Baking Bread

The first English-language book devoted to Ukrainian bread, equal parts baking resource and passionate celebration.

Baking Bread is a vivid portrait of a living tradition, bringing together 50 recipes and the voices of 24 bakers, from beloved bakery founders to new home bakers who found solace in sourdough during wartime. With recipes for flaxseed loaves, mushroom-studded breads, tangy tomato rounds, and fragrant holiday paska, this bilingual (Ukrainian/English) volume offers insight into Ukraine’s regional grain culture and the bakers reinventing it today.

Part travelogue, part oral history, and part baking manual, the book spans bakeries and home kitchens across Lviv, Kharkiv, Odesa, Bucha, and beyond, while honoring the diversity of Ukrainian foodways, including a look at Crimean Tatar recipes.

Some recipes are scaled for professionals, others more accessible to home bakers, but all are driven by a deep belief in bread as both craft and comfort. With striking photography and essays on topics like ceremonial breads and the cultivation of spelt, this is a compelling and important addition to the global bread canon.

Hardcover. Color photographs throughout. In English and Ukrainian.