Tartine Bread by Chad Robertson by Chad Robertson (Chronicle Books) (IBRCookBooks)

The Definitive Baking Guide

From San Francisco's legendary Tartine Bakery.



The Tartine Way

The bread at San Francisco's legendary Tartine Bakery sells out within an hour almost every day. At 5 P.M., these rugged, magnificent loaves are drawn from the oven. The first cut yields steam and room-filling aroma, exposing an open and tender interior underneath the burnished, substantial crust. This distinctive bread was developed by renowned baker Chad Robertson over a decade of working with one of the finest artisan bakers in the United States and France, followed by another decade baking solo in a small wood-fired oven on the coast of Northern California. The following for this singular bread far exceeds the bakery's limited daily production.

Only a handful of bakers have apprenticed to learn the techniques Chad has developed.

Now it's your turn to make this bread with your own hands. Clear instructions and hundreds of step-by-step photos put you by Chad's side as he shows you how to make exceptional and elemental bread using just flour, water, and salt.

Chad then explains how it all works and shows how variations from this master recipe lead to wonderfully diverse breads. Soon you will be able to create your own unique and personal loaf. Also included are more than 30 sweet and savory recipes using the day-old bread to make sandwiches, classic soups, puddings, delicious baked French toast, and an addictive Kale Caesar.

For the home or professional bread-maker, this is the book of the season. It comes from a man many consider to be the best bread baker in the United States: Chad Robertson, co-owner of Tartine Bakery in San Francisco, a city that knows its bread. To Chad, bread is the foundation of a meal, the center of daily life, and each loaf tells the story of the baker who shaped it. He developed his unique bread over two decades of apprenticeship with the finest artisan bakers in France and the United States, as well as experimentation in his own ovens. Readers will be astonished at how elemental it is. A hundred photographs from years of testing, teaching, and recipe development provide step-by-step inspiration, while additional recipes provide inspiration for using up every delicious morsel.