Help me design a sourdough book that works for everyone

In the process of creating a sourdough book, I’m realising more and more how important a good book design helps towards making a baking book practical and enjoyable to use.

I recently discovered a table system of displaying ingredients for several different batch sizes that I really like, but I am wondering what others here think of it?

So far, I am really happy with the design I’ve attached below, I think it looks clear. I’ve been testing recipes from this design and have found it easy to use.

What are your thoughts? Do you like or dislike this approach? Is there anything I could improve?

I’m not sure at this stage if I’ll be keeping the timing table there. I’ve been writing a lot in the book about how different room temperatures affect fermentation, and how to adjust baking through the seasons to work with your natural kitchen temperature rather than needing to buy gadgets to keep your dough warm, so this table is one way of showing how this theory applies to recipes, but I am wondering if it clutters or confuses things too much?

What are your thoughts on including a timing table along with the ingredients tables?

I hope you don't mind some friendly criticism.  This is just my own opinion:  I think this page looks too full, too many numbers, too complicated.  Maybe you explain how to read this recipe elsewhere in the book?  I like the information, but I don't like the presentation;  I'm looking at it at the end of a difficult day and it just looks hard to me, like I wouldn't want to take the time to read everything and try to figure it out.

Like I said, only my own opinion;  please feel free to disregard.

Oooh! Wonderful knowledge to have. Please include it somewhere, if not within the recipe.

Unrelated to your query, is it preferment or pre-ferment?

I like your table presentation - saves hunting/converting etc.

My first reaction is the same as G's above -- it seems too cluttered. But there are a couple of things that make me want to back off on that. First, I'm willing to get used to a style that I'm not currently used to, if it's better. My wife is going through an ice cream book that uses non-standard recipe styling and it really is superior, but takes getting used to. The second point is that the top third of your "clutter" is genuinely useful but, for me at least, a table where you multiply by 2, 3, and 4 is just a waste of space. I would *much* rather you leave that white so that I can write in the notes that are actually valuable to me -- I know how to multiply.

Also, to my American eye, "preferment" reads like something else entirely. I did a quick scan of your page for style, noted that it's talking about preferment which must be some foreign thing, and then saw Joylynn's comment and realized that she must have intuited it right. Obviously, you don't need to cater to UScian English (and I'm sure our dominance of the shared language must be sometimes annoying), but it's a point of friction worth knowing about.

I like it. I've got 5 kids so I quite often have to double or triple recipes to get everyone fed.

For my 2 cents... I like the style. But I also deal with charts and numbers alot, so this style is familiar to me.

My one critique is that it feels like one chart. But it appears that the columns in the top most part do not flow down to the next two charts?

***Edit - And yes, while I can do math... it's nice to have it handy, as I also find myself doubling and tripling recipes alot.

Hi Kate,

I love this information and would find it helpful but it is too cluttered! And while our household has eight people and always scale recipes, a chart like that often causes me to mess up because I don’t have a good way of focusing in on the column I need (I will use the x2 ingredient from one column and x3 from another column because I am easily distracted unless I cover up the extra info with stickies which ends up bugging me…). And this is from someone who is always making up my own charts for everything!

In my mind, there should be a separate appendix/section of the book that cross references all the recipes with the amounts for scaling (I would find what I use most often and then copy that information by hand into the recipes I use most and my children know to follow my handwritten annotations when cooking from a recipe). Even better if the exact page number is listed for each recipe and it’s scaled counterpart.

The chart on timing is also very helpful, but I am wondering if it is better incorporated into a beginning “how to” section. Then, the recipe can have a basic time schedule with a note to refer to the chart on pg. XYZ for information on adjusting fermentation and rise times for different temperatures.

I prefer ingredients listed in the conventional order by quantity, not order of use. Especially, please tell me how much flour the whole recipe will require because I grind once a day for the next 24 hrs and it’s easier to plan ahead when I know I will need 3 cups for muffins and 6 cups for bread and half a cup needs left over to feed my starter.

