This Loaf Changed American Bread, with Chad Robertson

Episode Transcript

- This episode is sponsored by Brod & Taylor makers of the new countertop dough sheeter built to elevate every bake ahead. And when I hear country bread, I think of ye old country. From King Arthur Baking Company, this is "Things Bakers Know." I'm David Tamarkin, King Arthur's Editorial Director.

- And I'm Jessica Battilana, Senior Editor at King Arthur. And today we're talking about the bread that changed the way Americans think about bread. Specifically, this episode is all about San Francisco's Tartine Bakery, Chad Robertson, and the country loaf that launched a thousand loaves.

- That's not an exaggeration. It really is thousands and thousands of loaves. And I'm really glad we're talking about this because it's been 16 years since Chad wrote his seminal book, "Tartine Bread." And in that time we've seen a huge shift in how American bread is made, is talked about, is even just thought of.

- Yeah.

- And we really can trace a lot of that back to Chad Robertson and the bread he was making at Tartine, I think ever since they opened in 2002.

- Yeah, yeah. I mean, and this is the first time we've done an episode that's sort of like laser-focused on one place and one person. But it seemed like an obvious thing to do, especially when we saw that the anniversary of the book was coming up. It was sort of like, how can we not talk about this? 'Cause it really did change everything.

- Yeah.

- And I was looking back at a 2016 article in the "San Francisco Chronicle" that was written by my friend, the food writer Jonathan Kaufman. And it was called "Tartine Bread turns into an American culinary movement". I mean, and that was like, 10 years ago that we were talking about that. And it was, I think he summed it up so well. He says in that article, "Just as the 1970s gave rise "to the doorstop whole wheat loaf in the 1980s "to shattering golden baguettes, "the 2010s belonged to the long-fermented country loaf."

- Yep.

- Which is totally true. And you know, some listeners, careful listeners of the podcast who track my every movement will recall that I lived in San Francisco.

- They'll know your address.

- They'll know my address.

- Yes, right.

- I will be doxxed immediately. I lived in San Francisco for almost 17 years, and that whole time I was within walking distance of Tartine Bakery.

- Oh my God.

- I know.

- I'm so jealous.

- I mean, it was a good run. And you know, I got to know Chad and his then wife, Liz Prueitt, who is also a phenomenal baker and has an amazing gluten-free Substack, which you should check out. When that bakery opened on Guerrero and 18th Street in San Francisco, like, there was not a ton happening on that block. And then, you know, it was like then Delfina Restaurant opened and there's Bi-Rite Market on the block. And that was like, a really, like, amazing stretch for eating. And at that time when Tartine first opened, Chad had arranged the bread schedule to suit his life schedule. So they had a young child, he also loves to surf. And he was like, I don't, like, I have to make this schedule work for me. And so, you know, a lot of bakers come in at three in the morning and they leave, you know, that's what the King Arthur Bakers do. They come in at three in the morning, they leave at 11:00.

- Yeah.

- But Chad would come in at a more civilized hour, which meant that the bread would not come out of the oven until 5:00 PM.

- Hmm.

- And you know how you and I have talked a lot about how we feel about lines.

- Yeah. Oh yeah.

- But I would go and I would wait in that line and you would get the bread hot from the oven. And I just like, I have such memories of pressing the sort of like oversized, like chestnut-colored, like warm loaf of bread to my chest as I walked home and just feeling like, very smug.

- I understand.

- It was like carrying an infant, like a bread infant across the city.

- Yes, you and I are famously against lines, but that is a line I would wait in.

- Yeah, it's a line to wait in. And it was unlike any bread that I had had before.

- Yeah.

- You know?

- Which is funny because if we describe this bread, it's gonna sound like every loaf of sourdough you can get like, on so many corners across the country and all around the world now.

- Yeah, around the world.

- Which is funny.

- Yeah.

- Yeah. So this loaf, this country loaf, for people that are not familiar with it, it's a big loaf of bread. You know, those country loaves were like a bâtard shape. Deeply, deeply browned, you know, with a very crackling crust. And then when you would cut it open, you know, I would always try and wait until it cooled off, you know, to cut into it. But you never could 'cause that smell. It has like, you know, the big sort of open structure, almost like a custardy interior. I mean, and people listening are like, oh yeah, I get that now like, 7-Eleven. But you know, at that time, like nobody was doing, even in, you know, San Francisco, birthplace of sourdough, like nobody was doing bread quite like that.

- Yeah, and so those are the physical characteristics I think you summed up really well. And the technical specs are also sort of have been influential as well. It's a high hydration sourdough.

- Yeah.

- Which is, you know, in 2002 when Tartine opened, I don't think those words, that phrase didn't exist.

- Yeah, yeah.

- It probably did. But it wasn't, you know, on the tip of our tongues as it is now. It's long-fermented. It's, you know, I think minimally handled, you know?

- Yeah.

- You know, it's not kneaded. It's folded. It's shaped with a really sort of interesting like stitching method. I think that, I don't know if that originated with Chad, and I guess we'll maybe hear later today when you talk to him.

- Yeah, yeah.

- But when you see videos of Chad making bread, which of course are like, a million on YouTube now, the stitching method of how he closes his loaves in the bannetons is interesting.

- Yeah, it is. And you know, I mean, and now you see like, you know, you see bread like that, like I think about, like, I was laughing, there's like a Sea Wolf and a She Wolf, you know?

- Yeah.

- There's a Sea Wolf. So I mean, you know, keep those straight if you can. But Sea Wolf in Seattle, She Wolf in New York, Publican in Chicago.

- Yeah, yeah.

- I think makes bread that's very similar to that. In my hometown of Portland, Maine, Bread & Friends, you know, that is the bread now. I think that's what people think of as like an artisan loaf of bread.

- Right, I think it's what we call, and even in our book, "Big Book of Bread," or you know, we use this terminology, we call it a country loaf or country bread.

- Yeah.

- And what I don't know is if that, is that true? I mean, when I hear country bread, I think of ye old country. More words that I can't believe just came outta my mouth. But I think of a very Old World-style of bread. When I think of Old World, I think of Europe, I think of things that way preceded 2002.

- Yeah.

- And so, I don't know, and I'm interested to listen to this episode.

- Yeah.

