Instagram, the result is a growing willingness to pull out pastry bags and digital scales in order to try something new. Why make brownies when a matcha crème brûlée tart will garner more likes, and you can order the powder online?
You’ll find this matcha tart in “Tartine: A Classic Revisited” by Elisabeth Prueitt and Chad Robertson. The book is an updated, revised edition of their 2006 classic, with 68 new recipes, 55 updated ones and gorgeous new photography.
Fans of the bakery’s straightforward tea cakes, currant scones and fruit galettes won’t be disappointed. They are all there, tweaked to reflect the changes in the Tartine kitchen over the past 13 years, but as delectable as ever. (Testing the currant scones made me wonder why I bother using any other recipes when this one is perfect.)
But it’s the new recipes that show just far we’ve come since 2006. Ten call for matcha powder, including a light-textured poundcake with a marbled green wave. Alternative flours — einkorn, teff and rye — appear frequently, often where you’d least expect them (flaky tart dough, carrot cake, devil’s food cake).
Perhaps the most telling change is the selection of gluten-free recipes practically hidden throughout the pages. There’s no index listing them, and sometimes there’s not even a mention of their gluten status in the headnote; you’d have to read the ingredient list to know. That these recipes are so integrated into the book is a testament to both how comfortable we have become with the roster of flours and starches necessary for gluten-free baking, and how far gluten-free baking has come.
