A James Beard Award winner for Baking and Desserts, and the book that convinced a generation of home bakers that a jar of wild starter is a pantry staple rather than a project. Sarah Owens came to it the hard way: years of conventional baking left her unable to digest her own favourite foods, so she rebuilt her kitchen around slow fermentation and whole grains.

The 101 recipes run seasonally and go well beyond the country loaf. Sprouted grain breads, rye, brioche, biscuits, crackers, savoury tarts, cakes and cookies all get the same wild leaven, and the produce chapters follow the harvest rather than the calendar. Ngoc Minh Ngo photographed it, which is why it reads as beautifully as it bakes.

If someone in your house has been feeding a starter for a month and baking the same loaf every weekend, this is the book that opens the rest of the door.