National Post (National Edition)
Flour, water salt
The benefits of making sourdough in trying times Laura Brehaut
Measuring and mixing, slapping and folding, shaping and scoring. The process of making my latest loaf of sourdough was, as ever, immensely rewarding. I used the dregs of various bags of flour — whole grain spelt from Vancouver mill and bakery Flourist and organic hard red wheat from 1847 Stone Milling in Fergus, Ont. — and added crushed spruce tips for their resinous, citrus flavour. Confined indoors as we all are, I can taste the boreal forest and feel content in the fact that — with the help of beneficial microbes — I turned flour, water and salt into something delicious.
I’m not alone in finding joy in the kitchen during COVID-19. If social media is any indication, pandemic baking is providing relief for many. Sourdough especially, after years of gaining traction, has exploded in popularity. On Instagram, there’s a never-ending scroll of loaves with impressive ears (where the baker has scored the dough with a blade or lame), nice height and open crumbs (air pockets). Tutorials for making a sourdough starter (a leavening agent made by cultivating wild yeast and naturally occurring lactobacilli) and how-tos abound. Now is the time, it would seem, to seek solace in this fundamental, time-honoured technique.
“It gives you a purpose,” says baker Dawn Woodward, co-owner of Evelyn’s Crackers in Toronto. “It can be a really great escape, but on the other hand it’s also extremely useful because you’re providing good food, and doing something. Right now we’re all so paralyzed: We’re not supposed to be doing anything. We can’t socialize. We’re not supposed to be going out. Trips to the grocery store can be quite fraught. Markets are shut down. So it’s just a way to slow down and focus.”
For James Eberhardt, a Toronto-based computer programmer who started baking sourdough bread for the first time during the pandemic, it offers an opportunity to be more active with his hands. “I like the time that it takes, and (the fact that) you have to pay attention to it,” he says. “It pulls me away from the other stuff I’m doing throughout the day that feels more like a chore. I’ve never felt like cooking is a chore.”
Making sourdough is often a solitary practice, so it’s inherently well suited to self-isolation. But as with all niche interests, on the internet it takes an incredibly social bent. Well before COVID-19, the online sourdough community was close-knit, with bakers riffing
MAKING SOURDOUGH IS OFTEN A SOLITARY PRACTICE, SO IT’S INHERENTLY WELL SUITED TO SELFISOLATION
off each other’s formulas and methods, sharing ideas, feedback, encouragement — and of course, photos of loaves. If you don’t know where to start, there are endless options and people who are more than willing to point you in the right direction.
Bryan Ford, a Miami-based baker and author of this summer’s forthcoming New World Sourdough, credits a spirit of sharing for propelling the craft forward as well as providing a welcoming atmosphere. Since the pandemic started, he’s noticed a marked increase in traffic to his blog, artisanbryan.com, as well as people making his recipes, including such nonbread sourdough foods as waffles and cookies. Since COVID-19 has prevented him from travelling — essential to his work as a bakery consultant — he’s been finding comfort in a virtual connection to fellow bakers.
“It feels nice for me, even though I’m grounded and not able to make a lot of money right now, to continue connecting with people who want to make sourdough and who are new to the blog,” says Ford. “There’s something about sourdough that’s just so mysterious — it’s different, it’s fun. You become attached. (Your sourdough starter) is like a pet. You become obsessed with the process, the results and the flavours. And most importantly, you share what you make with those that you love and those that are around you.”
An openness — to newcomers and new ideas — is a defining characteristic of the sourdough community, he says. Most bakers are more than happy to share what they know because their own practice is constantly evolving. The ever-changing nature of the craft is exciting, but can be daunting for new bakers accustomed to following recipes to the letter and achieving a predictable outcome. Sourdough is highly variable, and as such, requires a distinct mindset.
“Homemade bread is always good, even if it’s not perfect. Perfection is not the goal. Just get your hands in the dough,” says Woodward. “You can perfect a lot of desserts but sourdough, the room for perfection is endless … And the room for tweaking is endless, let alone all the different flours you can use and the different styles. It’s just a whole different world.”
Sourdough takes patience, both in cultivating the starter — which takes roughly a week (after which point you and future generations can maintain it for lifetimes) — and the baking process itself, which is often a two-day affair. It requires our time, but also invites us to relax. As an organic process, there are many factors that can affect the end result — it takes practice and presence of mind to know what to do in the moment.
Author and photographer Aran Goyoaga, who focuses on gluten-free sourdough in her latest book, Cannelle et Vanille, says that more readers than ever have been asking for help troubleshooting their loaves. “For a lot of people, it’s a lot of trial and error,” she says. “Part of it is that you have to develop an intuition. (The fact that it’s) alive and requires you to take care of it is very nourishing. Not only for yourself, but it also requires you to give it a little bit of intuition and care. Anything that pulls those things out of us is really important right now.”
As you’re probably already well aware, bags of baking aisle-staples Robin Hood and Five Roses are now the stuff of supermarket memories. Undeniably a loss for many, their absence is also encouraging those who can, to consider alternatives to industrialized flours. As a result, many independent flour mills have been fulfilling more orders than usual.
