Cookbooks: Honey & Oats

October 24, 2014

honey & oats cover

I have been interested in cookbooks for nearly as long I can remember. I picked up the habit of reading them cover to cover when I was eight or nine years old and haven’t stopped since. One aspect of this blog that brings me an awful lot of pleasure is that it grants me the opportunity to share particularly good cookbooks with all of you.

honey & oats spine

Since mid-March, I haven’t done as good a job as I would have liked with this cookbook sharing. Shepherding my own cookbook through the world took up a goodly amount of my attention and just didn’t leave me with a whole lot of energy with which to pore over the new cookbooks that find their way into the unsteady stack by my desk. I’m finally starting to work my way through the pile and I’m going to be better about writing about the best of the books that find their way into my life.

honey & oats interior

One book that I’ve been itching to share is Honey & Oats by Jennifer Katzinger. It’s a book devoted to baking with whole grains and natural sweeteners and it couldn’t be a better fit for the way I like to eat. The featured grains are oats (obviously), einkorn, wheat, barley, buckwheat, spelt, kamut, teff, and tapioca. The sweeteners include honey, maple syrup, coconut palm sugar, and sucanat.

buttermilk biscuits

There are 75 recipes in the book and they are divided into six sections – Scones & Muffins, Cookies & Bars, Quick Breads, Yeasted Breads & Crackers, Pies & Tarts, and Cakes & Frostings. Ten of the recipes are vegan and another ten are gluten-free. If you have a strictly GF household, this probably isn’t the book for you. However, if you occasionally find yourself needing to product a GF bread or dessert option for a party or potluck, it would definitely be a good addition to your library.

sweet potato skillet cornbread

I have marked a number of recipes to try. In the very near future, I’d like to make the Pear Ginger Muffins with Streusel Topping (barley flour, einkorn flour, and sucanat), the Buttermilk Biscuits (kamut and einkorn flours), Snickerdoodles (teff flour and sucanat), the Applesauce Currant Snack Bread (buckwheat flour, einkorn flour, and maple syrup), and the Sweet Potato Skillet Corn Bread (kamut flour, cornmeal, and honey).

barley walnut boule

As far as the look and feel of this book, it’s entirely lovely. It’s a sturdy, hardbound book that lays flat and open with just a firm press of the pages. The photography stays tight on the food and makes it easy to imagine the various breads, cookies, and pies in your own home. I do wish that a few more of the recipes had images, but knowing how much time, energy and money it takes to produce good food photography, I understand why there aren’t more pictures.

If you like to bake with whole grain flours and less refined sweeteners, you will love this book.

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5 thoughts on "Cookbooks: Honey & Oats"

  • This book is so great! I’ve made 2 recipes so far (Sweet Potato Skillet Corn Bread and Apricot Cherry bread) and they were both amazing! I’ve made the corn bread twice!! These are the recipes I’ve been searching for… no more white flour or refined sugar needed. The recipes turned out so well – the texture was so wonderful and the flavour is simply amazing. I am so happy I found this book and highly recommend it.

  • I’m so glad to find someone else who has this book because I’ve been trying to figure something out! In the opening, she says that she will include a 50% AP flour option for people who aren’t totally on board with whole grains yet. In most recipes, the 50% option is with einkorn, which makes me think that when she says “einkorn flour” she means AP einkorn. But she says that you can exchange the einkorn in the recipes with standard whole wheat flour… which makes me think she’s talking about whole einkorn. Arg!

    Also, does anyone know how easy it is to exchange the different varieties of wheat? Like spelt, kamut and einkorn are all listed (plus whole wheat pastry flour) and buying 4 kinds of wheat flour (not to mention the whole and light spelt) seems a bit much.