Sourdough starter grows into Georgia crackers

The adventurous bakers among us have tried our hand at sourdough baking a time or two. Maybe we cosseted a jar of starter long enough to bake a few loaves of bread, but, we lost interest and, soon, lost our starter as well.

Tracy Gribbon, founder of Georgia Sourdough Co., is not that person. Three days a week, she and her team are working with hundreds of cups of sourdough starter in six 20-liter buckets. What they feed today will go into tomorrow’s batch of sourdough crackers. Not bread. Crackers. In three different flavors: sea salt, cheese and everything.

Anyone who has tried producing crackers at home knows they aren’t easy to make. Not only do you need dough that will bake up flaky and crisp, but you need to roll the dough out thin and evenly. And, you need an oven that bakes evenly, so the thin dough doesn’t burn in some spots and underbake in others.

Gribbon, working in restaurants as a beverage director, started making sourdough crackers pretty much by accident. Her aunt and uncle, who had lived in Alaska, were on the HGTV show “Elbow Room.” As part of a renovation, the show built the couple a pizza oven. That got Gribbon and another uncle thinking about creating a really great pizza dough to use in that new oven.

“‘How about sourdough?’ he asked, and so I made a sourdough starter, and then made dough for a pizza crust. I didn’t know you could fast-track sourdough making by buying starter. I made my own, just by putting a mixture of flour and water on the counter and feeding it twice a day. And it worked.”

Sourdough definitely is a thing in Alaska, and her aunt started talking with her about all she had learned about sourdough, and sharing cookbooks. “I read about the health benefits of sourdough, and how it had more protein. I had no idea. I just thought it was cool bread.”

She tried pancakes, coffee cakes, bread and crackers. The bread wasn’t working out well, but the crackers were very successful. So successful, that she started sharing them around. “I was in a [Community Supported Agriculture group] with Greg Hutchins of Heritage Farms, and I took some crackers to him. I asked if he wanted to include them in the ‘add-ons’ he offered to his CSA clients, and he said, ‘Let’s do it.’”

The timing was right. Gribbon was ready to leave the restaurant world. She started selling her crackers at farmers markets, and that led to stores putting her crackers on their shelves. You still can find her Saturday mornings at the Peachtree Road Farmers Market, talking to customers and listening to their feedback. But, you also will find her crackers on the shelves of 64 stores, and the number is growing.

“I’ll hear, ‘My sister-in-law brought me these crackers, and I want them in my store.’ That’s how we got started in retail stores. Lucy’s Market in Buckhead and Ancient Awakenings in Woodstock were two of my first retail customers. Local Provisions in downtown Newnan is another. That store is full of Georgia-grown products. Among the things in my favor, is that there aren’t a lot of people who make crackers.”

Another thing in her favor is her crackers’ clean ingredient list. The sea salt crackers have just four ingredients: King Arthur organic baker’s classic flour, grassfed butter, sunflower seed oil and sea salt.

In Georgia Sourdough’s shared kitchen space in Prep Atlanta in Chamblee, Gribbon and team start work early. “We pretty much have about 60 liters of starter going all the time. We’ll use about 30 in production, and then feed it and let it sit, eat, and do its thing. The other 60 liters are waiting for the next day’s baking.”

Gribbon thinks of her three original flavors as primary colors. Now, she’s thinking about adding “shading and pastels,” as she works on perhaps a flavor that blends herbs and olive oil, or gluten-free crackers using brown rice flour, or even creating a new seasoning mix, in addition to her house-mixed “everything,” to dust the crackers.

As she looks to grow her offerings, she reflected on what it takes to succeed in the food business. She warned that it’s hard. “There are a lot of deep valleys and steep hills. You have to keep going. One thing that’s worked for me is that I’ve been lucky in what I call my ‘ignorance.’ I really didn’t know what I was getting into. But, I took small steps and didn’t talk myself out of something because my website wasn’t perfect and I didn’t have logo pens to hand out. Listen to what your customers are saying, and get where you can.”

JR MARRANCI Tracy Gribbon said her customers tend to think they should serve her original sea salt crackers with cheese. But, she said, serving cheese crackers with cheese adds dimension and variety.