Writing the Fire
Yoga and the Art of Making Your Words Come Alive
(Tower/Random House, 2006)

fWriting the Fire! offers writers a new and visionary practice: using yoga to release the body’s inner intelligence and then support, shape, and inform the creative process.

Indeed, “writing is yoga,” declares Gail Sher, introducing the “writing asana”—an invaluable new tool for every writer’s routine. Her insightful and lyrical book, organized around eight thematic “immersions,” plumbs yoga’s wisdom heritage. As Donald Moyer, director of the Yoga Room in Berkeley, comments, “She encourages writers to approach their writing with the clarity and presence of yogis, and teaches yogis how to temper their awareness with the heat of words and images.” Writing the Fire! celebrates the fullest expression of our being.

 

From a Baker's Kitchen
Techniques and Recipes for Professional Quality Baking in the Home
(Marlowe and Company, 2004)

Twenty years since its first publication, From a Baker’s Kitchen remains the very best single introduction to foolproof professional-quality home baking. Gail Sher—the first head baker of the celebrated Tassajara Bread Bakery in San Francisco—created more than 100 clear, foolproof, and wonderfully varied recipes, divided into two basic categories: yeasted breads, ranging from white breads to whole-wheat, rye and specialty-flour breads (including recipes for rolls and buns as well as loaves); and quick breads, covering corn breads, spoonbreads, biscuits, tea cakes, batter breads, gingerbread, and muffins. Sher also covers every ingredient: grains, leaveners, salt, liquids, shortening, eggs, and “embellishments”; equipment; and most originally, methods and principles of breadmaking, with a special discussion of her ingenious “sponge” method, which no less a baker than Rose Levy Beranbaum (The Bread Bible) has praised as crucial to her own understanding of bread baking—and which remains the most effective technique for creating flavorful bread. Over 100 drawings are also featured in this reset new edition of the all-in-one classic baking.