Vintage CookBook #2: The Tassajara Bread Book

I have been baking bread for a number of years now - starting from one basic recipe and moving on to start making my own. Unlike many people, I imagine, one of my main goals with my bread baking has been to create a great sandwich bread. I'd had trouble finding the best technique for this and getting the texture I wanted had been my biggest challenge. The bread tasted great, but would often crumble in a sandwich scenario!

The Tassajara Bread Book, originally published in 1970, really does its best to encourage the reader to do their own thing - and treat baking and food preparation as a ritual. Bake with Love could have easily been the subtitle.

It was the recipe for making a Sponge that finally allowed for my sandwich bread breakthrough. The technique is a bit time consuming, but easy; more mixing and kneading, essentially. The easiness of this technique was surprising to me as it had been the first reference to this I had read. The internet is a great resource for recipes, but the era of the bread machine has made this old school / traditional / slow food knowledge a bit harder to find. Not that I have anything against the bread machine (OK, I kinda do...) as I appreciate anything that encourages people to make their own bread. But I am beginning to feel that the loving ritual of making bread is really the best part - other than that first bite, fresh out of the oven!