- To find out how it came to be. Did it really originate with Chad or did it, does his loaf have origins, you know, in Europe, in France where he trained?

- Well, and I should, you know, in full disclosure, I worked, you know, for a long time I was just a fan of Tartine, crazy fan. And then I ended up working with Chad on his third book, "Tartine Book 3," which is sort of, you know, like, I should back up for a second and say like, the other thing that's interesting is that when "Tartine Bread" was published, that book, like talk about giving away the farm, like, I mean, Chad explained in crazy detail, just like every element of how he makes that bread, you know, starting, like starting with the starter and all the way to the finished loaf. And he basically like, handed over the keys to the castle. So it's, you know, he was very eyes wide open in like, I'm sharing this method and you know, this method is gonna influence people. And what was interesting about that first book is that they had regular people testing, which is always a great thing to do it in any cookbook. And people rarely do it. But people who would never baked a loaf of bread before, you know, were brought on as testers. So it was like somebody who played music in the cafe who was sort of curious about it. And so he really developed this method with home bakers in mind. Like, how can you get a loaf of bread like this at home? And just had enormous success with that. So, you know, building off of that book, he went on to write this "Tartine Book 3," which sort of then pushed the envelope. It was like breads that have like, more inclusions, have soaked grains, have sprouted grains, have, you know, I wouldn't say unusual flours, but you know, outside of just like white flour, whole wheat flour.

- And you worked on that book with him? And I worked on that book with Chad. And why was I talking about that? Just to brag that like what, Chad and I are best friends?

- Well, you know what you speak.

- Well, just no to to say that I think Chad would be the first one to say he did not invent this bread. I mean, I think he manipulated the method, but you know, I mean he had mentors that he is you know, very open to crediting and I think yes. This, like, what he pulled from was like a European tradition and then like tweaked it, you know, to his own schedule, to his own taste preferences. And I do recall, like, I talked to Chad not too long ago, and he was like, "When I started trying to sell like an $8 loaf of this bread "that basically looked burned," he was like, "People were like, what is this guy doing?" Like, why would I? You know, so I think it's funny just to see now, like, on the other side of it.

- Yeah.

- Like, people got on board.

- So we can blame Chad for $20 loaves of bread an ounce, yeah.

- Exactly!

- But it is interesting to think about the origins of this Tartine loaf, you know, and like you said, he wouldn't say he invented it. He trained in Europe, but everything's circular, right? I mean, I remember interviewing Dan Leader, who-

- Oh yeah.

- Is the famous baker and guy who started Bread Alone in upstate New York, has lots of books. And he was researching one of his books traveling to, you know, all these small bakeries in Italy, France, Spain, all around Europe, even in Asia, I think. And he told me was that in every single bakery, no matter how small the town, how small the bakery, where it was in the mountains of the Alps, wherever, he saw copies of "Tartine Bread," every single shelf.

- Yeah, yeah.

- I mean, the influence cannot be overstated. And that's fascinating, right?

- Yeah.

- I mean the same places that trained Chad are now, you know, taking some notes from him.

- Yeah, and you know, in the Bay Area, there's a lot of chatter about like, the Chez Panisse diaspora, like the cooks that, you know, worked at Chez Panisse for a period of time. I worked as a reservationist at Chez Panisse for a year, which was like, I describe it as the worst job in the best place. But that's a story for another time. I mean, you try taking calls of people looking for a table at 7:00 PM on a Saturday, just like, "No, no, no."

- Breaking hearts.

- Yeah, exactly. But they talk about the cooks that left Chez Panisse to open their own restaurants and like, you know, that web of food people that, you know, went across the country internationally.

- I can name, like, five just off the top of my head. Yeah, absolutely.

- Like David Tanis.

- Yeah, exactly. And then the same is true, I think of this diaspora of bakers that trained at Tartine then went on to open their own bakeries, like, around the country or run the bread programs at established restaurants, you know, and they took that sort of Tartine method, that Tartine ethos with them. So you see it kind of spreads like, you know, wildfire. And I think like that's why you have good bread in really random places now.

- Totally.

- That weren't, you know, it used to be like, you can get good bread in New York, you can get good bread in San Francisco, but like now in lots of small towns where people have trained up at Tartine, they've gone to open bakeries that are awesome.

- Yeah.

- And we have Chad to thank. I mean, we have Tartine to thank, I think.

- Yeah, and I think you're gonna thank him in person on this episode.

- Yeah, I was thrilled because I hadn't had a chance to talk to Chad in a long time. And I told him I wanted, you know, we wanted to do this episode and did he wanna talk to us? So it's a fun chat.

- I cannot wait to hear this conversation.

- Chad, it's such a treat to get to talk to you again. It has been a while. It has been a while.

- Such a treat, such a treat for me as well.

- I feel like you are a household name amongst bakers now, but for those who don't know as much about your background, just tell us a little bit about how you sort of got started with baking, what your influences were, and then how you came to open that original Tartine.

- Yeah, so I was at the Culinary Institute in Hyde Park, New York, studying to be a chef and cooking. And then I just, well it was like, it was one of my instructors was telling our class about this guy, this crazy baker making really incredible bread like no one was making anywhere. And it was Richard Bourdon. It was maybe an hour and a half from the school. And so we sort of went there on a weekend to check it out. And I literally, I was very young and this guy was totally, you know, he was like the coolest guy. Just, you know, he had his babies on his back and his razor blade cutting the bread. And it was in a big brick barn with the Housatonic River running behind it. And it was all very new to me 'cause I was born in Texas and that was like my first time on the East Coast.

- Wow.

- And I literally asked for a job that day on the field trip.

- Wow.

- And one of the bakers took me outside. He was having a smoke break and he was like, "When do you wanna start? Like now?" And I was like, "I need to figure it out." He's like, "I wanna go do something else."

- Yeah, right?

- He'd been there for years. He was like a gypsy baker, this really great baker. Anyway, Richard, who's still a very good friend. I saw him last week and just amazing baker, still works every day. He was like, "I can't pay you until you're useful, "but I have a room for you in my house." And that sounded totally reasonable to me at the time, so.