One final note, if you do end up using the chart, please use consistent terms: e.g. bulk or ferment.

Thank you all so much for the honest feedback - this is just the kind of stuff I need to hear to make a book that works for many people.

I will be discussing the table format earlier in the book, along with full explanations of the techniques. There's also going to be a complete beginners recipe that runs over several pages, with lots of step-by-step photos and instructions.

My aim for the design I've been posting in this thread is to have the recipe on a single-page spread, and to also have multiple batch sizes in a non-confusing way.

I’ve attached a quick alteration below where I remove the timing table. Grey line will be removed if this ends up going ahead like this - it’s complicated to remove it so I’m just leaving it there for a quick screenshot now. What are your thoughts?

I've also attached an example of a recipe that does not use a preferment - this one does have the timing table on it though.

The reason for the table format is that I am getting requests for recipes that yield just one loaf of bread, but I also don’t want to create a book that means that people who want more than one loaf have to do a bunch of calculations.

The table system is one way of doing this. Another way is to have larger batch recipes on a separate page, or a little coloured box down the bottom of the page to give larger batch measurements. Out of these three options, I think the table system is less confusing, and doesn't involve repeating recipes.

Joylynn Hardesty wrote:Oooh! Wonderful knowledge to have. Please include it somewhere, if not within the recipe.

Unrelated to your query, is it preferment or pre-ferment?

I looked into this a while ago, and it appears that 'preferment' is the more common term to be used.

A lot of people also use 'levain' or 'leaven', but these can also mean different things to different people, so I prefer 'preferment'.

Kate -

I don't think that I dislike the "busy" tabular layout at all.  Whether it is necessary to specify all of those batch quantities, I don't know, but as long as a lay-flat binding is available, or even a good book stand for a sewn binding, it's easy enough to devise a scheme so that only the column relevant to the current batch size is visible.  A ruler and a binder clip or two will probably suffice.

I do hope you are able to offer a proper sewn binding if a spiral bound lay flat binding isn't available.  I have too many perfect bound books (even one ostensibly a "hard cover") which now have loose pages - David Easton's "The Rammed Earth House" and David Lyle's "The Book of Masonry Stoves" come immediately to mind; in the case of Lyle's book, I may need to teach myself binding repair, as I do leaf through it fairly often, and do not want to lose any pages.  On the other hand, I have purchased several books from Chris Schwarz's Lost Art Press which are nicely bound and were competitively priced, though none have full color glossy pages, so I know that it can be done without breaking the bank, even in these times.

And back to your layout.  What I do like is the timing suggestions, both vis-a-vis fermenting temperature and different baking methods.  I also like that you have given both volume and weight measures for the ingredients.  Until recently, I measure by volume (typical Murican), but have begun measuring by weight for baking in the hopes of achieving more consistent results.

We have been cleaning out my father's house over the last few months to prepare it for sale.  Among the items we discovered were a couple of my mother's cook books, with penciled annotations regarding amounts (often for double or triple batches), additions or omissions, baking dish dimensions, temperature and timing adjustments for cooking at altitude, etc.  Your "extra" notes, quantities and instructions remind me of her notes.  Hopefully, that's not overly sentimental of me to say.  But, at least for me, I need all of the help I can get when it comes to baking "natural" sourdough - leaven, water, flour and salt - since I have no personal mentor, and my efforts have, to date, been of somewhat mixed success - edible, but not always fit to serve to company!

Looking forward to your book!

Kevin

Kate Downham wrote: the table format

I think it works just fine. I also appreciate that it has both volume and weight in there, because it can be a right pain in the butt when you want a weight and it's in cups or vice versa.

And just a thought, wearing my editor hat-- whether you say preferment or pre-ferment is your choice. Generally you can tell by whether you hyphenate other words where this is also an option: these might include overproof, preheat, undercook, etc. Usually it's all or nothing, because when one thing is hyphenated and another isn't it makes nitpickers like me crazy. Editors have tools to fix this (and other similar consistency issues) across an entire book. Just for the record, I saw preferment and even though we are clearly talking about bread, I first thought of the OED definition, which is to be promoted or appointed to a position or office.

