The greatest loaf of all

With its rustic mahogany crust, moist porous interior and addictive tangy flavour, its no surprise that sourdough’s popularity is on the rise. Eve Tedja meets two passionate artisans in Bali who produces the fashionable loaf.

We refer to sourdough by different names. The French call it levain, the Spanish masa madre, and the Germans name it sauerteig. It is a verb, used to describe the process of making bread but also a noun, a word we say to call the bread itself. To make sourdough is to partake in a history that goes back thousands of years, almost as old as the human civilisation itself. It is the oldest form of naturally leavened bread, made with water, flour, a sprinkle of salt, and time to allow the starter, a bewitching alchemy of fermentation between wild yeasts and lactic acid bacteria, takes place.

The starter is reverentially referred to as mother and often lovingly named by its baker who recognises it as a living culture that has the possibility to feed us. No one starter is the same. There is an astounding diversity of flavour in pots of starter, influenced by the environment where it lives, flour and water it uses, the wild yeast in the air, and the most defining factor of all: the hand

of the baker who creates it. This fascination is the fuel that ignites many professional and home bakers to make their own version of sourdough.

Despite the time-consuming process of preparing the starter, mixing the dough, resting, stretching and folding, pre-shaping, more resting, scoring, and lastly, baking it, there is an undeniable reward in opening the oven and pulling out a tray of a perfectly rising, freshly baked sourdough. It is also a gift to feed our bodies especially for those who are sensitive to gluten. A research done in 2004 by Marco Gobbetti, a sourdough microbiologist, proved that sourdough breaks down gluten, making it easier for the gut to digest. Compared to breads baked using just yeast, sourdough is higher in fibre and vitamins, as a result of the slow fermentation process. It is certainly a reason why these rustic loaves are experiencing a resurgence, as these two professional bakers can attest.

Natural leavening

“I sleep, dream, and wake up with bread as the first thing on my mind,” says Yoel Wijaya. To say that the bespectacled founder of BRAUD Artisan Bakery, which opened in 2014, is obsessive about breadmaking is an understatement. Trained as a pastry chef in Bali and at Dubai’s five-star hotels, Wijaya has a solid foundation and knowledge of the trade, but it is his fascination about sourdough that fuels his desire to open his own bakery. Back then, many Balinese were still unfamiliar with the flavour of sourdough – having grown up eating commercial bread. It took a while for Wijaya to connect with his customers but when he did, demand for his Toasted Sesame and Beer Soaked Pumpernickel Sourdough soared. Now, he supplies to many restaurants and cafés in Canggu, Seminyak, Sanur and Ubud.

Tucked in the city centre of Denpasar, the bakery operates three shifts daily and industriously churns out a wide range of viennoiseries, soft breads, buns, flatbreads, and baguettes, on top of the sourdough. A visit to the bakery is to experience a swirl of activities amidst high stacks of flour and deck ovens. Buckets of bubbling starters are snugly fermenting for tomorrow’s loaves on one of the top shelves. Wijaya received his starter, as a gift from a French pastry chef when he worked in Dubai, one made from T85 stone ground high extraction wheat and rye flour.

In one corner of the workshop, rattan bannetons are lining up the shelves, ready to be filled with dough for a final rise. There are four bakers working, their hands dexterously shaping the elastic dough into forms. It’s a challenging task considering BRAUD’S sourdough is 70 to 80 percent hydration. This “baker’s percentage” refers to the amount of water in the recipe compared to the amount of flour. “When the dough retains a high water hydration, the flavour of the bread gets more complex. It also ensures the loaves’ chewy elasticity and crisp crust,” explains Wijaya. With a 24-hour production time, sourdough is a time-consuming endeavour, but Wijaya won’t have it any other way.

Respect the fermentation process

Every day, Emerson Manibo and his team turn out 100 fresh sourdough loaves. Those in the know would make a beeline in front of Starter Lab, Canggu, at 7am and 6.30pm. Using two kind of starters, whole wheat and rye, Manibo leads his team to create seven sought after variants of sourdough breads: Country Bran, Seeded Wheat, Rosemary, Lemon and Sea Salt, Danish Rye, The Slab, Focaccia, and Organic Miso Baguette.

Once a week, they will experiment with different ingredient and fermentation methods given by LOCALAB, Locavore’s creative laboratory. The exploration has led to exciting creations, such as Fermented Purple Sweet Potato Sourdough with onion and dukkah or the umami Daikon and Togarashi Sourdough. “It is what Starter Lab is all about. We use our natural starter in all of our products and aim for constant improvement and consistency every day,” says Manibo who founded Starter Lab with his partner, Min Siah, in 2017. Set to open a branch in Singapore in June and a bigger bakery in Canggu, Starter Lab is steadily riding the wave of rising appreciation toward artisan breads.

The Filipino-american baker is living proof that it is never too late to switch careers in life. The former teacher found his passion for breadmaking at the International Culinary Center, New York when he was 38. He perfected his skills at two of America’s most respected bakeries, Della Fattoria and Tartine. Manibo was the head baker at the idyllic Della Fattoria, a family-run bakery in Petaluma, an hour north of San Francisco. It is renowned for its wood-fired ovens and Italian sourdough loaves. “The owner, Kathleen Weber taught me two important things: to take care of your team as carefully as you take care of the starter and to always remember that the bread is the boss. You can’t put a time on it and you are not going to produce the exact same bread every day and that’s alright,” tells Manibo.

In Canggu, the large clear glass window of the Starter Lab offers a glimpse of the fast-paced action of mixing, cutting, shaping, scoring, and baking that takes place daily. One can easily forget that it takes 36 hours to produce a batch of naturally leavened sourdough, from feeding the starter to taking it out from the oven in its top form, all chewy crust and tangy flavour. Using both local and imported flours such as wheat berries, whole wheat and rye; Manibo fully realise the responsibility of producing the best quality products that taste good and are beneficial to one’s health. Here he shares a simple recipe on how to make a sourdough starter and keep it alive.