- Yeah, I mean, you were 19 years old. It is reasonable, like-

- Yeah, I was still in school, so, you know, I switched to night classes so I could go work. And so I just got up to like, three in the morning, drove there, I was so obsessed. I was dreaming about bread.

- Wow.

- It's like I hardly slept, but it just didn't matter. I just remember I was just so obsessed with bread. So I'd never tasted, I mean, that was the first time I tasted sourdough bread when I was like, 20.

- Wow, wow.

- Yeah, in my life. So, and you know, a lot of people hadn't had that kind of bread really at that time. He's Québécois but then he worked a lot in Denmark and Belgium and all over Europe and France. So yeah, I ended up finishing school and then worked for Richard for a couple of years and then he kind of told me to leave and go learn from someone else. And I didn't wanna leave, but it was good advice. I said, okay, I'll leave. I want to go learn from the guy that taught you. And he always talked about this guy Patrick LePort, and he was in Savoie at the time, he's in Brittany now, but, so I ended up going to France and working with Patrick for half a year. And then Patrick's best friend who had a bakery in the south of France, his name was Daniel Colin. And both of these guys were just incredible bakers. So, and I remember I wrote a letter from France to Craig Ponsford who had just won the Coupe du Monde, this was, you know, nineties, maybe mid nineties. And I was like, "Hey, I've been in France working for you. "I wanna work for the best baker in America." And I got, like, no response at all. So I came home, I came back, I was very frustrated, but I wrote a letter to this guy, Alan Scott, who is no longer with us, but rest in peace. Just such an incredible human being, Tasmanian man, and he was living in Marin and West Marin and building these wood-fired ovens around the country. And he had a deal where you could come and stay, live in a farmhouse if you helped do chores and all that. And there was a-

- I see a pattern evolving here.

- Yeah, I'm kind of like, no money.

- No money, maybe a place to sleep.

- Yeah, it hasn't really changed that much, but I'm used to it now.

- Yeah.

- And there was a stone mill, and so I was milling flour and then the oven was in the backyard, and then Bolinas let me sell the bread, which was, you know, backyard illegal bread. But at the People's Store, which is still there, that was my first bread account. And I do wanna say also Alan loaned me the money to start the first bakery, which was in Point Reyes, which was just down the road from Marshall, where Alan was. And you know, he gave me like, forever to pay it back to him because I didn't have any money. And the people that built our oven were all students of CCAC, which was CCA, which I think closed, but it was back then-

- Yeah, California College of the Arts, is that, yeah.

- It was California College of the Arts and Crafts, which I thought was such a cool name.

- Yeah.

- And then they dropped that. But anyway, it was just, it was a beautiful thing and yeah, it was a lot of fun baking there.

- And then you transitioned from baking in Point Reyes to the spot in Tartine, which opened in 2002?

- Yeah, there was a little, there was a little jump into Mill Valley that was a short chapter, but it was interesting. We were getting closer to the city and it was kind of impossible to go into San Francisco. That was during the first dot-com bubble, if anyone remembers that.

- Yeah.

- And there was this, you know, rent was crazy. There was no vacancy.

- Yeah.

- But then right after the bubble burst, literally came in. I remember I was having dinner with the co-founder, my ex, Liz Prueitt. And we were eating at Delfina, which was just this little hole in the wall neighborhood restaurant that everyone loved. And we were walking back to our car and it was on that corner, there was a bakery called Lady Baltimore. It was a cake bakery. And there was one gentleman there that looked kind of lonely and sad. And Liz was like, "You go get the car. "I'm gonna go in and ask this guy if he would sell." And I was like, "That's crazy." And when I came back to get her, she was like, "Here's his number. He wants to talk." And so-

- Wow.

- We had the place. He wanted to retire, so.

- Wow.

- That's kind of how that happened.

- I think you are probably, I mean, the Tartine Bakery, Liz Prueitt, your former partner, did the pastry side, you did the bread side. But I mean, it's hard now because it's been, you know, 24 years. It's sort of hard to remember what the bakery scene was like back then, what the bread scene was like. But back then, but I mean, I think you quickly became known for this Tartine Country Loaf, right? Like, the Tartine Country Loaf became like, you know, one of the signature, you know, products of the bakery in addition to, you know, some of the pastries. So I want you to talk a little bit about that, like what you set out to make and whether you felt like that was, like the Tartine Country Loaf was something sort of like new, like did you invent a style of bread or do you feel like you were sort of like tying these threads together from the people you'd worked with and the breads you tried?

- Yeah, I mean, I was definitely influenced by the people I worked for. I had a lot of influences that weren't really mainstream French or European baking 'cause I sort of worked for like French hippies, which, you know, was really fun and amazing. And so yeah, when I came, and also it's like Acme does a perfect, you know, French baguette and all their breads are very classic, I think for the most part and very well done. And you know, they kinda had that covered.

- Yeah.

- And so I mean, I don't say like the country bread I made, it wasn't like a totally new bread, but it was definitely an expression of my favorite qualities from the four, I have like four teachers, Richard, Patrick, Daniel, and then Dave Miller, who also worked for Richard and is up in Chico. And he mills everything fresh, 100% whole grain, really wet doughs, totally, all their breads are totally different. But like, I love them all and I kind of took the parts that I liked most about each one and try to put them all into that country loaf.

- And for people who haven't had the country loaf, I mean, it is sort of wild to think about now because I think there are so many, and we'll talk about this in a little bit, but like, there's a lot of country loaf-esque bread out there now. Like, I think when you say to a person now, like, I'm gonna buy a loaf of sourdough bread, what they think of is something that resembles the country loaf. So just would you describe like, the qualities of that loaf for people that haven't had it?

- Yeah, I mean, you know, we bake, I see a lot of people bake a lot darker than we do now, but at the time people considered our bread pretty caramelized, pretty dark. And I guess the main, the way I would describe it is, you know, open sort of custardy crumb, a pretty extreme contrast between the crust and the crumb. A long slow rise, which now is pretty common, thankfully. It makes it more digestible. It makes it keep longer, high hydration, like I said before. Yeah, I mean, not too sour. It kind of depends. Sometimes you go a little too sour. When San Francisco would get really hot for three weeks outta the year.

- Yeah.