I'd probably put the timing column as a vertical sidebar in the left margin. It's slightly different from the rest of the info provided and I'd want it separated,  but accessible. That would also declutter the remainder a bit. Like others, it feels like there's just too much in the same format here and my poor old brain wants to get lost.

IHTH!

This comment made me go back and look at it.  I realized that I was misreading it too.  I was putting the accent on the middle syllable: preFERment.  I'm wondering if it should be pre ferment or pre-ferment.  I like the hyphen better if, indeed, that is what it is. Except for it being too blurry to read, I didn't find the formatting cluttered.  I think the font is a good size for older eyes.  In places you put the Fahrenheit equivalent, but when it's time to bake, you didn't.  It would be most helpful for your American readers to have that information right there.  Very exciting to be putting out a good cookbook on this kind of bread baking!  

Christopher Weeks wrote:My first reaction is the same as G's above -- it seems too cluttered. But there are a couple of things that make me want to back off on that. First, I'm willing to get used to a style that I'm not currently used to, if it's better. My wife is going through an ice cream book that uses non-standard recipe styling and it really is superior, but takes getting used to. The second point is that the top third of your "clutter" is genuinely useful but, for me at least, a table where you multiply by 2, 3, and 4 is just a waste of space. I would *much* rather you leave that white so that I can write in the notes that are actually valuable to me -- I know how to multiply.

Also, to my American eye, "preferment" reads like something else entirely. I did a quick scan of your page for style, noted that it's talking about preferment which must be some foreign thing, and then saw Joylynn's comment and realized that she must have intuited it right. Obviously, you don't need to cater to UScian English (and I'm sure our dominance of the shared language must be sometimes annoying), but it's a point of friction worth knowing about.

I could see this as a 5" X 8" loose leaf 3 ring binder book using Two pages for entering your columned file on the left view and the actual recipe/equipment/instructions on the right page. The book lays open as you need any specific recipe and your full information is shown without having to switch back and forth in the pages.

Recipes are great help mates, but, how often do you see one for 1 person, 2 persons, 3 persons, etc. Even an old dude like me KNOWS that you cannot just multiply a list of ingredients and have the recipe come out as if you are cooking for two people. It just doesn't work that way. Your chart of 1, 2, 3, or 4 loaves is getting there. But, what if you're NOT making loaves of bread, but regular sized muffins, or some dessert recipe, or a good stew? How much should you use for 5 people?

On your book cover, what gripes me about modern authors is that their name is almost always a much larger text than the TITLE of the book. What matters is what the book is about and that should be the primary text on the cover.

I have a Mealthy pot and I strongly criticized them for having recipes that have 15 items in them that I would never buy for a one time use, or even a several times use. I told them that if I had any meat in the recipe that I wanted to TASTE THE MEAT, not the spices, although there are times when spices are necessary, but not 15 or 20 of them in one recipe.

And yes, the preferment made me think that you were choosing one type of recipe over another. IF you use this you might think about adding an ed to the word as prefermented and that kind of solves the problem of definition of the word.

Good luck on writing your book.
I like your idea of detailing out recipes for cooking/baking for various sized occasions.
Maybe you'll start a trend in writing cook books that really detail the recipes on a couple of pages!!    :-)

Its looking very good!
You can look at the whole page, semi-closing your eyes, to see if anything stands off when it shouldnt.

Are you using more then two fonts? You can pick a font that has many variations in weight, condensed and so on.
I'd use less the bold weight. The numbers don't need to be bold.

In the screen, serif fonts look funny. Experiment printing a page or two - a sample at the scale you want the final product to be - and see if you like it. You can experiment printing various types if you're not sure. Picking a type can be the hardest part. Go for the first that "clicks", don't overthink.

In terms of spacing, it should be, "ascendently" like so:
space between leters < space between words < space between lines < space between paragraphs < space between columns < margins to the border of the page
this rule is when "objects" need to be together. If they don't, say, a table and a text, one allows them to breath. Like how you did.

