William Roy Shurtleff (born April 28, 1941) also known as Bill Shurtleff is an American researcher and writer about soy foods. Shurtleff and his former wife Akiko Aoyagi have written and published consumer-oriented cookbooks, handbooks for small- and large-scale commercial production, histories, and bibliographies of various soy foods. These books introduced soy foods such as tofu, tempeh, and miso on a wide scale to non-Asian Westerners, and are largely responsible for the establishment of non-Asian soy food manufacturers in the West beginning in the late 1970s. In 1980, Lorna Sass wrote in The New York Times, "The two people most responsible for catapulting tofu from the wok into the frying pan are William Shurtleff and Akiko Aoyagi.” In 1995, Suzanne Hamlin wrote in The New York Times, “At the turn of the century there were two tofu suppliers in the United States. Today there are more than 200 tofu manufacturers...and tofu can be found in nearly every supermarket."
In turn, the new availability and cultural acceptance of tofu and related foods enabled the creation of new manufactured soy-based foods such as Tofutti and Tofurkey, and arguably gave a push to the vegetarian movement in the West that had begun in the late 1960s.
Early life
Shurtleff was born in Oakland, California on April 28, 1941. He attended Stanford University in Palo Alto, where he studied engineering. After graduating from Stanford, he joined the Peace Corps and taught school in Nigeria. He then joined the Tassajara Zen Center, where he meditated and worked as a cook for years. He was also a student of Suzuki Roshi who sent him to Japan in 1971 in order to help Roshi set up a Tassajara center there. While in Japan, Shurtleff met his future wife Akiko Aoyagi, who at that time worked as a Tokyo-based fashion designer.
While he had initially developed an interest in soy foods at the Tassajara Zen Center, Shurtleff had also read the (then) recently released Diet for a Small Planet by Frances Moore Lappé, which argued that soybean’s were a superior source of protein. Using Lappe’s book as a reference, Shurtleff wanted to learn more about Tofu. Aoyagi then introduced him to “Kyoto’s Haute cuisine Tofu restaurants” where a 12 course meal was about three dollars. It was during one of these meals that they decided to create “a tofu cookbook that that would show Westerners how to prepare tofu.” Over the next few years they conducted research, traveling, visiting tofu factories, ashram’s, and “grandmother’s who still remember the old ways,” learning the various elements of tofu production. They then began to work on the book, with Aoyagi focused on developing, creating, and writing recipes, both Eastern and Western, and providing the technical illustrations. Meanwhile, Shurtleff researched the production and manufacture of the soy products. They soon "decided to do for tofu and other soy foods what Johnny Appleseed did for apples.”
In October 1972 Shurtleff and Aoyagi began full-time research on soy foods in Japan. In 1975 they published their first book, The Book of Tofu. In August 1976 they founded the Soyinfo Center (named Soyfoods Center until 2006) in Lafayette, California.
Major works
All three books have recipes that do not use meat, poultry or fish products, though the authors mention some traditional uses of the soy foods with these ingredients. The books do have recipes that use dairy, eggs, and honey.
The Book of Tofu
The Book of Tofu (1975) is aimed at the general public in the West. It combines a cookbook with Asian and Western recipes, a history of tofu, and descriptions of small-scale producers of tofu in Japan. The book includes sections on related products such as soy milk, okara, fermented tofu and yuba.
The Book of Miso
Shurtleff and Aoyagi researched and wrote a similar book on miso, The Book of Miso (1976). It focused on Japanese miso, with some attention to similar condiments in other Asian cuisines.
The Book of Tempeh
Shurtleff and Aoyagi went to Indonesia to learn about the manufacture of tempeh, and published The Book of Tempeh in 1979. This book focuses on traditional Indonesian types of tempeh and tempeh recipes, but also contains Western recipes that use tempeh. This book built on a very small but established non-Asian constituency in the United States that was making and using tempeh, including The Farm in Tennessee.