I really wanted to get into sourdough, but I was feeling very intimidated and overwhelmed by the whole process. There are so many steps, and I had been unsuccessful in making my own starter. I took a chance on this book, and it has not disappointed. The instructions are SUPER crystal clear and easy to follow. There are even QR codes throughout if you need to see something demonstrated. (And I have only scratched the surface of the book - there are so many recipes in this book. I can't wait to try them all.) HIGHLY RECOMMENDED by someone who had a mental block for YEARS over the whole sourdough process. If you are in doubt, get this book!

Love love this book! Maurizio's explanation on how to bake sourdough is perfect for beginners, I've baked several loaves (before buying his book) with no luck, I have a few other books on sourdough on my kindle that are for beginners but was still very confusing. "The Perfect loaf" explained and simplified how to bake sourdough from creating the perfect starter to baking the perfect loaf. This book has given me confidence in baking sourdough as I have baked really great sourdough bread, cinnamon rolls, waffles and biscotti following this book. There are recipes for using the discard starter so no waist on dumping more than half of your starter when feeding it. Recipes are easy to follow and show a time line and has QR codes that take you YouTube video if you are more of a visual learner as well as pictures in the book. He tells you what to look for in your starter, dough so you are not guessing and helps you to learn how to trouble shoot, this book is a guide that teaches you what works for your environment. Great great book! I prefer an actual book over Kindle. If you are having trouble with baking and understanding sourdough get this book.

This is the best sour dough cookbook I’ve found. Recipes are broken down well and tons of information behind the science of working with sour dough.

It costs a little more ....... and it will save you a whole lot more in purchases, reward you with better bakes, and push your happiness quotient through the relative roof of accomplishment! Seriously this baking bible (The Perfect Loaf) or FWSY are the most informative and best written and illustrated of my 12 bake books!

I bought a couple of top line leading books in sourdough making. But this book was the best of them all. Maurizio breaks everything down and isolates the problem for each situation. Every page is full of wisdom and clear photos, timelines, and diagrams for both beginner and advanced bakers to understand. My breads were coming out pretty good but when I started really getting the breakdown with his detailed instructions and troubleshooting, problems went away! I am getting nice crumb and excellent crust and excellent taste in my breads. The book is easy to read and easy to follow. And yeah if you are a professional, which I am not, it is full of excellent material. Every page is full of beautiful photos as well. 431 pages, lots of photos, and even QR codes to scan with your phone that takes you right over to YouTube to see a demonstration of exactly what he is referring to in the book! The book is loaded with these instructional videos along with the text and photos for step-by-step and you cannot go wrong. I highly recommend this book as a top notch number one must-have if you are into sourdough bread making! Maurizio Leo has such a passion for his work. He troubleshoots and breaks everything down and provides remedies and solutions to the sourdough process. If you've been baking sourdough for any length of time, you come to the conclusion that it is a continual moving target. Since atmosphere, room temperature, strength of your levain, types of flour, quantity of water, and time - have everything to do with the end results. Maurizio takes you through the process in detail but also makes it easy to follow. Yes, there is an intuitive part to this as well which comes with experience. The book has 431 pages including a very minimal index in the back. The content page in the front is also limited but the but has an sensible progression whereby you can find what you are looking for. My only crit would be that it needs a more extensive index, more thorough, so that there is less time flipping to find the content but between the index and the front content, you should be able to find your answers. The book has many other sourdough recipes including pizza, flatbread, buns, rolls, sweets, and so on. It is my go-to book for everything sourdough. Plus Maurizio is so good about answering questions, emails and so on. He is an amazing person full of goodwill and good heart. You cannot go wrong with this book and it is worth far more than the price in my opinion!

This is an awesome cookbook for any baker! Leo gives perfect instructions, tips, tricks and photos along the way, to guide you to bake an excellent product. The information is laid out in a useful, thoughtful manner. It’s easy to find any topic you’re looking for either in chapters or the Index. I waited for this spiral version to go on sale before purchasing, but I’m disappointed in how the binding holds up after use. The wire binding has started to twist and bend at the bottom and now it’s cumbersome to flip the pages back-and-forth. This is nothing against Leo the book is perfect but The binding and spiral wiring is disappointing. I would recommend buying the hardcopy of this book.