LITMIR.BIZ

      Sometime in my high school years, back in the early ’90s, my family took a summer vacation to New Orleans. This trip, which seemed like it would be an uneventful sightseeing tour, ended up being a life changing adventure. There was gumbo. There was jambalaya. There was étouffée. At one point, the gumbo was accompanied by a full marching band playing “Saints Go Marching In.” The flavors of this trip awoke my taste buds, which up to that point were a little bit adventurous, but barely beyond a typical Midwestern kid’s palate. (I had tried shrimp but it was fried. I had seen an avocado, but never tasted one, and wouldn’t have been able to find the heart of an artichoke if the world depended on it). Bill Knapp’s chocolate cakes on birthdays and Marion’s Pizza were our equivalent of the French Laundry restaurant.

      Soon after that trip, I graduated high school and went to college, where I honed my chicken salad (now with grapes!) and gumbo skills. I moved back home after graduating. That’s when the next big, lifechanging thing happened: The Food Network. For real, The Food Network. Before the channel morphed into a bunch of reality shows, there were actual people showing you how to cook actual food! I spent hours watching Essence of Emeril, Too Hot Tamales, and Grillin’ & Chillin’. Bobby Flay and Jack McDavid were roasting red peppers on a kettle grill. Emeril Lagasse was blackening shrimp and making a rémoulade. Susan Finnegan and Mary Sue Milliken were adding mangos to a salsa. Groundbreaking in my head! I would watch a show, run to the store and buy the ingredients, and then make it that same night for my parents. Nine out of ten times, this was a great success.

      After that summer cooking so many delicious meals, I moved to Chicago. I applied to the Culinary Institute, but ultimately decided against it, choosing a day job in graphic design over the kitchen life.

      Jump ahead to 2013. The previous fifteen years had been spent making a ton of great food. I’d become a fairly good cook. I read cookbooks, cooking magazines, watched the shows. But in 2013, I came across a copy of Michael Pollan’s book Cooked. One of the sections was about making sourdough bread. For some reason, this drew me the most. Then I immediately bought Chad Robertson’s Tartine, and began a baking quest. I collected natural yeast from the air, and pretty soon was producing some very nice loaves.

      The loaves got better and better. I started entering them in the California State Fair, and started winning. I started getting offers to buy my bread, to get the recipes, to teach classes. So this is what I did: I started helping local restaurants write recipes for bread that fit their meal schedules, I started teaching classes here and there, I started doing burger popups with my “Burger-in-law,” Rodney.

      And now, I want to teach you how to do this. Just as I learned how to cook from watching television and reading books, you can learn by reading this book, by seeking out baking shows, and by watching videos on the internet.

      Baking and sharing bread has been done for thousands of years, but it seems our culture has forgotten how. There are few things more rewarding than the smell of baking bread and the sight of fresh loaves coming out of the oven. Sure, it’ll take some practice. Some of your buns will be misshapen. Sometimes they’ll overproof, because you had to go pick up your kid or run to the store, and you got distracted. Sometimes you’ll forget to turn on the oven timer, and you’ll burn the buns, or your oven will be too hot, and you’ll toast the tops to a crisp. Don’t worry; it’s just flour and a few ingredients. Start over and try again. You’ll get it!

How to Use This Book

      I’m often inspired to bake or cook because of an Instagram photo, or a recipe I see while flipping through a book. Most of the time, when I look at a recipe, I only need to grasp the basics and then make it without referring back to the specifics. Or I see a photo and try to recreate a version of what I saw with whatever I have on hand.

      Most of the recipes in this book lend themselves to that style of cooking. They are mainly a starting off point or a suggestion. If you can’t find pea sprouts, use lettuce. If you have arugula, but the recipe calls for leaf lettuce, go for it! The greens are simply to provide a nice cool crunch, and a break from all the meat and carbs. Also, most of the cheeses in this book are interchangeable. Cheddar, Swiss, manchego, even American, can be used equivalently on just about any burger, should you like one but not another. Or, just use what you already have!

      For the beef, try to use a little less, and get the best you can buy. Go to a butcher or grocery store that carries sustainable, grass-fed beef. You can easily make one pound of good beef stretch into four burgers.

      A lot of recipes say, “Add salt and pepper to taste.” I recommend that you salt everything, and salt often. When cooking, add a little throughout the cooking process, not just at the end. This helps flavor

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