1847 Stone Milling is running its mill every day, from 6 a.m. to midnight, in order to keep up with “a huge increase” in demand for flour. Almanac, a stonemilled flour and heritage grain company in Ottawa, says its orders have tripled over the past two weeks. And Flourist co-founder Janna Bishop says the company has experienced a 200 per cent increase in sales through its website month-over-month.
In addition to exploring online options, Woodward encourages asking your favourite bakeries or farms that have pivoted to doing deliveries during COVID-19 if they have flour to sell. If you’re new to using whole grain flours (e.g., einkorn, emmer, red fife and spelt), she recommends using 30 per cent at first and adjusting from there. There’s a flexibility called for here as well — depending on the flour composition, you may have to add more liquid. Taking an intuitive approach, adding water bit by bit until it feels right, will serve you well.
Chef, writer and photographer Dan Lepard likens the experience of making sourdough bread to knowing how to drive, but choosing to go off map. He recalls an autumn road-trip to Wild Hearth Bakery in Comrie, Scotland. On his way there he switched off the navigation system and got lost, ending up in a woodland thick with moss. “It was just incredible and I only would have found it because I decided to turn off the rules. And sourdough can be like that. Like when people ask, ‘What’s the best flour?’ Well, I suppose the easiest flour is a strong white bread flour. But the best flour for me is the next flour. The one that I haven’t met yet.”
Necessity has led people to pursue heritage flours in ways they may not have before. Forging relationships with small mills represents a chance not just to buy flour in the short term, but to learn about an essential ingredient from another angle. James Beard Award-winning author Sarah Owens (Heirloom, Sourdough) has heard from “a total flood” of people wanting to learn more about sourdough since the pandemic started. Mills she has worked with in the past have also told her of an onslaught of questions from new customers who want to know more about how to use their flours.
“It’s this beautiful invitation for all of us to engage in a deeper conversation. And I’m so excited about that opportunity to open up a whole new world for some people. I kind of feel like a broken record. I’ve been saying these things for years: ‘It’s so much better to use stone-ground flour.’ ‘It’s so much better to work with your local mill and your local grains.’ But finally the hand is being forced,” says Owens with a laugh.
In sourcing alternative flours, Lepard — who established the bakery at Fergus Henderson’s revolutionary London restaurant St John in 1994, among others, and helped shape the modern sourdough movement through works such as The Handmade Loaf — recommends getting familiar with raw material producers in your region, and seeking out people who mill their own flour in your community.
“What I suggest to people around the world is, before you say, ‘I don’t have any’ or ‘I can’t get this or that’ go to Google Maps and just type in stone mill, or flour mill, and you’ll be surprised that there will be mills,” says Lepard. “Perhaps not across the road, but there will be mills in your region that you don’t know about.”
When Lepard started exploring sourdough in the early 1990s, resources were difficult to come by. He did the bulk of his research at The British Library, which at the time was inside The British Museum. In exploring materials from the 18th century, he applied his findings to the present: Asking questions of millers and trialling different types of water (e.g., mineral or tap water) to see how they affected finished loaves.
Today, the burgeoning sourdough baker is in the opposite position. There’s an overwhelming amount of content online and since COVID-19, it appears there’s more and more every day. Lepard sees this as a positive: Without a free, inventive approach to content — which inevitably encompasses both good and bad advice — advancement would be harder to come by.
“When I started, I had lots of breakthrough moments. A lot of things I feel I can credit myself for doing very early on, but I didn’t always have the science or understanding to back it up,” he says, offering the example of making ferments with ingredients such as raisins and apples. In doing so, he was adding additional sources of yeast and bacteria, while simultaneously tapping into something even less tangible.
“You link into older methods that may not have been the most scientifically sturdy, but that was the way people did them. I quite like that as a reason to do something — because your grandmother did it, or because you found a recipe in an old book. I think that’s a good reason to do
JUST AS EXCITING AS THE PRACTICE AND PRODUCT IS ITS DYNAMIC NATURE. THERE’S ALWAYS SOMETHING NEW TO LEARN
things, too. I don’t think you have to ask your local microbiologist what they think,” Lepard says, laughing.
In embarking on sourdough as a pandemic project, you’re doing much more than finding a productive way to while away the time. In feeding your starter, fermenting your dough, and shaping and baking your loaves, you’re connecting to cultures past and present. Through participating in a sensory and tactile act, you’re creating something that you can share with others. Just as exciting as the practice and product, is its dynamic nature. There’s always something new to learn, try and respond to.
“I feel really strongly that bread-making as a practice is a window into ourselves and how we approach life in general,” says Owens. “There are so many variables that we have to engage in the process. But we also really have to learn how to let go, and realize that we can’t control every part of the process. We can’t control the weather. We can’t control how much humidity is in the air. We can react to it and we can make choices about how we deal with it, just like this whole situation. It’s not an ideal situation for anybody, but it will be better or worse depending on how we choose to engage — how we choose to deal.”