Cooking & Entertaining

Baking with Ancient Grains: Mediterranean-Inspired Recipes for Living Well

This pathbreaking book encompasses a wide range of baking recipes with whole flours—from simple cookies, crackers, and cakes to flatbreads, glorious sourdough loaves, stunning tarts, and festive bakes—all while introducing a new balance in baking for modern palates.

Inspired by the bounty of the Mediterranean, Baking with Ancient Grains offers captivating contemporary recipes, showing how pleasure at the table can go hand in hand with a better diet.

This balance is rooted in three guiding principles: 

•Wholesome flours 
•Heart-healthy olive oil 
•Little to no sweeteners 

Comprehensive yet accessible, with an emphasis on helping novice bakers succeed, this book builds on the eating philosophy the author brought to her previous two award-winning ancient grains cookbooks.

The 75 nutrient-packed recipes, savory or just sweet enough, are tailored for today’s health-aware readers, using olive oil and trending flours including buckwheat, sustainable millet, and fiber-rich rye. Each chapter includes an introductory essay, and the recipes are accompanied by timelines, tips, variations, and baker's notes.

About The Author

Maria Speck is a veteran journalist and the award-winning author of Ancient Grains for Modern Meals and Simply Ancient Grains (both published by Ten Speed Press). Raised in Greece and Germany, Maria has a lifelong passion for whole grains and whole flours.
   Ancient Grains for Modern Meals received multiple awards, including the Julia Child First Book Award, The Health and Special Diet Award by the International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP), and a Gourmand Award. Both The New York Times and The Washington Post named it a top cookbook, and Cooking Light magazine included it as one of their 100 best cookbooks of the past twenty-five years.
    Maria’s second book, Simply Ancient Grains, won an M. F. K. Fisher Award for Excellence in Culinary Writing from Les Dames d’Escoffier International. It was selected as a top cookbook by The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, and on NPR’s Here & Now.
    Maria has contributed to numerous publications in both the United States and Germany, including The Washington Post, Saveur, Gourmet, Eating Well, and Gastronomica, as well as to The Harvard Medical School Guide to Healthy Eating. She also contributed to the multivolume Modernist Bread. Maria’s hometown of Cambridge, MA, has recognized her work with an honorable mention as a Food Hero.

  • Publish Date: October 13, 2026
  • Format: Hardcover
  • Category: Cooking - Methods - Baking
  • Publisher: Chelsea Green
  • Trim Size: 7 x 10
  • Pages: 336
  • US Price: $34.95
  • CDN Price: $47.00
  • ISBN: 978-1-64502-427-9

Author Bookshelf: Maria Speck