Customer Reviews

The Tassajara Bread Book

5 star:		(69)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If you want to live simply but not blandly, this is the only bread book you need. Written in a gentle voice, this book encourages all to bake wholesome, delicious breads - sweet and savory - and love every bite. Now, I have many bread cookbooks and I do love all of them - from Elizabeth David to Amy to Laurel - but I cannot stress how much pure enjoyment and encouragement I've gotten from this modest tome. Reading his words and following his advice (which is open and even inexact at times) has always led me to greater independence and faith in my own instincts and never fails to turn out wonderful results!

I wrote my first review of this book back in 2003 when I had first learned to bake bread. I didn't have much to say about it, other than I liked it.

It is now more than three years later. This is the book that I give to people as a gift quite often. I suggest it to people interested in learning to bake bread. I even suggest the book to people with stress problems since I've found that hand kneading dough can be quite therapeutic.

There are a lot of great bread books out there, and a literal mountain of bad books. This one doesn't dwell on the science of bread, or dedicate pages to explaining how modern flour is inferior to old flour, or to rallying against modern yeast as opposed to traditional sourdough. The author merely gives some relatively simple insutrctions which, if followed, will produce praiseworthy bread.

If you want to learn to bake bread, I suggest never using a food processor or stand mixer for it. At least in the beginning. Mixing by hand provides familiarity with the materials and the techniques. Save the gadgets for after you know how to bake bread. This book is purely about hand mixing and hand kneading.

This book is THE BEST for anyone with zero experience baking bread - or rolls, or bagels, or breakfast pastries -- this book covers EVERYTHING.

Best stuff:
1) Clear, very detailed instuctions on all the nuts-n-bolts tecniques that seem so intimidating, like how to knead the dough properly (well described and well illustrated)
2) Wonderful array of variations on the basic bread recipe
3) breakfast pastry section will really wow anyone coming over for brunch
4) Said it before but I'll say it again: Anyone who wants to learn to bake bread will succeed. Really, anyone.
5) Bread machines simple do not turn out anything as good as the 'real deal'.

Hard-to-find book but WELL worth the search.

I have for years relied on a bread machine to indulge my desire for home-baked bread. No more. This book is a revelation, a gem.

If you scrupulously follow the introductory instructions for the basic Tassajara bread, you will be able to make any kind of bread from scratch, by hand, guaranteed. Just now I have two gorgeous loaves of millet bread in the oven, and this is just my second time making bread by hand. Thea author, Edward Brown, tells you precisely how the dough should look, how it should feel, and how to know when you are finished kneading. You simply cannot go wrong.

I have the other "bible" of bread making, James Beard's book, and, much as I adore James Beard, I prefer the Tassajara method of bread-making. There is less guesswork, and less seems to go wrong.

And I love the spiritual side, the bliss-out and enjoy-the-moment side to the book, as well. I will never, ever part with this book.

Mr. Brown writes from the perspective of starting as a cook's helper, learning cooking by trail-and-error, and graduating to head cook of a monastery kitchen. His writing also reflects a Zen monk's reverence for food and the ritual of cooking.

The Tassajara Basic Yeasted Bread is discussed in detail. Chapters on yeasted bread, yeasted pastry, unyeasted bread, sourdough, pancakes, muffins and quickbreads, and desserts follow. Recipes stress the use of natural foods and grains. Most recipes include alternate ingredient suggestions.

I first used this cookbook to make the Tassajara Basic Yeasted Bread. I never before had made bread. The whole wheat dough was stiff. Mixing the dough was extremely hard work. Kneading the dough was agony. Making this bread taught me respect both for bread and for anyone who makes bread.

I recently rediscovered this cookbook while seeking a cornbread/muffin recipe that did not use shortening. I made muffins substituting molasses for honey and adding marjoram. My muffins were excellent both alone and with bean dishes.

Cooking is vastly underrated. One who cooks economically and maintains a clean, safe household is free to "Be All That You Can Be", an accomplishment that would make an Army drill sergeant or a Zen master proud. Mr. Brown's writing reflects that pride.

Since I'm out of school and too young to get a job, this summer I've spent most of the time going through cookbooks and baking. The other day my mom showed my this book. The book intrigued me, the whole Zen stuff. The next day I made the bread all by myself! It was delicious! And easy! I was so excited that the bread turned out well I made muffins as well. One hint though. The last time the bread rises, it sits in the oiled pan andd rises for about 20 minutes. You flip the dough over and cook. Well, I did all that, but it wouldn't come out of the pan when done! You have to oil it again and then put the dough in and cook.
Buy this book, the bread is delicious and easy to make! Most of all it makes the breadmaking process enjoyable!

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.

My wife allowed me to knead some dough she was working on. The dough felt alive in my hands and I knew I wanted to bake my own. She gave me her old copy of the Tassajara bread book. I made the Banana Sandwich bread. As a first time bread baker I know I made a number of "mistakes." I ended up with delicious hot loaves and our house is perfumed with the orange peel and cinnamon that was in the dough. When Ed Brown writes that his recipes have a wide margin for error he is right. This is a wonderful book, written in a warm and gentle spirit.

For the novice baker this book is just the thing. My advice - don't use a machine to handle the dough, at least at first. I feel it's important to know how the dough feels at the different stages of preparation. The kneading is my favorite part! Also - study the basic recipe, read it through a few times before starting if you are a beginner.

I bought this book in the early 70's, before I graduated from High School, and learned to bake from it and from two lovely ladies. The two ladies have long since left my life, but the book is still on my kitchen shelf. I pull it out every time I bake bread. The pages are stained and torn, and the covers are held on with tape.

Mr. Brown instructs not only in the making of food for the body, but also for the soul. Every time I open his book, it takes me back to those heady days of spiritual searching. Although I am no closer to Enlightenment, the work of the yeast and the energy of a day's baking makes the product vastly more satisfying than any commercial loaf.

If I am ever stranded on a desert island, I would want this book along, even if I had no supply of flour!

I grew up on home made bread, learned to bake bread from my Mother, then relearned how to bake bread well from The Tassajara Bread Book shortly after it was first published. It provides the right instructions for making bread from a sponge, tells you how to tell by feel when the bread is kneeded sufficiently ... and gives some excellent bread recipes - leavened, unleaven, quick and a variety in between. It has a recipe for Japanese vegetable pancakes that serve easily as meals or snack for small children. It has two dessert recipies - cream cheese bar cookies and peach kuchen that quickly become standards. In short, I highly recommend the book.