Perhaps better seen as a historical document, but still essential

books:


	• The Tassajara Bread Book: Revised and Updated Edition Edward Espe Brown Shambhala, 1986 - 145 pages average customer review:based on 45 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Get things flowing!

The Tassajara Bread Book has been part of my library for at least ten years. Upon first purchasing this gem with its gently textured cover and hand drawn sketches, I fell in love with the poetry that Edward Espe Brown, the author, offered in the opening of this cookbook.

His words, insights, and even the recipes themselves carry with them a humbleness and gratitude towards cooking, food, and life.

I'm amazed to say that only last week did I actually used one of the recipes (page 100, Bran Muffins) and it was scrumptious--not to mention helpful in getting things flowing (if you know what I mean!).

I intend to use many more recipes in the upcoming months. Next on the list is Corn Muffins (still on page 100--I figure why mess with a good thing).

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BUY. BAKE. SMILE.

I can't recommend this book highly enough. I've loved using it for more than three decades, and have never had a need for any other. Bread can be a little tricky, but with the Tassajara Bread Book even beginners will turn out perfect loaves. Using only this book, for years I was official bread baker for 34 of us sharing communal living--that's a lotta loaves.

For simple and nutritious meals, I also recommend Tassajara Cooking, a classic in vegetarian cookbooks. Other greats from the 1970s that have withstood the test of time are the New Age Vegetarian Cookbook and Laurel's Kitchen for basic fare; and Madhur Jaffrey's World-of-the-East Vegetarian Cooking and the Vegetarian Epicure for the more adventurous. As of this writing they are all available from Amazon.

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Perhaps better seen as a historical document, but still essential

When a classic book remains in print past the end of its useful life, what do you do with it?

I'm going to get one point out of the way right up front -- if you're a baking fan, you probably should get this book, as it was one of the most important influences on the rise of the modern American artisan baking tradition. I'm led to understand that it was also a major graphic design influence on much counterculture publishing (particularly the Moosewood Cookbook with handwritten pages, but the current edition has reverted to a more standard typeset layout. Though the author is a deeply religious Zen Buddhist and a vegetarian, religion and other dogmas do not dominate the book, making it palatable to all readers.

But there's an important thing about Tassajara that seems to get lost in the mostly deserved praised for the book -- Edward Brown is not and never was a professional baker, but rather a food generalist who happened to do quite a lot of baking. (The foreword, where Brown describes the naive, self-trained crew of a Tassajara-influenced bakery being laughed at by a pro, drives that point home.) Although the chapter on basic Tassajara bread is an exception, for the most part, this is not a technical bread book in the manner of Peter Reinhart's Crust & Crumb or Rose Levy Beranbaum's The Bread Bible, but a cookbook about bread in the manner of Beard On Bread. Again, this is fine. But if you're interested in baking like the pros, Tassajara will not be sufficient to your purposes -- apart from the first chapter, it's light on technique and baking science, and it uses volume measurements rather than weight, a big no-no for an experienced baker.

So that's how it goes. Tassajara captures for a modern audience a period where tastes were in flux and people were rediscovering the older ways after an overemphasis on modernity almost drove them to extinction. For that, you want this book. But if you're a pro in training, or an all-around kitchen geek, this book is only the beginning.

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Just what I kneaded!

This book was an amazing find for me. I have always been of the mind that bread baking is too much trouble and too much time for the results. But I wanted to try and fortunately happened upon this book. Not only can I now bake wonderful bread, but I also am gaining a deeper understanding of myself through the process of baking bread as I am guided by this book.

I know this may sound like a bunch of new-agey gobbledygook, but if you really want to feel like you're accomplishing something when you bake bread (especially if you are a beginning bread baker), this would be a good book for you. One of the things I like best about it is that it provides step-by-step instructions on how to bake bread in general, and then gives you the recipes to fit into the process. The book also tells you what kind of (basic) equipment works best. But it's also very open in saying that all of its instructions are merely guidelines, and the person reading it is left feeling free to deviate out of desire and/or necessity.

The Tassajara Bread Book is also an enjoyable read, and has some fantastic recipes in it (I use the egg bagel recipe to make Challah that is even better than the Challah from Trader Joe's!).

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You want to know Bread?

Hey, if you want to know bread and I mean the important stuff here it is, everything that was ever done with bread starts here...
Once you've got it you never forget it... I originally bought this book in 1971 and baked bread when I was in college.

There is nothing like that fresh baked aroma and taste...

Hey I could teach this!

Enjoy this great day~

Tom

reviews: page 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9

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