You may already have one of Beth Hensperger cookbooks on your shelf. She has written over twenty, starting with baking books like this one but in recent years extending to countertop appliances like slow cookers.
This lovely bread book is now 22 years old yet its diversity of recipes still shines. Shines year round in a book that is divided into chapters for the seasons. There’s even a clever section on how decorate your breads by the seasons: flowers, greenery, eggs, corn and of course fall leaves are ideas presented to elevated your leavened wonders.
What will you find here? Well, it is January and there is a January section for the Winter Darkness chapter. You could try:
Blueberry Bread with Cardamom
Whole-Wheat based on a yogurt starter
Four-Seed Buttermilk bread
Buckwheat and Honey Oatmeal Bread
Italian Amaretto Sweet Bread
Of course, as soon as winter starts, we all want spring to arrive. But these breads just might mean that a lingering winter is happily offset by the warmth of exceptional breads.
From the other seasons of the year, here are some of the other quite distinctive and original ideas to be found in Bread for All Seasons:
Yeasted Sweet Cheese Strudel
Whole Wheat Cinnamon Twist with Maple Sugar
Golden Rum Babas
Bourbon Dinner Rolls [lots of bourbon!]
Jewish Seeded Dill Rye
Savory Three-Cheese Spirals
Sour Poppy Seed Rye
Zuni Indian Sun Bread
Potato Cinnamon Rolls with Iris Cream Glaze
Orange Bread with Cranberries, Dates, and Pecans
Whether it is for a breakfast sugar rush, or the foundation of a superior lunch sandwich, or the accented accompaniment for dinner, there are recipes here to make your dayfar more tasty, surely more memorable.
It’s often said that bread making made civilization possible or that, in fact, civilization’s first step was bread making. A few thousand years have not dimmed our joy for bread or stilled our imagination. Beth was a forerunner of the great American bread revolution that surrounds us. We have gone far, far beyond mere Wonder Bread. And this book is filled with tastes you deserve to sample and delight in.