- It was hard to keep it the way I want. But, you know, it's funny, like looking back, I feel like what the Tartine Country Loaf, it kind of came to be like very much like an old school San Francisco sourdough. Like a Bordelaise or, you know, like extra dark, extra sour. Like again, we're not really going for extra sour, but I see pictures of these bakeries from the, you know, early 1900s in San Francisco. And I feel like the country loaf is kind of a modern version of all that, even though I wasn't trying to do that.

- Yeah.

- It still ended up being that and I've always said like, you know, when people say, "Why is San Francisco, it's such famous for bread?" and I'm like, the weather, honestly, is the biggest factor because it's almost always like good sourdough weather in San Francisco.

- That's interesting, yeah. I mean it's like, you know, people are always talking about like, it's the water, it's the, but I think that's true. Like it's never too hot, it's never too cold. And we talk a lot-

- It's kind of perfect.

- About like, you know, sort of coddling your sourdough dough, right? Like, maintaining the temperature, like, paying attention to it through the whole, but I mean, that's where San Francisco excels. It's sort of being like consistent, you know, really for month to month. And you, I mean, part of that long fermentation obviously was because you liked the flavor and you know, the texture of these long-fermented breads. But part of it, I mean, I made the joke earlier about surfer's bread. Like, you liked to surf and you wanted to make a bread schedule that sort of fit a little bit better with your life schedule. You had a young child. Like, and so-

- I love the surf story, but yeah. I'll give you the real version and it is related to surfing, but like, the long rise and the long rise led to a, so the long rise was because I needed to sleep at some point I was chopping wood.

- 'Cause it was just you.

- Yeah.

- Just me. I had no mixer, no retarder. So nothing to cool the bread down.

- This is when you're in Point Reyes?

- Yes.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, for six years, six or seven years. And you know, chopping wood every day, which I love, I still love it. And then like I would, yeah, I was sleeping in shifts. It was like four hours or three hours and then another four hours whenever I could get it.

- That sounds great.

- That would, I wouldn't survive now doing that at all. Not even close, but, and it definitely took a toll, but I was making it happen, but then during the winter I was like, man, maybe I can open these windows and like, it'll cool down enough. And it did, it would, you know, cool down to like 45, 50. And that would give me like, you know, a solid seven hours or something.

- Okay, yeah.

- But initially the bread was too sour when I did that. So then I mean that long rise was necessitated by me needing sleep. And then the long rise sort of forced me to develop a very young levain, a young starter kind of style.

- Yeah.

- Because if I used like a mature starter, which was the, you know, most traditional way and common way that people were using them after that long rise at that temp anyway, which is all I could do with opening the windows would give me too sour of a final flavor.

- I see, yeah.

- So I would start with a very not sour, very young, very lactic, hardly any acid at all. By the end it would have the acid level that I wanted.

- So my surfing story is a myth busted, but it's so romantic.

- No, but I love that story because when Eric and I started, Eric is a good friend, Wolfinger, who photographed the book and made that whole first book, you know, together, he lived upstairs and we were just literally surfing, making bread, doing recipes, shooting the book for a whole year. And basically like also in the beginning at Tartine, the pastries were all, everything was baked in one, in the bread oven, which is kind of how we trained in France. And I thought that was cool. It's not very practical, we don't do that anymore. But it would take like, two or three hours for the oven to come up to the bread temp after the pastries. So that was why the bread came out in the afternoon and that was why we surfed in the morning. And that was sort of the trade off, so it is true. But there's a little more, there's a little more-

- There's a little more nuance to it.

- Details to it, yeah.

- That's interesting.

- But, but-

- I was thinking too, I mean, in full disclosure, you know, you and I worked together on your "Tartine" book three, which came out, gosh, don't know, 10 or 11, 12, 13 years ago.

- That was 13, I think.

- 13 years ago?

- It was right after, three years after the first book, yeah. First I would say.

- You know, I was sort of able to see up close, like a little bit of your evolution of your bread baking process, you know, as you sort of shifted towards using, you know, more ancient grains, more sprouted grains, like playing around with the idea of, you know, porridge breads and you know, sort of other innovations. But I mean, I was sort of reflecting on that, like, that was 13 years ago. So like, you know, what sort of journey have you been on since then? Like, what gets you fired up when you think about bread baking now?

- Yeah, I mean, a couple of things. Like, the last few years I've been traveling and working with other bakers like, in South America and Mexico and just using like Spain, like, using totally different flours 'cause the other thing that, you know, there's a lot more awareness now about different types of wheat, different types of grains and all the bread stuff of course and fermentation. That gets me really fired up.

- Yeah.

- Just like, learning. Because I will say, like, when I started baking, there were lots of sort of rules that you would read. There were only a few books out there in English that, and there were very specific rules that sort of the authorities on bread sort of put out there in the nineties. And pretty much all of those have proved to not be true. And I'm not saying like any, these people were proved wrong, but I'm just saying like, actually while I'm working, I'm like, wow, I was told this in this book and this is not what's happening at all.

- And it's not bearing out when you're baking. That's interesting.

- Yes.

- Our colleague Martin Philip likes to say that, "Bread has no horizon line, "but you're always kind of chasing the sun." And I mean, that's true and that's what makes it-

- That's a very good quote. I love that.

- That makes it so fun. And I think you have done so much for home bakers, just like, you know, that people were not doing 25 years ago like, now are sort of commonplace. So it's I mean-

- I appreciate that and I love seeing it, I love seeing it. It's like I said, I get more inspiration from it. It's just, it's really wonderful.

- You're the best, Chad, thanks for joining us.

- Thank you, Jess. So nice to talk.

- This episode is brought to you by Brod & Taylor. Brod & Taylor is an independent family-owned company that builds tools for all bread bakers at every level to transform complex baking challenges into simple pleasures.

- I love Brod & Taylor. I mean, they are so passionate about bread and baking. When I talk to those folks, it really feels like I'm talking to someone at King Arthur too. There's that synergy there 'cause we only have one thing on our mind. It's baking, baking, baking.

- I love their tools. They really, truly are an asset for every home baker. And you and I both have quite a few of them in our own kitchens. You know, my favorite I think is the countertop proofer. I don't know, you're into the baking steel, but they have a lot of great tools.

- I love the baking steel.

