Southern Ground by Jennifer Lapidus

 

I received a copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review.

Title: Southern Ground: Reclaiming Flavor Through Stone-Milled Flour [A Baking Book]
Author: Jennifer Lapidus
Release Date: 4.27.21
Publisher: Ten Speed Press


Publisher's Summary
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.

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.


My Review
This book was a great resource to learn about different types of stone-milled flours but I will warn you it is dense. This is a baker's book, and I don't mean a person who dabbles in a bit of baking, I mean a serious type of baker. I learned several things but a lot of the stories and recipes were like a foreign language to me. If you are a serious baker interested in the detailed description of production and use of stone-milled flour, this is the book for you! I ordered rye flour online (because I couldn't find it at any of my grocery stores) and made the Rye Chocolate Brownies. I liked the flavor of how they turned out but even adding a few minutes to the suggested bake time was not enough to fully cook the center of the 9x13 pan. Next time, I would separate out the batter into two 8x8 pans or I would add several more minutes to the bake time.