The Soup and Bread Cookbook, edited by Martha Bayne and featuring recipes from Oobleck regulars and irregulars Guy Massey, Kristin Basta, Chris Schoen, and David Kodeski, as well as a plethora of other Chicago writers, cooks, artists, and musicians, hit the streets this week.

Drawn from recipes provided during the three-month run of Soup and Bread, a fundraiser for the Greater Chicago Food Depository organized by Martha at the Hideout over the winter of 2009, the cookbook’s a great collection of 60 soups, breads, and miscellaneous baked goods. But don’t take our word for it. Here’s what Hugh Amano, proprietor of the excellent Food on the Dole has to say.

“The book is a significant document on the importance of food and community. It isn’t glitzy, nor are there any celebrity chef endorsements. It’s a super-local (is there any bar more local than The Hideout?) source of lore about and recipes for real food (what is more real than soup or bread?). It’s a book of genuine people from all angles of life sharing food and recipes with each other in an effort to help more others yet. As put forth by Martha, Soup and Bread is “an ‘everybody wins’ type of project”. And the cookbook is a beautifully designed, thoughtful extension of that.”

The book’s available for $20 at the Hideout, and at Renegade Handmade, Swim Cafe, Green Grocer Chicago, and Chicago’s Downtown Farmstand, the city-run grocery devoted to local, sustainable food and food products.

Don’t want to leave the house? The internet is here to help. Just click the PayPal link in the sidebar here and one will be shipped straight to your home for an additional $2 surcharge.