- Whether you're a first time baker or you're in deep like us, there's something for you at brodandtaylor.com. That's B-R-O-D-A-N-D-T-A-Y-L-O-R.com. This episode is brought to you by our sourdough starter. If this conversation has you ready to hit the kitchen, but you don't wanna make your own starter, which I mean you should try 'cause it's a fun exercise. But if you don't want to, you can order ready-made fresh starter directly from us. Place an order on our website and we'll send you an adorable little jar of starter from the King Arthur Bakery. Couldn't be easier. You can make Chad's classic Tartine loaf for any of the amazing sourdough recipes on our website or in "The Big Book of Bread." You can find sourdough starter by searching sourdough starter on our shop site at kingarthurbaking.com.

- Yeah.

- Well, it's time for our next segment, Ask the Bakers. For Ask the Bakers, we wanna hear from you. If you have a baking question for us, head to kingarthurbaking.com/podcast to record a voice message and we may end up using it on the show. That's kingarthurbaking.com/podcast.

- And of course, if you have a baking question that simply can't wait, you can always reach out to our Baker's Hotline via phone, email, or online chat. Just go to kingarthurbaking.com/bakers-hotline, that's Baker's dash Hotline. Or call us at 855-371-2253. That's 2253 as in bake.

- You know, probably on balance, we have gotten the most listener questions over the course of all of these seasons about sourdough bread.

- Yeah.

- People have a lot of questions.

- Yeah.

- We have a few answers.

- A lot of questions, we have a few. Yeah, we've talked about-

- And we've heard some of the same questions, you know, more than once. So we picked, you know, we picked some of the most commonly asked questions and we're gonna take a stab at answering them.

- Yeah.

- So let's hear our first one.

- [Carla] Hi, this is Carla Lalli calling. I recently asked my audience on Food Processing, my newsletter on Substack, a burning question about sourdough starter. Why do people lie about how sensitive it is? For the past two years, I've stuck mine in the fridge for 10 months at a time. I never feed it and it's fine. Two days of feeding and we're back in business. All these stories about people who take their starters on vacation or feed their starter year round, even though they really only bake in the fall and winter. Why are people so histrionic about this? I thought I'd call and get your take. Thanks. Bye.

- I don't know about you, but when Carla Lalli put this on her Substack, I got millions of people sending it to me. You know, like, did you see this? Did you see this? Like, yes, I saw it. So I'm so glad she called in to answer. I have a lot of thoughts on this.

- Yes.

- Personally, first of all, Carla Lalli, great. Follow her Substack. If you're not, you know, following Food Processing, definitely get in there.

- She has a new book coming out, new cookbook coming out.

- Yeah, "Food is a Feeling," right? And her feeling is about, yeah, she's cooking a lot of feelings, you know?

- She should be a guest more often.

- A lot of thoughts, yes.

- We also have a lot of thoughts and feelings.

- So I love that she uses the word histrionic. One of my favorite words to describe, especially food people sometimes and it's true. So there is a lot of chatter sometimes about sourdough starters and how I'll say obsessive sometimes people can get about feeding them. I think there are a few things going on here. First of all, let's just bust a myth right away. You can keep your sourdough starter in the fridge for a long time.

- Yes.

- They are very hard to kill.

- Yes.

- I've pulled starters out. I think I've mentioned on the show, I have about five or six starters in my fridge of various ages. I have pulled out starters that are, I mean, they look like they look like biological disasters.

- Yeah, yeah.

- I mean they are almost solid at the bottom. And there's a really big layer of black hooch on top.

- Yeah.

- I pour it out, dig out a little bit, feed it, and it's true. It does revive.

- It does revive.

- And I remember when I started here at King Arthur, I was so inspired by a recipe on our website for Pain de Campagne, which was positioned almost exclusively at that time as a bread you could make with discard.

- Right.

- Without having feed your sourdough starter.

- Unfed starter, yes.

- What's interesting is that that book recipe is in "The Big Book of Bread" and we positioned it much differently. We advised that you feed your starter.

- Yes.

- Which was a decision that you and Martin, I'm putting you on the spot now.

- Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

- I don't think you knew I was gonna say this, but it's interesting to talk about why we did that. Because I think that answers this question about why we talk about feeding starters.

- Yes.

- Even though you don't have to, it's a good idea to do it.

- Right, so if you are keeping, I mean some of this we're retreading old territory. If you're keeping your starter at room temperature, you've gotta feed it. You have to feed it every day. Like, no getting around that. If you're not baking all the time, yes. You can put it in your fridge and what we advise best practice is to feed it, like, take it outta the fridge, feed it like once a week, let it sit at room temperature for a couple hours, put it back in the fridge.

- Yep.

- Can you go longer? Definitely you can go longer. I would say, you know, there is a difference and Martin is very like, makes this distinction. There's a difference between, you know, starter that will work. I'm using air quotes like that, you know, like will cause your dough to rise and starter that's at optimal health.

- Absolutely.

- And the only way you can really, like, you would really be able to see that, is to do like, a side by side comparison and I don't doubt that Carla takes her starter outta the fridge, she gives it a couple of feeds at room temperature and it works fine.

- Yeah.

- It raises, you know, it raises a loaf of bread, right?

- I think it's key is she said two days.

- Two days.

- And that's true. Like, and that could be two feedings a day.

- Sure. Let's try that. Like, take it out of, you know, the fridge, give it two or four feeds, bake a loaf of bread with it, see, but then like, keep it on your counter, feed it every day. And then bake that same loaf of bread, you know, a week later after daily feedings and just see.

- Yeah.

- Because my guess would be that, you know, after you give your starter a little more TLC at room temperature, it's just going to be like more vivacious and also notably less acidic. Because I think that, you know, I'm not expecting like a regular person goes to get a pH monitor. I mean you could if you're like, super curious. But you know, as you give your starter more feedings, it's going to become less acidic, A less acidic starter I think performs better. You know, so the only way to really know would be to do like a side-by-side test. But I think, you know, I think that Carla is right, that, do you need to take your starter on vacation? Definitely not. Like, do you need to have somebody come to your house? Like, you know, it's not a pet. People are like, it's a pet. It's not a pet.

