Elisabeth Prueitt is Pastry Chef and co-owner along with her husband and renowned Baker Chad Robertson, of Tartine Bakery in San Francisco. Tartine is the culmination of the pair’s training, and passion for food and cooking that began for Elisabeth at home in upstate New York, growing up in a family that grew most of what they cooked and ate. Her intuitive palette is evident in the unmistakable quality and taste of fresh ingredients that are essential in everything produced at Tartine. Chad is from West Texas, and three generations of handmade boot and saddle makers. He eventually took a turn to cooking and then to breadmaking, leading him to the same school as Elisabeth, The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, where they attended both the culinary arts program as well as the primary years of the new Baking and Pastry program to become early double graduates.

Elisabeth Prueitt
After her culinary education at The CIA, Elisabeth worked at New York’s influential Montrachet restaurant under Debra Ponzek, and then as Pastry Chef at Canyon Ranch in Lenox, Massachusetts. Many of the recipes she developed there contributed to the Canyon Ranch Spa Cookbook.

Elisabeth has worked as a bakery and dessert consultant for the last ten years and has had her work published in cookbooks and magazines such as San Francisco magazine, Bon Apetit, and Elle. She has made appearances on Martha Stewart television and radio, as well as local San Francisco television.

Chad Robertson
After his training at the CIA, Chad apprenticed at the Berkshire Mountain Bakery with renowned baker Richard Bourdon which led to several years baking there. The couple eventually relocated to the west coast where Chad worked and consulted as a baker before their travels took them abroad.

In 1994 Elisabeth and Chad married, traveled, trained, and cooked in France for a year. They worked primarily in two bakeries, one in the south of France and the other in the northern Savoie region, both wood-fired oven bakeries specializing in natural fermentation- modern, traditional breads, and regional pastries and desserts.

Upon their return, they opened their first bakery in 1995, Bay Village in Point Reyes Station just north of the Golden Gate in West Marin County. They lived and worked baking everything themselves for six years there with a quick stop in Mill Valley and a small retail shop on their way to San Francisco. They became known for remarkable bread baked in a wood-fired brick oven and rustic, elegant pastry marrying local ingredients with classical technique.

Chad was singled out by Alain Ducasse for his extraordinary bread making in his book on artisan American food producers prior to opening his restaurant in the US- ‘Harvesting Excellence’, published in 2000.

In the summer of 2002 Elisabeth and Chad moved their life and business to San Francisco’s thriving food community centered at the corner of 18th and Guerrero Streets in the Mission district and opened Tartine Bakery where Elisabeth continues to delight customers who line up for her cookies, tarts, cakes, confections.

Chad and his small team of bakers continue to make their distinctive bread in relatively small quantities most days available hot in the afternoon.

Our intrepid morning bakers make an impressive array of viennoiserie daily in real time: Quiche, scones, croissants, and morning buns. The first croissants are out around the time the front door opens in the morning and continue emerging in small batches until after noon. Bread comes out of the oven before dinner by 5 pm six days a week.

Fresh, quality all day.

In August, 2003, Elisabeth was chosen by San Francisco Magazine as Pastry Chef of the Year, Critic’s Choice.

Elisabeth and Chad were together nominated for a James Beard Award in 2006 and 2007 for Outstanding Pastry Chef and Baker, National. In 2008 they were fortunate to be selected by their peers to win the award.

Their first book, ‘Tartine’, published by Chronicle Books, was chosen by Corby Kummer of the Atlantic Monthly in the New York Times list of selected top ten cookbooks of 2006. It was also nominated for a James Beard award for the photography of France Ruffenach.

Chad and Liz are working on their second book for Chronicle. Regarding Bread.