Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is undeniably a beautiful book... but it's not at all what I hoped it would be, and I'm really sorry I bought it. Most annoying to me was that virtually ALL the recipes require obscure ingredients... usually four or five of them. So far as I can tell, this book is geared toward the independently wealthy-- because it presumes an amount of free time and resources and space that only someone who doesn't also have to do other things, could manage. Every time I've picked up the book, seduced again by the beautiful pictures, I've put it down again in disgust because it's not designed for ME to be able to do it. I've been maintaining and baking sourdough for four years now; currently I bake eight loaves at a time (a version of Peter Reinhart's "Harvest Struan") every couple weeks. So I'm not a novice. Her approach simply doesn't work for me. I'd also been misled by the book's claim to be based around "whole & sprouted grains"; I hoped I was getting a book that used ONLY whole grains, and sourdough, like Peter Reinhart's "Whole Grain Breads", only more seasonally-oriented. Instead, there are a lot of recipes that use bread flour (which is white) and all-purpose flour (which is white) and other kinds of more exotic but still "white" flour... with some whole and sprouted grains added as a sort of bonus, presumably to make the baker feel virtuous. Ultimately, I can only blame myself for not having looked carefully enough at the recipes... lesson learned. Now, anybody want to buy a gorgeous coffee-table book?