Toast and Jam: Modern Recipes for Rustic Baked Goods and Sweet and Savory Spreads

Toast & Jam is such a promising cookbook at first glance, with beautiful photographs of mouthwatering foods with a large collection of recipes. Too bad it did not fulfill the promise on a closer look. What cooks and bakers Sarah Owens envisioned as users this cookbook is a puzzle. The book is not for the average home baker, as the recipes are beyond their capabilities, interest, and time. The bread section contains professional recipes with ingredients and techniques beyond the home cook’s arena. Ingredients alone will intimidate most: organic stone-ground flour, einkorn flour, hundred-percent hydration active sour dough starter, type T85 flour, high-extraction bread flour, then later three packs violet petals, grated fresh turmeric, rose-infused honey, and sumac fruit cluster, to mention a few. The language is food-science technical, and the writing is almost textbook-style. The selection of subjects is rather odd: part one is on breads/crackers/cakes/scones baking, part two on jams, condiments, and pickles, and so on. As professional bakers do, ingredients are given first in metric. Many recipes are long, with elaborate preparations in which Owens refers to preparations for recipes elsewhere in the cookbook. We are talking about half a day or more to complete a recipe. Occasional errors also slipped in.