Elisabeth Prueitt - October

Text copyright 2019 by Elisabeth M. Prueitt and Chad Robertson.
Photographs copyright 2019 by Gentl + Hyers.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

ISBN 9781452178981 (epub, mobi)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Names: Prueitt, Elisabeth M., author. | Robertson, Chad., author.
Title: Tartine : A Classic Revisited / authors Elisabeth M. Prueitt and Chad Robertson.
Description: San Francisco : Chronicle Books, [2019] | Includes index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2019001090 | ISBN 9781452178738 (hc : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Desserts. | Pastry. | Tartine (Bakery) | LCGFT: Cookbooks.
Classification: LCC TX773 .P96 2019 | DDC 641.86--dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019001090

Editing by Sarah Billingsley.
Design by Vanessa Dina.
Typesetting by Frank Brayton.

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The word authentic has been overused by food writers, who have turned it into a catchall in praise of just about anything that tastes good. But whenever I see this word, another similar word springs to mindauthorand the food I recognize as authentic is real food that is unmistakably its creators own, as genuine as a handwritten manuscript. Such food is rare, so when I first saw the handmade fruit tarts and bread loaves from the wood-fired brick oven of Elisabeth Prueitt and Chad Robertson, I did an excited double take.

That was nearly twenty-five years ago, when Liz and Chad had started their tiny Bay Village Bakery in Point Reyes Station in Marin County. Twice a week, they hauled their bread to the Berkeley farmers market in big, eye-catching, vintage wooden boxes, and before long Berkeley shoppers were queuing up for bread before the market had even opened. The bread was that good. It had that remarkable village-bakery quality that comes from stone-ground organic flour, native yeasts, coarse gray sea salt, a wood fire, and loving hands. Call it authenticity.

Soon after I discovered them at the farmers market, I went to see the bakery. It was in a little Victorian cottage, and the brick oven was in a 15-square-foot [1.4-square-meter] kitchen in the back of the house, where Chad baked as much as he could in the limited space. At the time, I was staying in a friends house in the fog of Bolinas, not far from Point Reyes Station, so I had the luxury of visiting their bakery often. I remember thinking that Liz and Chads little tarts and rustic loaves felt like they were of another world, like the France of a hundred years agowhere freshness was measured in hours rather than days or weeks and where honest food was grown and prepared by human handsa world that, even in France, has largely disappeared now. That summer, I visited Liz at the bakery one afternoon as she was stacking boxes of apricot tarts to take to market; I remember the sun streaming down and the apricots glistening, their edges just slightly caramelized, and the entire scene took my breath away. The magic tableau said everything that needs to be said about food and the joy of living.

Ive never been much of a baker or pastry cook, and so whenever family birthdays rolled around in the years that followed, I came to entrust Liz and Chad with baking the cake, one of which floats into my minds eye as a kind of Platonic ideal of a birthday cake: layers of airy cake separated by thinner layers of strawberry jam; a rose geraniumflavored red wine syrup; perfectly whipped cream; and little sprigs of just-picked fraises des bois, the fragile, intensely aromatic European woodland strawberries rarely grown in California gardens, arranged around the glazed top. It is a cake so classically restrained in appearance and so impetuously romantic in flavor that it is the finest birthday present I can imagine receiving.

Many more birthdays have raced by, and today Liz and Chad are the proprietors of the bustling bakery in San Franciscos Mission District that gives this book its nameas well as two expansive, ambitious Tartine Manufactories in San Francisco and Los Angeles. There is even a Tartine Bakery now in Seoul, South Korea! On the surface, these establishments may appear to be the urban antitheses of the tiny, bucolic Victorian cottage in which Liz and Chad began their journey. Yet these bakers have preserved their quiet artisanal authority and integrity without making any compromises: that delicious country bread of theirs has redefined and influenced so many of the breads made in the Bay Area and around the country; their sandwiches and salads are perfectly balanced and highlight the ripest ingredients; and the desserts are full of light and air. They are lavish in their use of seasonal fruits and judicious in their deployment of sugar and decoration, and, best of all, nearly all the ingredients used are grown nearby and produced sustainably, so that everything that comes out of the kitchen is fresh, unfussy, simple, and alive. Tartine Bakery opened in 2002, and in the intervening 17 years, it has become an anchor for the neighborhood, a defining institution for the city of San Francisco, and a beacon of taste and flavor for people the whole country over.

In short, Tartine is about as authenticand indispensableas a bakery and caf can get. No wonder people are still lining up.

Alice Waters

At the time of this books release, it has been 13 years since the first Tartine book was published, 17 years since we first opened our doors in San Francisco, and almost 25 years since we started our first bakery in the west Marin town of Point Reyes Station. We started our business with just the two of us, baking early mornings and then driving to the East Bay farmers markets to sell our bread and pastries, hot out of the oven.

Weve had many milestones to celebrate along the way, including the birth of our daughter, winning a James Beard award, and expanding to a second San Francisco location. We are happily in a business that people come to when they have something to celebrate. Customers who have met in our line have since married; employees have married each other and have families of their own now. Weve been a part of decades worth of birthdays, bar mitzvahs, Thanksgivings, Passovers, Christmases, and celebrations of life. Its an honor specific to owning a bakery. Even when the Twin Towers came down and businesses temporarily closed around us, we remained open to offer people a communal place to gather, eat, grieve, and feel connection to each other. Whether a happy or sad occasion, or part of the routine of your day, is there anything more comforting than being in your favorite bakery, with your favorite book or person, eating your favorite food?