Why do so many people make pilgrimages to Tara Jensen’s North Carolina Smoke Signals Bakery? Why do 100,000 people follow her Instagram feed @bakerhands? It’s because Tara bakes the most exquisite bread in the US, using a wood-fired oven that she tends with her own two hands. It could also be to learn how she makes her bubbly, deep-dish fruit pies or to see the crisp pizzas that are sometimes covered with fresh flowers.

It could be something deeper: Tara Jensen has learned to live a simple life, close to the land that feeds her oven. In her first book, she shares her philosophy of simple living and her trove of recipes with others. A Baker’s Year takes readers month-by-month through the seasons at Smoke Signals for porridge and waffles in winter, crusty bread in spring, pies and pizza in the summer, and celebration cakes for end-of-the-year holidays. Along the way, Tara writes about how to live in a more peaceful world, shares stories from her own life, mourns romances lost, and celebrates the promise of a new relationship.

Tara Jensen’s A Baker’s Year is destined to be a classic of cookbook shelves in the tradition of The Auberge of the Flowering Hearth and When French Women Cook. Illustrated throughout with Tara’s photographs and drawings, A Baker’s Year is a true American original. Think of it as The Tassajara Bread Book meets Eat Pray Love.

About the Author

Tara Jensen is an artist and baker living a solitary life at Smoke Signals, a wood fired bakery deep in the mountains of North Carolina. Jensen baked her way through her twenties in professional settings, keeping handwritten journals as she went. Baking has now become her personal practice, which she shares with students from around the world. When not teaching she spends her days chopping wood, mixing dough, and studying the stars.