Chronicle Books Tartine Bread

This book is good but has a confusing way especially for beginners. The photos are displayed first with the comments mentioned later without any numbering so you have to guess which comes first. It is written by a professional and the methods are nice but it took me a while to understand. The book table of content is very short and you have to go to index to find recipes. I really want to try some recipes as I feel it will let you bind with what you feel with your hands.

Been making bread for 20 years. Never had much success with Sourdough. Then I saw a video on utube about Tartine Bread and decided I had to buy this book.Now I make great sourdough and it’s so easy. You can even leave the dough overnight in the fridge and bake it when it suits you.Best bread book I’ve ever owned and I have a lot.One thing you need to know is while you get a good loaf using a conventional oven with some hot water in a tray to create steam, you get a fantastic loaf using a Dutch Oven .

I have to admit I only made the basic country loaf so far, and it's the most thorough recipe I have ever read with loads of photos - it's amazing. First recipe is 35 pages long (p45-p79). I don't need all the details the second time and I'm sure the third and fourth will be even easier .... but my second thing to make is the baguettes, and it seems like such a mountain to climb even though it's only 10 pages long. Now - having moaned about the length of the recipes - there are lots of photos and it's very detailed about smells, bubbles, textures, feels and dough folding... I just wish it had a condensed version in the back - like 1-2 pages long with the basics to refresh my memory.

If you want to make sourdough bread then the Tartine method is a great starting point. I have baked some wonderful loaves using their recipes.The book itself is a joy to hold with a soft and tactile cover. Inside is well laid out with some lovely artistic photos of the process. The main sourdough recipe is given in great detail and is followed by a section that discusses each step in much more detail. I found that very useful.The resulting bread was really nice. Even my first bake was a real success and subsequent bakes, with guidance from the book enabled me to tune the bread to how I liked.Negative points ? The artistic photos are lovely, however B&W photos maybe are less clear than colour. (Look lovely tho). Also only half the book is recipes for bread and half is about what to do with leftover bread. Leftover sourdough bread? In my family ? Never!All in all though, this is a lovely book. It’s both informative and interesting and a really good guide for budding sourdough’ers.The bread is pretty tasty too!

If you really want to make amazing bread, Chad Robertson is your man. Unlike many English writers who put the emphasis on the 'sour' in Sourdough, Chad explains how to make beautiful bread with easy to make natural leaven (no yeast), without the need for the sour taste that many dislike.It has long been held that modern baking methods, using excessive yeast and energy are the cause of many people's intolerance to bread. Robertson helps to explain this, along with his well researched, long refined and detailed methodology for making outstanding bread.Stylish design with hundreds of outstanding photographs and a striking cover mean this will be a go-to book for many home bakers and a attractive addition to the coffee table for others.Stunning!

I bought this book some time ago and got very inspired by the enthusiasm of the author but never made any of his bread because I was a bit baffled by the 'cast iron combo cooker' that seemed to be essential to getting a perfect result. Having just worked out that a baking dome (from Bakery Bits) does the same job I started to make my starter, made a leaven, and then made a couple of truly fantastic loaves at my first attempt. I can now see why people become obsessed with sourdough. This is a lovely book with excellent photo illustrations to help you from straying off-piste.