Prairie Home Breads
150 Splendid Recipes from America’s Breadbasket
Symbolic of home and hearth, a good loaf of bread nurtures the soul as well as the body. America’s great bounty of breads radiates from the Heartland, rich in regionally grown grains and diverse in ethnic populations. Its offerings are born of the confluence of Old World tradition, New World ingenuity, and prairie abundance, resulting in a wonderful mix of the tried and true with the new and innovative.
Prairie Home Breads proves that not only is the Midwest where America’s grains are grown, but it’s also where the art of bread baking is taken seriously.
To create these 150 recipes, Judith M. Fertig visited artisanal bakeries, working farmhouse kitchens, rural church suppers, urban bakeries, farmer’s markets, and typical home kitchens. She found yeast breads as varied as Amish Pinwheel Bread and Roasted Sweet Pepper Bread, as well as naturally leavened breads like Brewhouse Bread and whole grain breads like Northern Prairie Barley Bread. There are also buns and rolls, as well as quick biscuits, popovers, and crackers. Along with elegant tea breads and homey muffins there are scrumptious coffeecakes, kuchens, and strudels. Last but not least, there are recipes for accompaniments and for using up leftovers.
Prairie Home Breads is also filled with rich stories of ethnic and regional culture, agriculture, Midwestern culinary traditions, and warm celebrations of Heartland food.
Praise
“Prairie Home Breads is a deceptively humble title for a fascinating book of modern homemade breads infused with the flavor of yesteryear. America’s heartland had been almost a secret cache of enviable breadbakers and Judith Fertig has given us a taste: family recipes, bakery specialties, a sense of place, a who’s who on the baking scene. Maybe we don’t grow our own wheat or churn our own butter anymore, but we can most certainly bake our own bread with the heart-to-heart soul of American bakers in every loaf.”
—Beth Hensperger, author of The Bread Lover’s Bread Machine Cookbook and The Best Quick Breads
“Prairie Home Breads is packed with so many interesting breads and fascinating stories from the Heartland. These unique, traditional breads should be lovingly made at home and shared with family and friends. You’ll never find them in a bakery. Create your own baking traditions using Judith Fertig’s inspiring recipes.”
—Amy Scherber, owner of Amy’s Bread in New York City and author of Amy’s Bread
“Prairie Home Breads reminds me again of what it is that makes bread so special—its ability to connect us to something deep inside. Whether a taste memory or that warm place of comfort, bread, and certainly bread from our own deep prairie heartland, expands our awareness of the universal implications of that simple but infinitely profound staff of life.”
—Peter Reinhart, author of The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, Crust & Crumb, and Bread Upon the Waters