Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

I purchased this as a gift for someone who has used sourdough as a baking ingredient for decades. As someone who has had their own sourdough starter from my grandfather's sourdough start begun and maintained from a 1923 Mormon starter partition in 1979, a rye sourdough starter begun in 2010, and a milk-based starter started in 1989 by my in-laws (along with ten years experience as a brewer and a winemaker with yeast starts and soured mashes) we were interested in the author's take on sourdough. The book is presented well, but it's also marketed as if the author has a technical background in zymurgy and sourdough's place in yeast sciences. By the time we got through the first section of the book, it was very clear that this is not the case. The recipes are good. They are decent recipes, but the author's attitude towards sourdough is both somewhat ridiculous and cultish. Additionallly, any sourdough cookbook that has no recipe whatsoever for pancakes/hotcakes/griddle cakes is not only ignoring one of the most iconic sourdough foods, but also seems to skip over the primary historic foods made by pioneers WITH sourdough to provide themselves with a source of protein in rough living conditions. Her admonition that one has to treat the sourdough like an aged pet (you can't go on vacation if you have a starter you're keeping) and her definitions of what is and is not "real sourdough" are, in a word, uninformed and ridiculous. Likewise, her usage instructions are very wasteful. Anyone who says you have to throw away half of the starter every time you use it is definitely NOT someone who understands the basic concept of a sourdough or what one should do with it. In short, her treatment of the sourdough starter itself and care is both narrowly defined and limited to her own experience and usage, and doesn't explore the range of environments or levains that exist throughout the world. The author isn't a zymurgist, nor is she an expert biologist. Basic yeast science isn't her forte. Nor did she appear to understand that beer brewers, bakers, pizza makers and quite literally millions of other users of yeast have used yeast-based sour starts for thousands of years with stronger traditions that fly in the face of her yeast care instructions. However her techniques and recipes (aside from anything at all to do with the usage / care / feeding instructions of the starter) are solid. The bread shaping, proofing, and technical aspects of her baking instructions with sourdough are spot on. The problem lies in the fact that her cookbook attempts to show her as an expert on zymurgy and yeast culture, and she is clearly not that. It's beautifully photographed (there is obviously a food porn blog background) and laid out, but if you trust anything the author says regarding the maintenance of sourdough instead of going to a sourdough forum or doing research with actual bakers who have used sourdough for decades.