A review by karteabooks
Breadsong: How Baking Changed Our Lives by Al Tait, Kitty Tait

emotional hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

 

Breadsong is not only a cookbook filled with their recipes for bread, pastries, and cookies, it’s the story of how baking changed the Tait family’s lives. Aged 14, Kitty’s life had been thrown off course by anxiety and depression and her parents thought they had exhausted their choices of how they could help. Then her dad, Al, tried breadmaking as a distraction for her spiralling mind. Something about making bread gave her a pathway to recovery and hope and healing. It also led to them opening the Orange Bakery in Wallington, which Kitty and Al now run together.
 
 Told with humour, and grounded in a love of community, particularly through Lockdowns, Al’s understated recollections of seeing his child suffer and struggle with mental health issues and the quiet adjustments the whole family made to try and overcome this brought tears to my eyes. Kitty herself is a force of nature and her passion for all thing bread is so encompassing. Her story is one of hope and is so engaging and truthful and a real advocate to finding your own path in life. 

I was so happy to see Kitty find her way and enjoying something that she loved to do/ Kitty, her dad, the bakery, and this book deserve to go far. 

 I highly recommend this. I'm not sure if I can put into words how brilliant this book is. As I mentioned earlier, this is so much more than a cookbook, it is also a moving and lovely memoir based on true grit, determination and community. I read this on someone else’s review and completely agree ‘we truly need more Kitty’s in this world