Sourdough for Cool Kitchens: A Beginner's Guide to a Reliable Starter, Your First Loaves and Zero-Waste Discard Bakes

Great sourdough, whatever the temperature of your kitchen. A clear, beginner-friendly guide to making a reliable starter, baking your first loaves and using every spoonful of discard. Most sourdough recipes are written for a warm kitchen. In a typical British home, where the heating goes off overnight and the worktop sits in the high teens for much of the year, those timings simply do not work, and beginners are left with flat loaves, sluggish starters and a growing jar of discard. This book puts temperature at the heart of every step. Instead of vague instructions to leave the dough "at room temperature", you get simple tables that tell you how warm to make your water and roughly how long bulk fermentation will take in a cool, mild or warm kitchen, plus the visual checks that tell you when the dough is really ready. Inside, you will find: A day-by-day plan for making a starter from flour and water, with clear signs that it is ready to bake with Water temperature and bulk fermentation tables for real UK homes, and easy ways to create a warm spot One master loaf explained step by step, then six more breads, including a seeded loaf, a light rye, a sandwich tin loaf, focaccia and pizza Shaping, scoring and baking with or without a lidded pot, with conventional, fan and gas mark settings Workday, weeknight and weekend schedules that fit around work and sleep A troubleshooting clinic for sluggish starters and flat, dense, gummy or very sour loaves Over 30 discard and leftover bread recipes, from crumpets, pancakes and Welsh cakes to crackers, flatbreads, Yorkshire puddings, brownies and banana bread Zero-waste weekly plans, starter and bake logs, a glossary and conversion tables Measurements are given in grams, with cups and spoons alongside for the discard recipes, and food safety notes are based on UK guidance. This book provides general home baking information. Sourdough made with wheat, rye, barley or spelt is not gluten free and is not suitable for people with coeliac disease.