and insight into how to use and enjoy these geographically distinct flavor-forward flours. Southern Ground is a love letter to Southern baking and a call for the home baker to understand the source and makeup of the most important of ingredients: flour.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bread-heads will thrill to this deep dive into grains from Lapidus, an Asheville, N.C., miller who ditched law school to pursue baking, then turned to milling. Baking with locally milled grains, the author writes, helps "rebuild a more sustainable food system" and yields baked goods far tastier than those made with "industrial commodity flour." Lapidus gets granular about everything from high grain prices in 2008 (blame Goldman Sachs) to the path of 5,000-pounds of Austrian mill equipment that traveled through Tanzania and Tasmania on its way to becoming the centerpiece of her operation. Readers looking for recipes will have to be patient, as the introductory material and mini profiles of 20 artisanal bakeries across the South take up the first third of the book. As for the recipes, they are precise (with measurements in grams) and organized by type of flour—hard wheat, rye, soft red wheat, and "blends and outlier grains." Hard winter wheat is used in a Piedmont loaf and a "hippie" bread, while rye appears in a custard and a Nordic loaf made with beer. Other than a recipe for ciabatta rolls, the many breads covered are sourdough, and there are plenty of options for crackers, cookies, biscuits, and galettes. Ambitious home bakers looking to up their game would do well to pick this up.
