As I mentioned in an earlier post, while we were in San Francisco in April, we visited Tartine Bakery. This bakery is well known with the locals and probably most of the tourist who venture away from the main touristy spots of San Francisco. The main attraction there was the country loaf and mainly the only reason I wanted to go there. We purchased a couple of small items from the traditional bakery case and got a full loaf of bread.
The bread was fresh, probably just a few minutes from the oven. They don't start selling it until around 5:00 PM Sunday - Thursday, we had timed it just right! We were scheduled to have dinner at Delfina's which actually right next door to Tartine Bakery, so I didn't want to fill up on the bread, but I could not wait to have the first bite. It was phenomenal; well worth the wait we encountered, which wasn't much really. The wait we did have allowed Debbie and I to catch up and have a good laugh or two about the funny stories that had already occurred in the few hours we had been in town.
I knew that the owner and head baker at Tartine had recently released a book and I was actually thinking of purchasing his book while we were there, but I think it just slipped my mind during the rush... No matter, I was able to reserve it, luckily, from our local library. I had a new project in the works.
If you want to follow the recipe from the book, the country loaf is not something you just whipped up on any given day. It takes time and patience. I had the time, since I didn't have some of the essential tools/gadgets for making the bread anyway. Patience, well...
Once I finally got everything I needed to make the bread, I planned it all out. At Tartine, they serve fresh bread with dinner, so the normal baking schedule doesn't apply. It really is an all day affair once you are actually ready to prepare the country bread.
I won't belabor the details of the process, that's done well enough in the book, but I was pleased with my first effort. By no means perfect, or exactly like what we had from the Tartine Bakery, but everyone that tried it, seemed to like it.
Here are some photos from my first attempt (and hopefully not my last)...
The bread was fresh, probably just a few minutes from the oven. They don't start selling it until around 5:00 PM Sunday - Thursday, we had timed it just right! We were scheduled to have dinner at Delfina's which actually right next door to Tartine Bakery, so I didn't want to fill up on the bread, but I could not wait to have the first bite. It was phenomenal; well worth the wait we encountered, which wasn't much really. The wait we did have allowed Debbie and I to catch up and have a good laugh or two about the funny stories that had already occurred in the few hours we had been in town.
I knew that the owner and head baker at Tartine had recently released a book and I was actually thinking of purchasing his book while we were there, but I think it just slipped my mind during the rush... No matter, I was able to reserve it, luckily, from our local library. I had a new project in the works.
If you want to follow the recipe from the book, the country loaf is not something you just whipped up on any given day. It takes time and patience. I had the time, since I didn't have some of the essential tools/gadgets for making the bread anyway. Patience, well...
Once I finally got everything I needed to make the bread, I planned it all out. At Tartine, they serve fresh bread with dinner, so the normal baking schedule doesn't apply. It really is an all day affair once you are actually ready to prepare the country bread.
I won't belabor the details of the process, that's done well enough in the book, but I was pleased with my first effort. By no means perfect, or exactly like what we had from the Tartine Bakery, but everyone that tried it, seemed to like it.
Here are some photos from my first attempt (and hopefully not my last)...
