Happy Spring, fair readers! As of yesterday, we’ve officially moved into the season of the world’s waking. Flowers blooming, animals migrating home, and that special delicate optimism about the warmth to come. And what better way to celebrate the climbing temperatures and temperaments than with some bread? I bake a loaf or two most weekends, and have hand-picked some great selections from WPL’s catalogue to get you going too!
The Little Book of Cottagecore: Traditional Skills for a Simpler Life by Emily Kent
This is a great general reference book for skills in the same vein as breadmaking. Cottagecore really took off as an internet aesthetic for its embrace of a simple life rife with handmaking, and cooking is no exception. If you’re looking for a warm and cozy all-in-one guide that includes bread alongside sewing on a button and making your own paper, this is the one for you.
I don’t know if you spend a lot of time on TikTok (I for one tend to see videos that have been reposted onto Instagram and Youtube Shorts) but if you do, you may well know that the recipe and cooking community is maybe the best bit. Everywhere you look, there’s a tutorial for someone’s warm and gooey pasta bake or crisp and crunchy air fryer mozzarella sticks. The short video style rife with jump cuts lets you quickly see most of the process, and the use of audio really augments the finished product (you can hear the crust crunch as someone cuts into it). This cookbook has all kinds of gone-viral options, including a lovely few bread and bun recipes.
Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza by Ken Forkish
No acid here, but plenty of heat! This is an amazing cookbook, so much so that I actually bought it for myself. For one thing, I felt terrible about risking spilling all over a library book! These recipes are hands-on, with no mechanical mixing to be found. Ken Forkish is a beloved baker out of Seattle and a man of tactility and precision when it comes to his bread baking. Flour Water Salt Yeast comes with an entire methodology for baking from start to finish, including recommendations for tools, techniques, and tastes (to pair with that fresh loaf!). We currently have our first copy of this book on order, so you will have to wait a bit, but hopefully, it comes soon with warm spring weather!
Check it out 