Want yeast free bread and other grain-based breadstuffs? Want to know how to naturally leaven your yeast free breads with sourdough culture so that they’ll still rise and be healthy and wholesome?
We loved this book so much that we quoted it and listed it the must-have resources of our own book, The Do It Yourself Homestead. That’s love. 
Yeast Free Bread Unique
I think I’ve read every natural leavening book on the market and Beyond the Basics with Natural Yeast, by Melissa Richardson, is without peer. (Unless, of course, you’re talking about her first book The Art of Baking with Natural Yeast.) Here’s the scoop on Melissa’s new book – Christmas is coming, and all…
The first thing I want to point out before I get into the details of Beyond the Basics with Natural Yeast
- There are sourdough bread baking books that will tell you how to produce beautiful looking bread BUT they still call for isolated, commercial yeast in the recipe. My body does NOT like commercial yeast.
- You can find a few cookbooks that focus on natural yeast but they are, in my experience, often written for people who are at a much higher level of cooking/baking than I am. They call for proofing boxes (I had to look that up, too) and several steps and blah, blah, blah. It’s bread, not brain surgery – I only time for so many things in my day. Melissa’s books speak to us normal folks out there about how to get yeast free bread and other baked goods.
- Beyond Basics with Natural Yeast is easy to use, laying flat on your counter. It has thick pages that turn easily. There are great pictures and troubleshooting tips. The book is also priced very accessibly for those of us who love to cook wholesome foods for our families, but don’t have a lot of money to spend on every cookbook out there.
Cutting Out Commercial Yeast
If you need to learn how to bake with natural yeast and NOT simply add it to a commercial yeast recipe for sourdough bread, Melissa can truly help you learn how. Our family cut out commercial yeast for awhile because we had such a hard time processing it – it wreaks havoc on our gut health. Not using commerical yeast got simpler over time.
Natural leaven is a way to ferment grains and flours and that took some education. We’ve learned to ferment all our grains in some kind of culture (kefir, whey, buttermilk, leaven, raw milk, homemade sauerkraut juice, whatever) before we eat them to make them easier to digest. Learning to ferment and bake with natural yeast has been a Godsend for our family. Literally.
I was lead to this method of grain preparation and baking after months of prayer; prayers that usually went something like this, “Heeeeeeeeelp!”
Beyond Basics with Natural Yeast
Melissa will teach you in both her books how to bake with natural leaven, achieving beautiful and healthy yeast free bread. These books are wonderfully written for the total novice and the seasoned leavener. Yeast free bread is totally doable for the novice baker – you just need to learn how!
I absolutely recommend you purchase and use the first book, The Art of Baking with Natural Yeast
Beyond the Basics with Natural Yeast
Baking for the Every Day Person
One of the best parts about reading these books is her prose – she’s just fun to read, as anyone who follows her blog Bread Geek will know. Some baking books leave me feeling like I’ll always be on the outside of the fancy ingredient, equipment and style group – that’s just not how I bake. I need simple ingredients and even simpler techniques.
It’s not that I don’t appreciate fine baking, but I live in a real woman’s life with a real woman’s kitchen. I need to know what will work and how to make it happen.
Melissa writes in her book,
“The purpose of this cookbook (and my calling in life) is to make it easy for people to make beautiful, delicious, naturally yeasted bread and baked goods. I want everyone and anyone to be able to pick up these recipes and feel excited, not intimidated.”
Mission accomplished, Melissa – I do!
May I also just add that having a sourdough culture in your food storage program is a wonderful idea. A culture, once dried, can last pretty much indefinitely. You do NOT need to store commercial yeast!
What’s Inside Beyond Basics with Natural Yeast?
First of all, the book is spiral bound with a hard cover – this is what every cookbook should be!!! It will lay flat while you read it and bake. Thank you, Melissa.
Yeast Free Bread from the Fridge
The first few sections cover some basic natural yeast principles:
- feeding your starter
- beginning with a new starter
- some information on natural yeasts
- five critical keys to success.
One of those is to keep your starter in your refrigerator door and check on it every time you open the door – in fact that’s number one.
This is a good place to mention something that’s very important, especially if you’ve worked with natural yeast before and have a method you like.
Melissa’s recipes and advice are for refrigerator starter. If you culture yours on your counter-top, you’ll be learning a new technique.
Melissa points out two things that are important:
- If you try to mix these two methods, you’ll get mediocre results so commit to one – either fridge or counter-top.
- If you have some experience under your belt and are ready to take your natural yeast baking to the next level, Melissa recommends Chad Robertson’s Tartine Bread which uses counter leavened starter.
When I’m more comfortable with what I’m doing, I’ll check that out but for right now, I’m going to do whatever Melissa tells me to do. I’m not an artisan baker. I’m a mom who needs my hand held while I try to keep my family in happy gut health. I’ve tried every other method under the sun for healthy grain consumption and natural yeast is the one that feels the best and is the most manageable for my life.
Other Stuff
In the back of the book, there’s a troubleshooting guide, just in case.
Throughout the book, there are symbols next to some recipes indicating that they are suitable for vegans, friendly for diabetics and no-wait recipes.
There are also symbols for those who were the winners of the contest Melissa ran for new natural yeast recipes from her readers. Those winners (the people) are featured in the back of the book but their recipes are all over the place and they’re cool.
Only Yeast Free BREADS?
Nope, learning to use natural yeast isn’t just about learning to bake breads without commercial yeast. Though bread recipes are a large part of the book, of course.
However, simply put, you haven’t lived until you’ve eaten sourdough waffles for breakfast. How about
- pancakes
- muffins
- crackers (including graham)
- injera
- pita
- cake
- cookies
No, I’m not done but my hands are getting tired of typing all the cool stuff that’s in this book.
I’m so excited to try every single one of these recipes! I’ll report on my progress because I think this is an important topic for a lot of us seeking a healthier way to consume bread products. I’ve tried other methods and using natural yeast is the one that works the best for me. (I’ll tell you about my soaking/sprouting/dehydrating/grinding nightmares later.)
Maybe it will be the one that works well for you, too. The best way to find out, in my opinion, is to start with Melissa Richardson’s – The Art of Baking with Natural Yeast
Gift Suggestion for the Yeast Free Bread Baker
If you’re looking to gift these books to the bread geek in your life, you’ll want to include the following items:
- Purchase a few half gallon mason jars to go with the books. The leaven bubbles up and I have overflowed my quart jars too many times that I now use half gallons.
- A spurtle
is really the best thing I’ve used for mixing my leaven and would make another good addition to your gift.
- I love those plastic mason jar lids
, too, for covering the natural leaven while it ferments. In the half gallon jars you shouldn’t have to worry about your leaven coming in contact with the plastic unless you’re mixing a ton.
- They’ll also want some sort of basket (which would be nice to present all this in anyway) for proofing their dough.
- Toss in some light muslin or heavy cheesecloth, too.
Don’t worry, Melissa will teach you or the recipient of your gift how to use all those tools to make yeast free bread. For now, just trust me that all this stuff will come in handy!
Disclaimer
The publisher sent me a copy of this book for review after I signed up for the release tour saying something very undignified like, “I’ll be your best friend if I can review this book!” I’m not sure but what I might have squealed in delight, too.
The opinions in the review are my own. I love this book fur reelz.
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