- It's absolutely true. I can, I am living proof. Well, I've done this in my house. I have been converted from someone who kept his starter in the fridge for months at a time. Pulled it out, revived it, made bread with it, and someone who lives in a house now with a regularly fed starter. I'm not the one feeding it, but I have access to it. And the difference is palpable. It is a stronger starter.

- Yeah.

- It gives you a better rise. It gives you better bread. The difference is not that big of a deal and so you can definitely get great bread out of a neglected starter. Carla, thank you for keeping this discourse alive and calling in.

- Let's go to our next question.

- [Caller] Hi there. I can't believe I finally found this podcast. Oh my God, my dreams come true. Period. So I have been making sourdough for, you know, like everybody else since 2020. And I have made hundreds of loaves and I paid very detailed attention to the workflow on it, the timing, et cetera, et cetera. But now I find myself getting kind of used to some shortcuts. So for instance, my questions are levain or no levain? What is the benefit? Also autolysing or just throwing that salt in with the starter and flour and water right away, period? Yeah, love to hear your thoughts. Thanks.

- Well, these are two enormous questions that we could build entire episodes around and we probably will because this is our most, you know, our most appreciative listener. Her dreams came true.

- Yeah, yeah. I mean, and also a topic that people can talk about endlessly.

- Yes.

- I mean truly and so many nuances to it. Okay, well let's just do our best to peel the onion, okay?

- Start with levain I guess.

- Okay.

- To me this is a really interesting question. It sort of speaks to what our understanding of levain is.

- Well, so tell people, tell listeners what levain is.

- Levain or levain.

- Levain.

- I mean God knows.

- Yeah, here we go. We're already-

- I'm not the one to decide. It's a preferment. A preferment is just a small amount of culture or starter flour and water that is mixed before you incorporate the rest of the flour and water into the dough.

- And usually about 12 hours ahead.

- Yeah, you mix it ahead of time and you give it like a head start. And it really is there to, you know, start fermenting, start the fermentation process, start the hydration process and it builds a lot of flavor. That then when you incorporate it into the larger batch of dough is distributed through the entire dough.

- And what does Martin always say, it's a bouillon cube of flavor.

- Yeah.

- Which I think is an interesting way to think about it.

- Yeah, yeah.

- It's also nice because that process of making a preferment is essentially like giving your culture, your sourdough starter like an additional feed, right? So, you know, say you're feeding your starter once a day and it's like, okay, it's time to feed my starter. Well, like you can make that preferment and you know, juice up your starter that way. So it helps to build the strength of the starter also.

- Yeah, yeah. The question of levain or no levain, levain or no levain, is interesting to me because to me it seems, it's just very specific to the recipe. Some bread recipes have it, some bread recipes don't, to me it's not something that I would throw into any bread recipe that doesn't have it already. I suppose you could.

- You could, you could.

- But I wouldn't, I personally wouldn't mess with the formula that way because I trust that the formula was written to work without it.

- Right, and if you were gonna do that, I mean, 'cause you could say you were like, I wanna add a preferment to this, then you would, that's fine to do, but you have to make sure that you account for the amount of flour and the amount of water that you're putting in the preferment in the total quantity of flour and water in the recipe.

- You have to accurately subtract it.

- Yeah.

- Otherwise-

- Math is not my strong suit. Because otherwise you're gonna have too much flour, too much water.

- Yeah.

- Yeah. Now to the autolyse question, because this is a two-parter, a real doozy of a question.

- Yeah.

- But since she's a true fan, I'm gonna answer both parts of the question. So we thought and talked a lot about autolyse when we were writing "The Big Book of Bread." So autolyse, for listeners who don't know, is you combine some of the flour and some of the water in a recipe and you just let it sit for about 30 minutes and then you add the salt and the starter. The reason some bakers like to do that is that it prehydrates a portion of the flour and it helps with the extensibility of the dough. So like, how stretchy it is. I think if you are making, the conclusion that we drew after doing some, you know, considerable testing and thinking about it is that we think that that process is probably more vital in a larger bakery setting when you're making like, more loaves of bread. And then we didn't find that it made a huge difference when you are making a loaf or two. And what is the risk of it is that you forget to add those things. Like you forget to add-

- You forget to add the salt to the bigger batch.

- Exactly. Exactly.

- In which case, game over.

- Game over.

- Because there is nothing, sorry to Tuscany, but there is nothing worse than unsalted bread.

- It's terrible.

- It is just foul.

- It's terrible.

- Yeah.

- In our testing, what we determined and the compromise that we settled on is something that we call autolyse light. So we actually mix everything together. So flour, water, starter, salt, but then in some of the recipes we do build in a rest period. And that rest period is helpful because you know, yes, salt has some impact on extensibility, but we found that it wasn't like a huge difference and that that benefit from resting did allow the flour to hydrate. It did make it a little stretchier, easier to work with. So that's where we sort of settled. So there are some recipes in "The Big Book of Bread" that use this autolyse light, which is basically like mix everything together, but then let it rest. And it's not a true autolyse because the starter and salt would be omitted in a true autolyse.

- It's a salt-a-lyse.

- It's a salt-a-lyse. Yes, exactly. And I think it gets some of the benefits of an autolyse without the risk of like, oh, you've forgotten to add things and also like, without drawing out the process even more, because sometimes the autolyse is like, let it sit for an hour and then, you know, start with your recipe.

- Yeah.

- And you know, I know there are diehards out there who are listening to this that are like, I always autolyse, like, you fool. And that's fine. Like, I think if that's-

- Go for it.

- What you wanna do, like it's not gonna hurt. And in some cases it will help. Like, I do think autolyse can be useful in doughs that have like a higher percentage of whole grain flour because those benefit from the extra hydration time and you want that extra extensibility that's like not inherent to the flour, you know, or if you're making a bread dough that has high gluten flour in it, like, then I think an autolyse might be indicated more than, you know, it would in other cases. But I don't think there's like, you know, there's no hard and fast rule about it.

- Yeah.

- Thank God.

- So.

- Because I hate rules.

- So we are a little autolyse skeptical when it comes to small batches of bread for the home baker.

- Yeah.

- But if you wanna do it, go for it.

- Yeah, let's go to our next question.

- [Caller] Good evening. I'm calling find out if you have any ideas for making my sourdough bread or sourdough yeast a bit more pungent because I would like it to taste even more sour. And I'm not sure how to go about that. If you have any ideas, I would certainly be open to them. Thank you again. Goodnight.

