Cookbooks. I own too many cookbooks, considering that I pretty much never, ever follow a recipe. I used to use the cookbooks for inspiration and to discover new combinations of things, but as I flipped through the pages of my favorite ones, I didn’t feel at all inspired. In fact, I felt bored. After looking through a short stack of colorfully printed books, I put them away with the thought I should get rid of them somehow, which, with me, usually means finding someone who can use them and really wants them and passing them over. After I have given them the once over one more time to copy out any interesting bits of information I don’t want to forget, that’s exactly what I am going to do.

For some reason, I stood in front of the overstuffed shelf of tomes regarding food, I saw one small old and sad looking thing stuck between two much larger books. I pulled it out and looked at the title: The Tassajara Bread Book, published by Shambala Publications, Berkeley, California. It was printed in the early 70’s. I have no idea where I acquired it or when. I am certain I bought it not because it was about breadmaking but because it looked like it had lived an interesting life, and I fell in love with the look, touch, and smell of the book itself. I am also certain I have never once read it.

I started reading it tonight. It is, in a nutshell, everything I would want in a book about the making of bread. It’s a California, 1970’s, hippie bread book. The hippies … they knew a thing or two about making bread.

It’s just chock full of explanations and information about tools, ingredients, kneading, forming, and baking. It also has basic bread recipes for almost every kind of yeasted and un-yeasted bread … all kinds of bread. It’s the perfect bread book. I can’t believe I have had the perfect bread book sitting on my bookshelf full of cookbooks, and I didn’t even know! I am quite happy about discovering it. My search for the perfect bread book is now over. Crazy that I have owned it all along, isn’t it?

Even crazier is that more and more often, as I go through the things from my younger years and begin deciding what stays and what goes, I am finding that Silly Younger Orb often bought things she had no intention of using and didn’t need and fell in love with for the dumbest reasons, and now Less Silly Older Orb is thrilled that she did (and that she held onto them through move after move). It’s almost as if Silly Younger Orb had some sort of subconscious idea of who she was going to be, or who she wanted to be, and brought things into her life that would be immensely useful to the Less Silly Older Orb. If you had met me at age twenty, I don’t think you would have imagined me ever being an eater of health food and a baker of bread, yet that’s what I seem to have currently morphed into.

I can’t wait to start using the recipes in this book, and for once, I might actually follow them.

You can still get this bread book. In fact, it celebrated 25 years of publication in 1995. Without having read any more than the little bit I did tonight, I have to suggest The Tassajara Bread Book for anyone interested in making bread. I’m debating getting a new one. It might have some new information in it. But … it wouldn’t have the worn-in, well-loved personality that the one I have does. Mine was obviously owned by someone who actually used it in a kitchen, and so now I will use it in my kitchen too. Maybe someday I will pass it along as I plan to with my other cookbooks, but not yet! I have a lot more to learn about breadmaking! Get your own copy!