Start with flour, water and warmth. Catch the wild yeast already in your kitchen. In a few days you have a living starter, and Cynthia Lair shows you how to keep it alive for years rather than weeks, which is the part most sourdough books skip.

Then bake. More than thirty recipes take the starter far past the boule: Danish rye seed bread, English muffins, focaccia, naan, tortillas, buttermilk biscuits, an orange, pecan and fig loaf, and morning yogurt flapjacks. The book keeps going after the bread comes out, pairing the naan with Indian spinach and fried paneer, the biscuits with creme fraiche butter and sea salt, the fig loaf with figgy French toast.

No stand mixer, no proofing cabinet, no specialist flour order. Basic kitchen equipment, time and a lively starter. A hundred and ninety two pages in hardcover, published in full as Sourdough on the Rise: How to Confidently Make Whole Grain Sourdough Breads at Home. Short and friendly enough that it is usually the book that finally gets someone to make their first starter.