- Oh.

- Hi Keira.

- Very cute, Keira. So Keira obviously has not done tequila shots in her life. This is a very simple way to do this. All you do is you, you cut a slice of sourdough, you cut a slice of lime, suck on the lime, eat the bite of sourdough. It works wonders, sour as heck.

- This is a question we get a lot though, because I think it's interesting sometimes people will eat, you know, a piece of sourdough bread and they're like, it doesn't taste very sour. And you know, that sort of tanginess that you get in some sourdough bread is not necessarily a hallmark of sourdough bread. And that's why these, you know, sometimes people are like, "Oh, I don't like sourdough bread, too tangy." And you're like, "Well, not necessarily." So you can definitely-

- They've been raised on San Francisco sourdough.

- Yeah. Well, yeah. And we've talked about the San Francisco sourdough and how some of those commercial loaves actually have citric acid added to them to make them tangier. So I mean, you could do that. Would I recommend doing that? Definitely not, because I don't think that gives you the best results. There are things that you can manipulate to get a more sour bread. And I think chief among them is giving your bread like long, cold fermentation. So the longer it sits in bulk fermentation in a cold environment, the more sour it's gonna become.

- Yeah, and so we mentioned earlier the recipe for classic Pain au Levain, in "The Big Book of Bread." We also have recipes like that on the site. And this is an interesting recipe to talk about in terms of sourness because that recipe gives you an option. You have a preferment, which is gonna give you lots of flavor. You let that go overnight, you shape, you know, you do the bigger mix, bulk, shape, and you can bake immediately the next day or you can give it a cold retard in the fridge.

- Yeah.

- And that's when you're gonna make the difference between a loaf that has a lot of flavor and a loaf that's gonna have even more flavor and even more sourness to it.

- Yeah. And you can even go longer.

- Oh yeah, you could.

- I mean, there a threshold at which dough loses strength and you know, becomes sort of flabby and you know, won't rise as well. But you can push that cold fermentation for quite a long time.

- Yeah.

- And I've accidentally done it, you know, like when we were doing testing for "The Big Book of Bread," like, I would find dough and like, oh, just like a very particular problem, I know, but I would like forget about doughs and then you're like, well, I might as well just bake it and see what happens. And yeah, the ones that sat around longer, it just got tangier and tangier. So that is what I would recommend. If you have a recipe that you love rather than just like, you know, baking it immediately take that dough, you know, shaped in its banneton, cover it, tuck in the fridge overnight, and then bake it the next morning and you'll see, I mean, or the next evening even. And you'll see a difference in the flavor.

- Yeah, and that is a trick you can apply to a recipe that may not necessarily have it, you could experiment with that, right? I mean, so I was talking a little bit earlier about how I wouldn't necessarily, just me personally, I wouldn't add a preferment to a recipe that doesn't call for it.

- Right.

- That's just me.

- Yeah.

- But I would, again, talking about me, I would experiment with holding a loaf in a cold environment overnight to experiment with. I think that's pretty low risk.

- Yeah, it's low risk. And I mean the refrigeration slows fermentation, slows fermentation down so much, like to a crawl. Right?

- Yeah.

- And so you don't really have to worry about like, overproofing your bread in that time. If you left on the counter, like, you would have to worry about it.

- Yeah, right.

- But in the fridge it's just like at a snail's pace. So I think it is pretty low risk.

- Yeah, so in this scenario where you've taken a loaf and you've, you know, stuck it in the fridge for 12 hours more than the recipe says, would you let it warm up for an hour before you put it in the oven? Would you take it out while your oven preheats or would you go it do it straight from?

- I think it sort of depends. I mean, I would probably just evaluate the dough when it comes out. Like, you know, we talk a lot about what you're looking for. Like, I sort of would like wiggle the banneton and it should look marshmallowy and it should be bubbly. And you know, I think sometimes you can just tell by looking at it.

- Yeah.

- That it's ready to go and sometimes it also depends on how far you have pushed the first fermentation, right?

- Before you put it in the fridge.

- Before you put it in the fridge, so if you feel like, oh, I've like gone to maximal fermentation there, which frankly most home bakers don't do, so then you might just take it straight out of the, it's also, I will say just I find it easier to score a cold from the fridge-

- For sure,

- Loaf of bread to get like a nice score that will help the loaf release in the oven. So, you know, oftentimes I will try and push the first fermentation, get it in the banneton, and then put it in the fridge, and then the next day just turn it out right away without letting it warm up.

- Yeah.

- Because it's easier to score.

- It definitely is easier to handle cold. I have a really cold refrigerator. So I sometimes I experience an opposite problem where it slows down fermentation so much.

- So much.

- That I feel like I want to give it, I want to wake up a little bit.

- Yeah.

- Before I bake it. So I'll take it out, you know, put it on my counter while my oven preheats.

- Okay, yeah.

- So it's like just 45 minutes or so. It's not like a huge, it's not like I'm giving it a huge amount of time, but just to give it that last little boost. But you really just have to pay attention.

- Yeah.

- And look at how your loaf feels.

- Good question though.

- And that was a really sweet call and I was just, lots of sweet calls.

- I know, we've got some fans.

- And now we're gonna go into the sour part of the podcast.

- The sourdough, the sour.

- Because every episode we love to check in with Jessica to see what wildly surprising and full-throated ideas are in her head. A segment we call lovingly, Jess-opinions. Jessica, what is your Jess-opinion about sourdough?

- Well, it's interesting because I think, you know, at the top of the show we were talking about how that Tartine loaf just took off, you know, and suddenly like the bread that you would get was this particular style of bread. And do not get me wrong, like, I was talking earlier about how much I love that style of bread.

- Holding it to your chest.

- Holding it to my chest like an infant.

- It was your baby.

- It was my baby. And I think it's a delicious, you know, a delicious thing to eat. I will say though, that I don't think it is perfect for every application.

- Okay.

