Artisan Sourdough Made Simple - Emilie Raffa Review (2026)

About the book

Artisan Sourdough Made Simple is written by Emilie Raffa, a professionally trained chef and home baker who also runs the blog The Clever Carrot. It was published by Page Street Publishing in October 2017 and runs 208 pages in paperback format. The book is built around Raffa's own beginner-friendly method for maintaining a sourdough starter and shaping her approach around minimal kneading, which is meant to make sourdough baking less intimidating for people who have never worked with a live starter before. It has become one of the more widely recommended starting points for new sourdough bakers since its release, in large part because of how directly it addresses common beginner mistakes.

Structure and recipes

The book contains more than 65 recipes, each paired with a full photograph, covering starter creation and maintenance, sweet and savory artisan loaves, pan loaves, whole grain breads, focaccia, rolls, decorative bread art, and recipes that use sourdough discard rather than throwing it away. Measurements are given in both grams and cups, which helps readers who are used to volume measuring ease into the weight-based approach that most serious bread baking relies on for consistency. Step by step photos walk through shaping and scoring techniques, which is often the hardest part for a first-time baker to learn from text alone.

Who it's written for

This book is explicitly aimed at sourdough beginners rather than experienced bakers looking for an advanced or highly technical reference. Raffa's simplified approach to starter maintenance and her minimal-kneading method are designed to lower the barrier to entry, which is exactly what makes it appealing to someone who has never baked with wild yeast before. Readers who already have a mature starter and a solid grasp of hydration, fermentation timing, and shaping may find the explanations more basic than they need, since the book spends real space on fundamentals rather than pushing into more advanced techniques like high hydration doughs or laminated sourdough.

Where it fits among sourdough books

Compared with denser, more technical sourdough references that dive deeply into fermentation science and formula percentages, this book trades depth for accessibility. That tradeoff is intentional and is the book's main selling point: it gets a nervous first-time baker from an empty jar of flour and water to a finished loaf without requiring them to understand bakers' percentages or detailed fermentation theory first. For readers who later want to go deeper into the science of sourdough, this book works well as a first step before moving on to a more advanced or technical title.

Who should buy it

Artisan Sourdough Made Simple is a strong choice for someone starting their sourdough journey from scratch, someone who wants clear photographs for shaping and scoring, or someone shopping for a gift for a beginner baker. Its grams-and-cups measurements and discard recipes also make it practical for everyday use rather than just a reference to read once, since discard recipes in particular help a new baker avoid wasting flour while they are still learning to keep a starter alive. Bakers who already bake sourdough regularly and want to refine fermentation timing, hydration percentages, or advanced shaping will likely outgrow it faster and should look at a more technically focused book instead. For its intended beginner audience, though, it remains a reliable, well organized starting point.

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