Whole grain is a given

Roxana Jullapat's new book, 'Morning Baker'

5 Aug 2026 — 4 min read

Photograph by Kristin Teig.

Longtime readers of Wordloaf will know how much a fan I am of Roxana Jullapat and her book Mother Grains. Roxana is the head baker and co-owner of Friends & Family in Los Angeles, a bakery that has long leaned into the use of whole grains. Mother Grains, which was published in 2021, was, along with books like Jen Lapidus's Southern Ground, at the vanguard of the new wave of grain-forward baking books. Way back then (all of five years ago), whole-grain baking was still, unbelievably, something of a novelty, at least within the confines of food media and social media. These days, however, it's almost taken for granted that what grains a baker uses in their flours is as important a question as any other, no doubt in part thanks to the presence of these books on our shelves. They served as guides for home and professional bakers looking to make the leap from white, supermarket flours to whole-grain and regional flours with confidence, and remain essential references for those who use them now.

Which is one reason why in Roxana's latest book, Morning Baker—co-written with Ari Smolin—the use of whole-grain flours is a given throughout. The book includes a short introduction to baking with whole-grain flours immediately after the introduction, and a short, but handy guide to flours made from different grains at the back of the book—including lists of recommended, widely-available brands—but other that that, the book exists in a universe where where the use of whole-grain flours is just the way that it is.

Here is how Roxana puts it in the book:

Sometime after finishing Mother Grains and before deciding to write this second book, I started to look at my whole-grain habit as a spiritual practice and an ethical choice. I use these words—spiritual and ethical—with pause, never seeking to exclude or preach to anyone making different choices to feed themselves or their communities. But as a baker with the knowledge to make an informed selection, as well as access to these ingredients, it would be neglectful not to lean on whole grains without reservation.

Another way that Morning Baker differs from its predecessor is its focus. While Mother Grains covered a broad variety of recipes that could be made with any particular flour—cookies, quick breads, pies, even savory entrées and sides, Morning Baker (as you might guess) is all about breakfast items: muffins, biscuits, scones, pancakes, doughnuts, croissants and other laminated things, and breads of all kinds, many of them adaptations of the Friends and Family repertoire. As a consequence, there are far more yeasted or sourdough things here, making the book of special interest to us bread bakers. (The recipes, instructions, and troubleshooting sections of the whole-grain croissant chapters are worth the price of admission alone.)

There is a short section at the end of the book of "anytime bakes," which includes a handful of recipes for cookies, granola, tarts, and cakes. (When I spoke to Roxana about the book, she explained that the first draft was nearly twice as long and included many savory dishes made using whole grains—salads, veggie burgers, etc.—and desserts. When the team decided to narrow the focus to breakfast items, they chose to retain the best "all-day" baking recipes.)

Like Mother Grains, Morning Baker was gorgeously photographed by Kristen Teig, making all of the recipes look like something you need to make immediately.

Morning Bakes is essential reading for everyone who's already got a copy of Mother Grains on their shelves; if you have neither and want to understand how to use whole-grain flours in your bakes, get both!

I've got TWO copies of Morning Bakes to give away to a couple of randomly-selected Wordloaf subscribers (see below to enter). And for all of us, Roxana has generously allowed me to share two recipes from the book, which you can find here:

Finally: I'll be co-hosting an in-person event with Roxana at Sofra this fall, so stay tuned for the details!

—Andrew

Excerpted from Morning Baker: Recipes and Rituals for Breakfast and Beyond. Copyright ©2026 by Roxana Jullapat. Used with permission of the publisher, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc. All rights reserved. Photographs by Kristin Teig.