- And, you know, there's some that are gonna disagree with me, but like, you toast that bread and like, go ahead, put your butter and peanut butter on it and just like, watch it rain through those holes. You know, that large, like open structure, open-holed structure that everyone is questing for, like, look at my crumb, evaluate my crumb. What is my crumb? Like, I don't know. I think sometimes it gets, it goes too far and you're like, well, what am I supposed to do with this crust? Like, with a web inside? Like, how am I supposed to? Like, there's no bread. Like, where did the bread go? So I think that that bread is like, has obviously like some delicious applications, But you know, for morning toast, like, I don't mind, like, I don't think a tighter-crumbed bread is a flawed bread is all I'm saying. It's like, it's just a different, or even like a tighter-crumbed sourdough bread. Like, a sourdough sandwich loaf. Like, I don't think it's a lesser than, and it's interesting because we spend a lot of time looking at, you know, like what people on Reddit are talking about sourdough. And everyone is obsessed with getting the super open crumb. Like, it has become like the benchmark of a good loaf of bread. And I just, I push back a little bit against that because I think it is a certain style of good loaf of bread.

- Yeah.

- And that is a great thing to make some of the time. But often like I am turning to like a close-crumbed, you know, still sourdough, but like a sandwich loaf or something like that 'cause you get the flavor, but like, for God's sakes, you can put some jelly on it. You know, like, is that too much to ask?

- Well, you know, it's a flex now, right? You know?

- Right.

- I mean, and it's a challenge to get it. And right now we're about to come out with a recipe that you're gonna hate, you know, a super open, super high-hydration sour dough, much like the ones you're talking about. And we're even developing an entire On-Demand class about it because it is so many people's Holy Grail.

- People wanna make it.

- People wanna learn. So I think part of it is that they just want that challenge. But it is interesting to think about the pendulum and I just wonder if the pendulum is going to swing back that way. And I feel like it kind of is slowly like, okay, we went super open crumb and now we're now gonna be ready to go a little bit-

- It's gonna be Wonder Bread.

- It's gonna tighten up again. Yeah, and now we're gonna go back to Wonder Bread. Yeah.

- It's just gonna be like a piece of bread that you can just squish in your hand into a tiny ball, you know?

- Yes, right. And I think you just kicked off the pendulum swinging back.

- I hope so, a trendsetter.

- Yeah, yeah.

- Yeah, there's room at the table for both styles. But I would just say to people like, don't forget, or don't think it's lesser than, like, there's lots of ways to use sourdough that aren't that type of bread. And I think they're delicious too and worthy of veneration in the way that we venerate the Tartine loaf.

- Yeah, I'm disappointed in this Jess-opinion. It's way too reasonable. I mean, it's not really that, it's not really that hot of a take. I mean, it's nice. This has been a very nice episode.

- I know. I'll work harder next time.

- Yeah, gotta get back to some-

- To be my old self. What are you gonna bake this week, David?

- Well, all this talk about sourdough got me in a sourdough mood, which I'm usually in anyway.

- Yeah.

- But I'm gonna go a little sweet with it. A little enriched. Tight crumb. We have a new recipe on the site for a Sourdough Chocolate Babka.

- Oh yeah.

- And I think we were talking about this in a previous episode. I like chocolate with sourdough. I like that lactic tang I think really works well with chocolate. So I think it's a very good pairing. I love a chocolate sandwich with sourdough bread. So this is-

- Oh yeah. You turned me onto that.

- So this is that just in loaf form.

- I'm gonna do, we have, well, listeners will know my coconut agenda has been fully realized because we have this new Creamy Coconut Sheet Cake. It's combining two of my loves, sheet cakes and coconut. I mean, I'm gonna have to make it for dinner. It's 'cause it's a big cake. It's, you know?

- For dinner.

- I'm gonna have it for a dinner party. I'm gonna make it for dinner. It's got coconut milk, it's got coconut extract, it's got like a soak, sort of like a tres leches.

- Keep me away.

- Keep you away? Well, I won't invite you to my dinner party then. And that was a contributor recipe and it looks really great.

- Who did it?

- Kayla Hoang.

- Oh nice. And so I haven't tried that yet, but I'm eager to give that one a spin.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- You really are pushing King Arthur towards your own personal agenda.

- Yeah.

- There's so many coconut recipes coming out of the test kitchen right now. There's a cookie stuffed with German chocolate cookie.

- Oh my gosh. That cookie.

- In a future book, right?

- Yeah. That, yeah. In fact, the test kitchen director Sarah was like, we can't put any more coconut recipes in this book. I was like, are there a lot? But-

- Was that maybe a directive coming down from me? Maybe, maybe not.

- So that's what I'm gonna do this week. And both of those recipes are on the site if you wanna bake along with us. As always, thank you for tuning in and joining us here on "Things Bakers Know." We're gonna be back next week with a new episode.

- Yes, I think we're talking about bagels next week.

- Talking about bagels.

- [Both] Yeah.

- Out of the frying pan, into the fire.

- That's definitely gonna be a less nice episode. I got lots of opinions about bagels.

- Yeah, I know you do.

- Yeah. People, remember to like and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to your podcasts.

- And leave us a, I was gonna say, leave us a recipe while you're there.

- Sure.

- I mean you could, I would love.

- I know.

- But also a review and share the episode with a friend because baking is more fun together.

- Yeah. And in the meantime, people, please do not forget to follow that recipe. We talked a lot about things you could do outside of recipe today. Ignore all that. Follow the recipe. Follow the recipe. "Things Bakers Know" is hosted and executive produced by me, David Tamarkin.

- And me, Jessica Battilana.

- Rossi Anastopoulo is our senior producer, Chad Chenail is our producer and Marcus Bagala is our engineer. Original music by Megan and Marcus Bagala.

- And also big thanks to Chad Robertson, who's just the GOAT for joining us on this week's episode. You can learn more about him and his new projects via his Instagram @tartinebaker.

- "Things Bakers Know" is a King Arthur Baking Company podcast. This episode is brought to you by a new collaboration between King Arthur and Supernatural. Supernatural, of course, is the maker of America's brightest dye-free sprinkles. And we are putting those sprinkles in our new Confetti Cake Mix and Confetti Sugar Cookie Mix. Lemme tell you something, I made the cake and I made it to an ice cream cake. It was gorgeous, it was celebratory. It was like my birthday, but it wasn't even my birthday. Find both mixes at target.com and of course at kingarthurbaking.com.