The Complete Sourdough Cookbook [Plastic Comb]

Don Holm (Author), Myrtle Holm (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 1972

Distributed by the University of Nebraska Press for Caxton Press

From the right "starter" to delicious sourdough goodies, this book offers one of the most significant collections of sourdough recipes to be tested.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Don Holm was born in North Dakota in 1918 where he attended grade and high schools. Later he attended the Univ of Texas, Portland State Univ, Multnomah College and Lewis and Clark College. From 1936 to 1941 he traveled widely, served in the U.S. Navy during WWII.

Product Details

• Plastic Comb: 136 pages
• Publisher: Caxton Press (July 1, 1972)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0870042238
• ISBN-13: 978-0870042232
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #185,711 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Good stories, not so good recipes, July 3, 2002

By 

Michael Avery (Gunnison, CO United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Complete Sourdough Cookbook (Plastic Comb)

If you want an interesting book about the lore of sourdough - and the experiences of Don and Myrtle Holm, this is a great book.

If you want authentic, useable, sourdough recipes this is not your best choice. All the recipes use baker's yeast in them. Baker's yeast wasn't available to the sourdoughs who made sourdough famous, and it doesn't belong in sourdough.

Don and Myrtle admit you can make sourdough without adding baker's yeast, but they get vague on the details. I'd rather stick to a purist approach to sourdough and just use sourdough to raise and flavor my bread, and for that goal, this book was disappointing.

Instead, look at the books by Ed Wood, Peter Reinhart, or Allan Scott and Dan Wing.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointing intro to sourdough breads, February 9, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: The Complete Sourdough Cookbook (Plastic Comb)

I bought this book hoping to get started making my own sourdough bread. Instead, I found a mildly interesting collection of anecdotes, lore, and "recipes" concerning the history of sourdough in the American West. The instructions for making a starter were vague and brief. Most of the recipes called for commercial yeast anyway, making me wonder if the starter was even responsible for any rising that took place. I tried 5 of the recipes in the book and found them all to be bland and disappointing.

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointed, February 13, 2000

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Complete Sourdough Cookbook (Plastic Comb)

This is an interesting book to read but I was looking for an actual cookbook, with recipes, in a cookbook format, which this book is not. If you read enough chapters you can glean various steps to the sourdough process but there are no recipes in an easy-to-follow format. I would have preferred to have the story telling in one section and a recipe section at the end.