Even in Kyoto

Ahahaha, "healthy suffering"!

I lump it in a certain category along with Diet for a Small Planet and Laurel's Kitchen, as those are three cookbooks my family grew up with. DFSP and LK were incredibly innovative when they first appeared, because that was well before vegetarian cooking was nearly as mainstream as it is now. Both books are actually wonderfully informative when it comes to thinking about how to get good nutrition from vegetarian fare, but in some cases I find the recipes lacking in flavor. That might be because of a limited availability of spices, to some extent, or less general exposure to foreign cuisine than people have now.

Regardless - I feel like I learned a whole lot from the Tassajara Bread Book, but at the same time I wound up deciding that when it comes to making bread, it's so much easier to "cheat" by adding a cup of white flour.