I'd pick a diferent heading font, that looks very bulky. But its a matter of taste  For a book teaching how to cook good food - as in gourmet level - one can pick a refined classy font, that will make the page beautiful. Should be easy to find a serif that'll do the trick. Maybe the one youre using on the body, bigger.

About the introduction paragraph, try this on for size: instead of italic, loose the italic, make it a bit bigger then the body text. If you have a non serif version of your body's font, try it too.


Enjoy the process!

This has lots of good information!  For beginners and infrequent bakers, I think having the timing chart right there is helpful so one doesn't need to flip back and forth to different sections of the book and risk getting the pages messy.  (Oooh, you could make the pages plastic like those washable kids' books... OK, maybe not.)  

I prefer "pre-ferment" as it is more intuitive and I believe more "correct," however a quick search shows that many people indeed just run it together as one word, so I'm sure most bakers would not bat an eyelash at this usage.

I would make the photo a half page, leaving more room for the text to spread out.  The first page would be the title, your additional notes, and the charts, with more space between each chart to look less cluttered, perhaps even offsetting the charts on the page (timing chart more left-justified, pre-ferment chart more toward the right, and the final chart toward the left again.)  And since you are printing in color anyway, use different colors for the different numbers of loaves to help people like me not pull one measurement from one column and another measurement from a different one, accidentally.  (Do not use the same colors in the time columns though, this will help differentiate time from ingredients.)  Then the second page would have the half-page photo and instructions.  If you are doing separate color and black printing runs to save money, you could do grayscale columns instead of color.  That wouldn't be quite as big a contrast, but better than none at all.

I did miss seeing bold text stating "Ingredients" and "Instructions," to immediately draw my eye to what I needed, but after looking close-up at your pages, I think I could get used to your format and easily locate what I need without those.

Barbara Simoes wrote:In places you put the Fahrenheit equivalent, but when it's time to bake, you didn't.  It would be most helpful for your American readers to have that information right there.

I thought about mentioning that too, but only after I'd already posted my earlier reply.  I'm pretty well practiced in the art, due to work - lots of back and forth between Degrees Frankenstein and Degrees Science, also length measures and other engineering units (though I always have to look up the conversion factor MPa to psi).  But, lots of people aren't accustomed to temperature conversions on the fly, so that does seem to be a helpful addition for a general readership.

Kevin Olson wrote:I don't think that I dislike the "busy" tabular layout at all.  Whether it is necessary to specify all of those batch quantities, I don't know, but as long as a lay-flat binding is available, or even a good book stand for a sewn binding, it's easy enough to devise a scheme so that only the column relevant to the current batch size is visible.  A ruler and a binder clip or two will probably suffice.

Thank you for your feedback. I like that my extra notes bring up memories of your mother’s well-loved cookbooks.

I’ll be using the same printer that I used for “A Year in an Off Grid Kitchen”, so the hardcover edition will lay flat, and the paperback will stay open fairly easily on a stand or with some weights.

Tereza Okava wrote:

Kate Downham wrote: the table format

I think it works just fine. I also appreciate that it has both volume and weight in there, because it can be a right pain in the butt when you want a weight and it's in cups or vice versa.

And just a thought, wearing my editor hat-- whether you say preferment or pre-ferment is your choice. Generally you can tell by whether you hyphenate other words where this is also an option: these might include overproof, preheat, undercook, etc. Usually it's all or nothing, because when one thing is hyphenated and another isn't it makes nitpickers like me crazy. Editors have tools to fix this (and other similar consistency issues) across an entire book. Just for the record, I saw preferment and even though we are clearly talking about bread, I first thought of the OED definition, which is to be promoted or appointed to a position or office.

I’d never heard of that definition of preferment before - I'd only heard it used in the context of baking.

After what Joylynn and Christopher said earlier, I looked into it again - some of the baking books I have say “pre-ferment”, others say “preferment”, and some don’t use that term at all.

