Gingerbread from the Heart Book

The ho-hum title and cover photo of this book do not nearly do it justice. A James Beard award-winner, this book is a travelogue, an anthropological study, a bread baking guide and recipe collection, and a collection of authentic international cuisines.

The authors inspect flatbreads as a defining symbol of a culture's eating habits and traditions, often from firsthand experience. They have crafted their recipes so that home cooks in the developed Western world can reproduce flatbreads as authentically as possible, recommending creative adjustments to Western baking techniques and ways to combine common ingredients to mimic the different kinds of flours and flavorings in use in other regions. In addition to flatbread recipes, they include dozens of meal and condiment recipes, and suggestions on how to incorporate flatbreads in traditional or non-traditional meal planning. Sprinkled throughout the book are vignettes about their travels, both together and separate, giving a humorous, enlightening, or heartwarming view into rural and urban lives in some less-traveled regions of the world.