Bread Head, by Greg Wade

Buy this one both for the recipes and the baking guidance Greg provides. If you are looking to use more whole grains in your baking without compromising texture this is the cookbook you need. The Multigrain Sourdough is exceptionally tasty, lovely in taste and full of bubbles.The variety of recipes is wonderful and the troubleshooting section - 20 pages - is very helpful. This book is a keeper.

When I found out that Greg Wade was launching a cookbook about baking, I was super excited! Greg is an amazing baker and very well known in the Chicago region. I have personally had many of his baked goods from Publican Quality Breads, and his breads are also served in Michelin Starred restaurants in the city. They are truly fantastic. I saw that the book had great reviews in many websites, so it was really a no-brainer to buy it, even more so from the Janie's Mill website, so that I could support my favorite local mill, from where I personally get all of my flour from. The book not only provides recipes, but also has chapters dedicated to flour and the different types of grain (personally, as an experienced baker, I loved that section, even more so when he mentioned where we can buy better flour and talked about Janie's Mill!!) , as well as detailed discussions on equipment and technique, which are all very well explained and provide detailed pictures. Another standout is the Digging Deeper section, including tips for troubleshooting and so on. All the recipes in the book are very well explained with step by step, along with tables providing weight, volume and baker''s percentage measurements for all the ingredients. Some of my favorites are the Honey-Oat Porridge Sourdough loaf, which is absolutely delicious (specially with the Janie's Mill High Protein bread flour, which works very well with the recipe), the heritage cornbread, as well as the rye focaccia and the whole grain pizza dough. I am excited and looking forward to exploring more recipes! I would strongly recommend this book!

I have tried a couple of the the recipes and so far I wouldn’t make either recipe again without making adjustments. For example in the Brown Butter Wheat Chocolate Chip Cookies, any decent chocolate chip will overpower the brown butter flavor and pastry flour. Maybe a different chip like white chocolate, or maybe pecans would have been better. I bake a lot but by no means an expert. But I’m disappointed because I so wish that I liked the recipes more I did. Now I’ve got to figure out what to do with this cookbook.