Despite its utilitarian title, Chad Robertson's new cookbook Tartine Book No. 3 is actually very interesting and in-depth. The San Francisco breadsmith went down a two-year-long whole grain bread rabbit hole, and No. 3 is the result of his travels. Robertson traveled around the world (although mostly to Scandinavia) to research ways to add flavor and texture to breads by changing the grains used, often substituting flour with ancient grains, sprouted grains, and other lesser-known grain techniques.
The amount of information in the book is almost overwhelming. This is doctoral level bread nerdery: If making regular old refined-flour breads is not enough for you, Robertson has recipes for everything from sprouted purple barley loaves to buckwheat-nori crispbreads to sprouted emmer bread flavored with maple and beer. There's even a pastry section in which Robertson offers recipes for rye gougeres, spelt puff pastry dough, and a buckwheat, bergamot, and blood orange chiffon layer cake. Apologies to the gluten intolerant: the grains used are not substitutes for glutinous fare but rather additions used to flavor. But for the ultimate bread dork, there's really nothing else out there that digs this deeply into the topic. Tartine Book No. 3 is out December 17 from Chronicle (order on Amazon); take a look:
· All Chad Robertson Coverage on Eater [-E-]
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