I tend not to hyphenate those other words that you mentioned, so “preferment” may be the most consistent term for me to use in this case.

The book begins with a beginners recipe that does not use a preferment, followed by lots of detailed information on sourdough baking, including explanation of what a preferment is, then the first chapter of recipes is all without preferments, so by the time a baker gets to a recipe using a preferment, they already have a lot of solid background information.

Barbara Simoes wrote:In places you put the Fahrenheit equivalent, but when it's time to bake, you didn't.  It would be most helpful for your American readers to have that information right there.

This is just a rough draft for the purpose of tinkering with design - the final book will definitely have Fahrenheit as well as Celsius whenever temperatures are mentioned, and all volume and weight measurements filled in too.

Jesse Glessner wrote:I could see this as a 5" X 8" loose leaf 3 ring binder book using Two pages for entering your columned file on the left view and the actual recipe/equipment/instructions on the right page. The book lays open as you need any specific recipe and your full information is shown without having to switch back and forth in the pages.

Recipes are great help mates, but, how often do you see one for 1 person, 2 persons, 3 persons, etc. Even an old dude like me KNOWS that you cannot just multiply a list of ingredients and have the recipe come out as if you are cooking for two people. It just doesn't work that way. Your chart of 1, 2, 3, or 4 loaves is getting there. But, what if you're NOT making loaves of bread, but regular sized muffins, or some dessert recipe, or a good stew? How much should you use for 5 people

The book is just baking, not meal recipes, so that makes quantities easier - most recipes are loaves, or numbers of rolls, muffins, etc, rather than batches to feed specific amounts of people.

The format is 8.25” by 10.75” - a nice big book that will be easy to read from a few feet away. If I were to put the tables on one page and the method on another page, it would be hard to find a place for photos, so I like the idea of having photo + tables + method on a single-page spread.

Ana Mendes wrote:Its looking very good!
You can look at the whole page, semi-closing your eyes, to see if anything stands off when it shouldnt.

Are you using more then two fonts? You can pick a font that has many variations in weight, condensed and so on.
I'd use less the bold weight. The numbers don't need to be bold.

In the screen, serif fonts look funny. Experiment printing a page or two - a sample at the scale you want the final product to be - and see if you like it. You can experiment printing various types if you're not sure. Picking a type can be the hardest part. Go for the first that "clicks", don't overthink.

I'd pick a diferent heading font, that looks very bulky. But its a matter of taste  For a book teaching how to cook good food - as in gourmet level - one can pick a refined classy font, that will make the page beautiful. Should be easy to find a serif that'll do the trick. Maybe the one youre using on the body, bigger.

The serif font is “Marion”, I used this for “A Year in an Off-Grid Kitchen” and really liked it in this. I also really like the big bulky top font for this particular book. I trialed a bunch of fonts for the cover of the book and this one really stood out to me as "yes!", and I think it works inside the book as well. Is anyone else here a fan of the big font? Or is it just me?

Donna Lynn wrote:
I did miss seeing bold text stating "Ingredients" and "Instructions," to immediately draw my eye to what I needed, but after looking close-up at your pages, I think I could get used to your format and easily locate what I need without those.

That is a good point regarding headings for “ingredients” and “instructions”. I will tinker a bit more with it, as my earlier tinkering made it look awkward when combined with the headings for the different stages of the instructions.

I decided to add an apple poll to the first post in this thread - feel free to throw your apple (or your thumbs up) to the statement you agree with the most about the design.

A couple more ideas attached:
1. Different colours in different columns. I think this looks too busy, and will only work in the colour editions of the book. Could maybe be useful for anyone worried about reading from the wrong column (although on different days I am baking different amounts of bread, so figuring that I always use the green column isn’t going to help if it’s a day when I’m making a smaller batch, other bakers might be the same with this.)
2. Putting lines in between the different ingredients
3. Putting lines in between columns as well as ingredients

Do any of these make it look easier to work with?

I like the first table (with colors) the best, then the third one next best.

