Breadsong: How Baking Changed Our Lives

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It’s recipes are easy to follow and adapt to suit your own tastes - it is filled with bakes you want to make (and eat) and Kitty’s casual and chatty narration is the perfect accompaniment to the recipes. Not only that but I’m glad to see how Instagram played a part as well allowing Kitty to connect with bakers all over the world and further her passion and skills through the community. From the texture and colors of the cover to the texture and colors on the pages, it was clearly made with so much love. This is not a cookbook; although there are recipes for the breads and pastries discussed, it is first person accounts from a father and daughter about how flour, yeast, salt and time can be transformative. Family, community, generosity, and kindness are all on display throughout the whole story and it’s beautiful!

Kitty and Al Tait's] story is as heartwarming as it gets, accentuated by Kitty's lively voice and infectious grin splashed across the pages along with her dad's adorable illustrations. It doesn’t surprise me how much support this family received on their journey including from teachers at Kitty’s school.One loaf quickly escalated into an obsession and Kitty started to find her way out of the terrible place she was in. It's the sort of book that makes me think "maybe I could be a baker and make bread all the time and bring joy to people! Many thanks to Bloomsbury and Netgalley for the opportunity to read this advance ecopy in exchange for an honest review. I made my own sourdough starter and made a loaf that tasted better than any bread I had previously eaten.

Then, one day, as Kitty stood on a stool watching her dad mix flour, water, and salt, she determined Al's gloopy, sludgy blob of bread looked a whole lot like her brain. It's got enough context of other things going on that you know bread isn't absolutely everything, but it's also very clear that the focus is the story of Kitty not being able to go to school ---> opening the bakery; it's not a complete autobiography. Full of worry, her parents tried everything, from new hobbies like reading and painting to medication and visits to a specialist. It is proof, if one was needed, that a loaf of bread can have the power to heal, bring joy, bring together a family and a community and give life flavour and purpose. It's profoundly obvious but there are just some things that are bound to help when you're not feeling well or when you are stressed and walking a dog or baking some bread or spending time with loved ones should be up there with things doctors prescribe.To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. I feel like saying anything negative about this book would make me a jerk, so if you're looking for a book with a positive message that has some decent baking recipes, you may enjoy this one. Throughout the two year journey, Kitty found ways to cope with her anxiety and was able to get mostly back to her old self but still credits bread baking with what turned things around for her. I've done the sourdough thing, and I'm just not sure I can face going back to the world of the starter. Breadsong tells the story of Kitty Tait who was a chatty, bouncy and full-of-life 14 year old until she was overwhelmed by an ever-thickening cloud of depression and anxiety and she withdrew from the world.

In reading the memoir side I did feel a little bad for her older siblings during Kitty's breakdown and the beginning of her bread obsession. The Tait's vision of baking as a joyous, life-enhancing thing is infectious, and their Miracle Overnight White Loaf is proof that “making bread is magic”. One loaf led to four led to forty and soon I was running a subscription service and then a pop up bakery.

I really loved reading this memoir and was totally obsessed by it (I read it over two days and probably also dreamt about it at night). The instructions are clear, and I liked how the recipes worked together as a collection - using bases covered earlier on to develop different flavours and bakes, for example. It seems the bakery needs no publicity but I would imagine this book will bring many people to Watlington! We get a glimpse of the ups and downs of growing a business while trying to still have a life away from work. My life revolves around me keeping my starter, known as Windy Miller, happy and burping, so I can continue to make the wonderful sourdough recipes found in this book.

In this uplifting work, the British dad-and-daughter duo behind Oxfordshire's Orange Bakery fold innovative recipes into a moving testament to the healing power of baking … Kitty's passionate creativity is as irresistible as her creations. The memoir element is a beautiful insight into a sadly very relatable theme - tackling mental health issues as a family while finding creative outlets for tension is one that I feel will strike a chord with a lot of us. It's the story of how they ended up running a bakery together, and while that sounds all heartwarming - and it is, absolutely - but it starts because baking a loaf of bread is one thing that Al tries to help Kitty with her crippling anxiety. The first 152 pages of this book are absolutely not my thing; they're well written, but simply don't interest me. I felt disappointed that the book was half filled with 'the journey' and I didn't want this part but bought it for the recipes.

An irresistible hybrid of intimate, uplifting memoir and mouthwatering cookbook, Breadsong recounts Kitty Tait's path from depressive withdrawal from the world to the healing power of baking loaves with her dad and setting up a bakery in their village, all accompanied by delicious recipes. Join the Tait family's journey from personal difficulty to family business glory in this delightful recipe-book-come-memoir.