The Cheese Board: Collective Works: Bread, Pastry, Cheese, Pizza

by Cheese Board Collective Staff, Alice Waters (Foreword), Cheese Board Colletive (Editor)

The Cheese Board was there, a hole in the wall with a line out the door, before Chez Panisse was so much as a gleam in my eye. When the restaurant was conceived, I wanted it to be in North Berkeley so the Cheese Board would be nearby, because I knew I would be among friends. -Alice Waters, from the ForewordWhen a tiny cheese shop opened in Berkeley, California, in 1967, there was little hint of what the store-and the neighborhood-would grow into over the next 30 years. The Cheese Board became a collective a few years later and Chez Panisse opened across the street, giving birth to one of the country'¬?s most vibrant food neighborhoods, the epicenter of California'¬?s culinary revolution. Equal parts bakery, cheese store, pizzeria, and gathering place, the Cheese Board is a patchwork of the local community, where a passion for good food runs deep. THE CHEESE BOARD presents over 100 recipes for the store'¬?s classic breads, pastries, and pizzas, along with a history of the collective and an extensive cheese primer.More than 150 classic recipes from one of the San Francisco Bay Area'¬?s most acclaimed culinary destinations.Includes a history of the store, a cheese primer, and over 50 duotone photographs that capture the food and personality of the Cheese Board.

Genres: Cookbooks, Cooking, How To, Nonfiction

240 pages, Paperback

First published September 12, 2003

Reviews

[Maria]

I am on the hunt for the perfect pizza crust. Something chewy with a tang to it. I had been trying different flours with dry yeast and couldn't get what I wanted. Then I visited the Cheese Board and tried their pizza and their crust seemed much more like what I was imagining.

Almost immediately my mom gave me her copy of the Cheese Board book and pointed out that all I needed to do was make their sourdough pizza crust. But it turns out that to make sourdough you also have to make sourdough starter which is an 11-day process of precise measurements and daily feedings. I hate to wait for anything but I have been doing my best. Every day for the past two weeks I have awoken in fear that I killed the precious sludge that is my starter. Which brings me to the first thing you should know about this book:

1. You will be throwing a lot of flour away.

Basically you have to keep a bit of the starter each day and toss the majority of it. And there isn't a recipe for doing something with this extra flour. I find it hard to believe that people who used to make bread daily would have tossed that much product away, so I'm saving it with the plan of making pancakes or something of the kind. Any suggestions for what one does with unfinished, excess starter would be much appreciated though.

While I was waiting for my starter to be ready, I realized that there were tons of other recipes in the book. Many of them for bread use the same sourdough starter I had been babying along. So today I made bread, actually two kinds of bread which brings me to the second thing you should know about this book:

2. The recipes are BIG.

The bread recipes make two loaves, the pizza recipe makes three crusts. I mean, who is this written for? Big families, parties? So I ended up making the Suburban Bread and a modified form of it that had nuts and fruits and is made into little rolls called Wolverines.

Making these breads meant starting at 5:30 AM and finishing just around 2 PM which (when taken in combination with the starter process) brings me to the third point:

3. You need a ton of time on your hands.

I worked the process around a dance class, lunch, and made it out the door in time for tutoring but it was crazy. This really should only be attempted on a weekend.

And, in addition to the waiting game, the reason these recipes take so much time is:

4. Each recipe has a million steps.

The ones I was working on each required two kneadings, multiple rests and risings, the creation of a proofing chamber, multiple mistings and ice baths in the oven, as well as razor slashing. It was like an action movie. And all of the information is on different pages so from start to finish required flipping through the book like a crazy gymnast. Kudos to the Cheese Board for being detailed about it but ugh on the complexity front.

In the end I managed to produce some burnt rolls (in all fairness - that was my fault for not lowering the oven temperature to account for the fact that I was using nonstick pans) and a flat, sticky saucer that I suspect would not be identified as bread if handed out as a sample on the street. Not a tremendous success, but I could see how it could be improved upon in the next round.

So we moved on to the pizza crust. Hunter measured everything out and was running out the door when I said that there didn't look like there was enough starter. Which, it turned out, there wasn't because Hunter miscalculated when cutting the huge recipe in 2/3. So now, I'm headed to the store to buy pizza dough (I'm told Trader Joe's makes this). And I think we're going to toss our starter which is looking weak despite having eaten almost an entire bag of flour over the past couple of weeks.

I think it is miraculous that there is yeast in the air at any moment available for the taking, but I also think I am going to see if there's a bakery that sells their sourdough starter before I attempt crust again. And I think I'm done with the Cheese Board and their torturous recipes. I am going to look for the most basic instructions for sourdough crust ever and see where that gets me. Which bring me to the final thing I learned from this book:

5. $4 or $5 is a steal for a loaf of bread.

And the next time I am in a bakery looking at bread, I will no longer say to myself "These people must be crazy". I will think of piles of dishes covered in caked-on starter, of shouting, stacks of paper filled with urgent scribbles (MUST PROOF at 11:26 AM), obsessing over the degree range that constitutes "lukewarm", and whether the "windowpane" in my bread is really there or not..... And I will go to the counter and say, "Thank you, this is such a deal."

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nice history on how they became a worker-run collective and the recipes are great - of course.

[Shannon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am having so much fun reading this book, which is more than just a cookbook. My dream is to open up a pizza collective somewhere else in the country. Anyone want to join?

[Felicia]

On a recent uber-typical California afternoon, me and my friends Chris and Mary went to The Cheese Board in Berkeley. Folks ask if I know the Cheese Board as soon as they find out how I delightedly let my tummy and tongue lead me through the Bay Area. This was the first visit for all three of us.

Oh, cheese!

We spent a long, long time staring at and questioning about and delightedly nibbling cheeses after cheeses after cheeses, then went next door and got a pizza. We had a picnic with the pizza in the median strip on Shattuck Avenue, chatting and eating and watching the traffic whip by. I'd never picnicked in an intersection before, and found the experience delightful. I'm very excited for a day off in which I can try out some of these recipes.

[Joyce · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved reading the history of the collective, as well as the anecdotes from current and former members. I'm not sure it's really possible to capture the true energy of the place, but I'm excited that so far I've been able to capture some of the flavors, even though I'm a very amateur baker.

Making and working with sourdough starters had always been too daunting to try, but since so many of the recipes I wanted to replicate are based on the starter my hand was finally forced. Twelve days later I had a starter and quickly baked three different breads. The recipes are easy to follow, and there is a lot of useful information on techniques, ingredients, and tools in the front of the book. I'd recommend this to anyone who likes to bake.

[Caitlin · Rating 5 out of 5]

After reading this book I am so inspired to bake bread and desperately craving a currant scone (and everything else at the Cheese Board), luckily I live less than a mile away!
Recently I've been checking out cookbooks from the library on my kindle then deciding if ita worth buying - this is definitely one that I need to own!

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

This one's great because it contains numerous anecdotal blurbs from the people who work there. And they discuss cheeses. Goal: bake Cheese Rolls and Blackberry Scones comparable to the ones I often bought from Arizmendi's on my hurried Monday mornings.

[angi · Rating 5 out of 5]

They tell you how to make their cheese rolls and I started my sourdough starter using their instructions! What more do you want??

[Amy Gee · Rating 4 out of 5]

ironically, this cookbook is the most widely circulated document on bay area worker cooperatives. good fondue recipe. interesting stories.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Sourdough bread and pizza

[Pinky · Rating 3 out of 5]

Want to try the Corn Cherry Scones, Potato Pizza, and the Zampanos recipes.

[Catherine Woodman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great story about a place that was WAY ahead of it's time--really enjoyed it