My baking journey started in 1980.  It started with traditional loaf breads and eventually branched out.  The breads that began in North Carolina and continued for 20 years in Illinois took an interesting turn when we moved to Mount Gretna in 2006.

 

Winemakers speak of the ‘terroir’ of a region: the soil, the moisture, the weather, the overall environment.  I’m not a classically trained baker so I don’t know if that’s the proper word to use but I’ll use it anyway.

 

The terroir here in Mount Gretna is special.  The air is so filled with spores & wild yeasts that we noticed the changes with some of the first breads out of the ‘vintage’ 1975 electric oven that was in our home.

 

Over time — 15 years now — our kitchen space has settled in to a terroir of its own.  It is a wonderful place to work.  And while I still make yeast breads on a regular basis, I prefer sourdoughs.

 

With yeast breads, there is a predictability from start to finish.  Most everything I bake with yeast can be done in 2-3-4 hours total.  Sourdough, on the other hand, can be a days long process:  a combination of watching, waiting, stretching & folding, and shaping is what brings it all together.

 

My sourdough starter culture is about six years old — ‘young’ by many standards.  If I’m baking regularly, it sits in a jar on a countertop and is fed twice a day.  If I’m taking a break, it is in the fridge.

 

I use the same culture whether I’m doing sourdough breads, sourdough pizzas, baguettes, whatever.  The only thing that changes is the amount of culture used in the dough.

 

I bake mostly with flours from King Arthur Flour, Snavely Mills (Lititz PA), and Small Valley Milling (Halifax PA).  None of these flours have been bleached, nor do they have preservatives, flavor enhancers, enrichments, or bromates.    Most commercial breads cannot make the same claim.

 

When I’m preparing sourdough bread, a portion of the culture is combined with flour & water to create a levain (a leaven).  The levain ages for 6-12 hours and is then mixed in with the main dough.  The dough goes through a series of stretches & folds over a period of several hours before being shaped into the final form for proofing/aging.

 

Some of the sourdough breads proof in traditional loaf pans, others in rattan bannetons.  In order to control when the dough is actually baked, I can slow down the proofing process by putting the banneton into the fridge until it’s ready to go into the oven.

 

Pizzas can be quick (yeasted) or not quick (sourdough).  A quick pizza dough can be ready to bake in three hours.  Sourdoughs can be 24-48-72 hours.

 

These days, I bake in an electric oven and in a brick oven.  I have also baked in a fire pit using a cast iron Dutch Oven.

 

On this website, you will find a good collection of recipes for breads & pizzas as well as a list of essential & nice-to-have kitchen tools.  Most of the recipes are targeted for the home baker and have pictures and/or video clips.

 

My take is that if I can do this, so can you. 

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Take care.  Bill