My original thought was to just make the text in each column different colors, but different color highlighting behind black text really sets them apart too.  And you can make the highlight colors as bold or as subtle as you like.  I think rather than making it look too busy, it makes it look more clear, however that's based on seeing one table rather than the whole page with that incorporated.  In non-color versions, the gray scale translations might look different, or they might just run together.  You'd have to print a test sheet to see.

The table makes a lot of sense to me (and I thought "oooh that's really useful!")

For context: I am an experienced sourdough maker but taught myself 14 or so years ago from a teeny magazine article and lots of trial and error.

I am impressed with the fact that you are asking for feedback, thinking about it and willing to make changes!  Not many people would do that.  The one thing I find most important in a cookbook is that a recipe is complete on one page.  I HATE when ingredients continue on to the next page...it's not so bad if  it is the left and then the right side of the fold, but when you have to turn the page to see what else you need, that is horrible!  I think the Joy of Cooking does that, and I never use it because of that.  It was my mom's go-to, so I may be in the minority, because I know most people have this one.  Then again, how many use it, I couldn't say.  It sounds like you feel that way too, and are really making it work on one page.  I like the charts and I find it cleans it up vs. a lot of prose that you have to read through to get the information you're after.  For those worrying about jumping around on columns of ingredients, what I do is take a bookmark or piece of paper and cover the columns I don't want.  That works easily enough.

Last vote in apple poll was on May 27, 2025

I did some more tinkering with the table, and a way of displaying the recipe timing without a table. I have not included any information about adjusting water temperature, but this is covered earlier in the book, so maybe it is not necessary to repeat it with every recipe. What are your thoughts?

I like this latest iteration... it is easier to quickly locate whatever you're looking for, and doesn't seem too busy.  

If you're concerned about ensuring that people know about adjusting water temp without putting the whole shebang into each recipe, you could always just reference the explanation at the front of the book in each recipe that would benefit from it.  Like:  "*See page XX for how, why and when to adjust water temperature."  Or something similar.  Just one sentence to be sure anyone who skipped straight to the recipe would know to go back and read that bit.

I think people are uncomfortable with "preferment" (one word) because, in the US, "preferment refers to the act of formally bringing a bill of indictment before a court. An indictment is a formal written accusation, usually issued by a grand jury, that a person has committed a crime. The prosecutor then 'prefers' this indictment, meaning they formally present it to the court. This triggers the formal commencement of a criminal trial. "
It can also refer to promotions, as noted above.
In either case, at first glance it looks like it derives from the verb "prefer"
So better "pre-ferment", I think.
Interestingly, in The Perfect Loaf, Maurizio Leo uses "preferment" but mainly calls it "levain".

Kate Downham wrote:I decided to add an apple poll to the first post in this thread - feel free to throw your apple (or your thumbs up) to the statement you agree with the most about the design.

A couple more ideas attached:
1. Different colours in different columns. I think this looks too busy, and will only work in the colour editions of the book. Could maybe be useful for anyone worried about reading from the wrong column (although on different days I am baking different amounts of bread, so figuring that I always use the green column isn’t going to help if it’s a day when I’m making a smaller batch, other bakers might be the same with this.)
2. Putting lines in between the different ingredients
3. Putting lines in between columns as well as ingredients

Do any of these make it look easier to work with?

Kate -

For me, the shaded columns seem easiest when trying to "return to register" after looking away - just look for the pink (or whatever) column.  But, I have normal color vision.  I wonder if there are tints which would also be distinguishable by someone who is red-green colorblind.  Or, maybe even if the adjacent tints differed, in that regard (to different grayscale levels).  On the other hand, most people who are colorblind are men, and there are fewer men who cook than women, at least in my neck of the woods.  But, the men who do cook are pretty serious about it, in my experience (of those I know personally, I am probably the least serious of all, and I still do more of the cooking in our household than does my wife).

Kevin

I like the newest version better. I especially like that there is some consistency with Off Grid Kitchen. I do think that the shading is helpful, but with the lower box already shaded, shading the ingredient columns would make it too cluttered.