| | |  | Friedr Dick Knives | Home » » » The Cheese Board: Collective Works: Bread, Pastry, Cheese, Pizza | | | | | | | Description: | | When a tiny cheese shop opened for business on a quaint Berkeley street in 1967, there was little hint of what the shop—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. Known and loved by locals and travelers alike, the Cheese Board is equal parts bakery, cheese store, pizzeria, and gathering place—a patchwork of the local community, where a passion for good food runs deep. For the first time ever, THE CHEESE BOARD presents the classic recipes that have made the store one of the San Francisco Bay Area’s most acclaimed gourmet destinations. Complete with a history of the shop and neighborhood, a cheese primer, and all the classic recipes—including the corn-cherry scones, cheese rolls, and zampanos, all of which have a cult following—THE CHEESE BOARD is as rich and varied as the institution that inspired it. | | | Product Details: | | | Author:
| Cheese Board Collective Staff | | Paperback:
| 240 pages | | Publisher:
| Ten Speed Press | | Publication Date:
| September 12, 2003 | | Language:
| English | | ISBN:
| 1580084192 | | Package Length:
| 9.4 inches | | Package Width:
| 8.5 inches | | Package Height:
| 0.7 inches | | Package Weight:
| 1.4 pounds | | Average Customer Rating:
|  based on 17 reviews |
| | | | Customer Reviews: | |
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Heavenly amazingApr 22, 2010
There is Arizmendi bakery nearby my house and I always love everything they bake in their little shop. This book has every (and extra) recipe for every goodness!
Best of BerkeleyMar 18, 2010
I got this for my wife to remember our grad school days in Berkeley and it does not disappoint. When you taste the breads and other recipes in this book you'll start thinking of opening your own bakery--they're amazing! Next best thing to sitting in the median of Shattuck and eating your lunch!
Collective KnowledgeJan 19, 2010
I am a huge fan of the Cheeseboard Collective in Berkeley and their amazing baked goods a pizzas. I got this book for Christmas and was anticipating making my first baked good from the book, hoping against hope that it might resemble the "real thing". All I can say after trying two different recipes is: This is perhaps the best baking book I have every used!
First of all the narrative and informational sections are both very helpful and interesting. They really help you to understand the connection between the collective and their baked goods and cheeses. Clearly these folks have thought long and hard about what they are dong. I would also say that the book is surprisingly well written and NOT hippy-dippy.
On to the recipes. The narrative of the books explains how they carefully took their recipes from their industrial kitchen and reformulated them to work in home kitchens. All I can say is that they succeeded with flying colors. I have tried two recipes so far: the cheese rolls (my all time favorite baked good at the Collective) and the oatmeal scones. By carefully following the directions I ended up with cheese rolls that were amazing good reproductions of the originals. This is all the more amazing when you consider that they have special industrial oven with misters and I just used a very normal home oven. Having working in a commercial kitchen I can tell you that getting this recipe to work in a home kitchen must have taken extreme time and patience by the authors. (I will say that if you haven't ever baked sourdough bread, you may not want to jump directly to baking the cheese rolls). The oatmeal scones, although easier to make that the cheese rolls, were no less amazing and came out perfectly.
The short story: If you want to bake amazing breads and baked breakfast goodies, buy this book.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 Easy recipes, great resultsAug 01, 2009
Do you want to make perfect sourdough boules, the kind you can usually only get at an artisan bakery? Bread that's crusty on the inside, springy and soft on the inside, with a complex and yet subtle flavor?
Well, then you'll need to make your bread with a starter. Which can be complicated, or easy. This book makes it pretty easy, and the results are very, very good. At the same time I made the starter from this book, I followed a different starter recipe from another book. And the Cheese Board starter worked better from the start. It amazes me that you can leaven bread with a solution made initially with just water and flour, but this book makes it easy. It then gives you many easy bread recipes to turn your smelly starter into simply amazing bread. I was shocked when I tore into the first loaf--best bread I'd ever made, hands down.
Furthermore, this book has the best pizza crust recipe we've ever used, made with commercial yeast, so it's quick and easy. The granola recipe is fab, the pizza recipes are great, etc, etc. My husband got me this book as a gift and I wasn't sure I'd really use it. And it's become one of my most beloved and crucial kitchen tomes!
I love baking, but some books make it MUCH too complicated (I'm looking at you, Breads from the La Brea Bakery). This book, while not simplistic, is easy enough to follow and the recipes are obviously very well tested. Go forth and bake delicious things!
A little piece of Berkeley in your own kitchen! (Plus tips on sourdough for hot, humid climates)Jan 17, 2009
I love this book, and not just because I am from Berkeley and recognise well the institution that the Cheeseboard has come to represent. I currently live in Thailand and found this book in a shop here. I was so excited because it reminds me of Berkeley. However, what for me is really great is that the recipes in this book are so flexible that you can substitute whatever you can't get (don't have, etc., for me in Thailand it's usually 'can't get') and you still get very tasty bread. The Corn Oat Molasses bread has become my favourite, but I have now made all of the breads, most of the muffins, some of the scones (Oat Scones, yum), and two of the sourdough breads + baguettes (although I cheated and went to Cheeseboard when I was in Berkeley recently and asked for some sourdough starter for them because it's very hard to make that in this climate).
In sum, a great book for those who know Berkeley, and a fantastic book for the creative baker who wants to make gourmet breads and pizzas but also likes to experiment a bit!
ADDITIONAL INFO: Some tips for people who live in hot humid climates like me (Bangkok) and want to make the sourdough starter. Initially I had a very hard time trying to get the sourdough starter to work, however I have discovered some things: when they say that you should use luke-warm water, you can just use room temperature water. You should also only let the starter sit for 12 hours rather than 24 or 48 (!!!! that kills it), because the process is so much faster in the hot, humid climate. You have to monitor your starter all the time in this climate, because if it sits too long it will just start rotting.
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