Our favorite thing to talk about and CSB sign up closes noon tomorrow!
Tomorrow Wednesday 3/9 at noon we will close our sign up period for the next CSB. The CSB provides a subscription to our classic sourdough batard for Saturday pick up in Jamesport March 12, March 19, March 26, April 2, April 9.
We will donate half of the revenue from this subscription period to the International Rescue Committee to help Ukrainian refugees. The IRC is on the ground in Poland helping displaced families from Ukraine with food, medical supplies and emergency care.
A note about preorders: Going forward, only CSB subscribers will be able to preorder our products for Saturday porch pick-up in Jamesport. CSB members will have access to a password protected page where every week they can add our full range of products to pick up with their weekly bread. CSB members can preorder another classic sourdough, chocolate sourdough, roasted coffee beans, sourdough baguettes, sourdough cinnamon rolls or sourdough pizza dough.
Our favorite conversation at the farmers market
It happens every farmers market that someone stops by our table, looks at the bread, says that it looks beautiful but they can’t eat it because they are gluten free. In our last newsletter we shared that we have a set of loyal customers who are gluten free (non celiac) and ours is the only bread they can eat and feel good afterwards. We know their experience with our bread underscores the difference between naturally leavened bread and processed bread.
Classic sourdough bread is made with just three ingredients: flour, water and salt.
Artisan bakers are known for being choosey about their flours. Our flour, the gluten, comes from mills that hand select their grain and mill it fresh: Central Milling (certified organic) and Castle Valley (stone ground, uncertified organic).
We absolutely love talking with our customers about the difference between processed and unprocessed bread, which essentially comes down to three things: yeast, ingredients and how the bread is made.
Yeast: Processed bread is made with commercial yeast, the kind you buy powdered in a packet or jar. Our yeast is our starter that we lovingly feed every day and grows from wild yeast in the air all around us.
Ingredients: The second differentiator is the number of ingredients and our ability to pronounce them. Pictured below are the ingredients from two breads that we have in our pantry, one a potato bread and the other a widely available organic seeded whole grain bread. Even the organic one has ingredients that we don’t recognize, and though most are familiar and clean, there’s just a lot of them. Why might that be?
How the bread is made: We’re just guessing about why even an organic bread with mostly clean ingredients might have so many of them but the answer likely has to do with being able to produce the bread at scale with more machinery and automation than human hands, and shelf stability. A processed bread can be made from dough to baked loaf within a few hours, and needs to be shelf stable for much longer than 2-3 days. A naturally leavened bread made from three ingredients takes at least a full day to make and is not long term shelf stable.
For our own bread, we introduced cold proofing into the process so that we could maximize the benefits of fermentation on a somewhat predictable schedule. Cold proofing means resting the bulk dough and unbaked individual hand shaped breads in the refrigerator. And sourdough bakers, it’s ok to laugh at my use of “predictable.” All we can do is try :)
Our process looks like this: day 1 mix the dough then put it into the refrigerator to bulk ferment, day 2 hand shape the dough into individual loaves then put them into the refrigerator to cold proof/ferment, day 3 individually score the loaves and bake. To score means to slice a design and a long functional cut to prevent bread from exploding in the oven. All that time means more fermentation, which means more time for bacteria from our natural leaven to break down gluten, liberate minerals and add B vitamins to the dough. Lactic acid is a by-product in the process and it adds the sourdough flavor and enables the bread to keep longer without any preservatives.
We’re not scientists or doctors but we do suspect that bread as a food is getting a bad rap when there is a world of difference between what goes into it and how it can be prepared. We’re proud of how we make ours, believe in the process, and absolutely love to talk about it! So if you see us in person and feel passionately about this too or have any questions, know that we’re game for a chat any time.
On a final note, there is nothing wrong with processed bread if it agrees with your tummy. This is not meant to be a processed bread shaming article. It’s a beautiful thing that processed bread exists to nourish people in a scalable way. In our house, processed bread has a time and place and we rely on it regularly. Goodness knows our children will always choose to put their hotdogs in potato roll hotdog buns over sourdough every time!
We are returning to Sang Lee’s farmstand for their reopening in Peconic on Friday!
Spring must be coming because Sang Lee Farms is reopening their beloved farmstand in Peconic this Friday at 9am. Our classic sourdough batards will be ready for purchase alongside their organic vegetables and prepared items. It’s an understatement to say that we cannot wait!
Sang Lee Farms 25180 County Rd 48, Peconic, NY 11958
Our full product offering is available on Saturdays at the East End Food Market
There are only two ways to purchase our full product offering. One is to be become a CSB bread subscriber, and the second is to find us at the East End Food Market in Riverhead.
At the market this Saturday 3/12 we are offering
Hot Coffee
Classic Sourdough
Chocolate Sourdough (vegan, dairy free)
Rye Sourdough
Light Roast Kenyan Single Origin Coffee Beans
Hide Tide Espresso Roasted Coffee Beans
Sourdough Baguettes
Sourdough Pizza Dough
Sourdough Cinnamon Rolls
In closing, here is a summary of where to find our products this week:
Friday
Lombardi’s Love Lane Market in Mattituck
Sang Lee Farms in Peconic for their opening day
Saturday
East End Food Market in Riverhead
Jamesport for week 1 of our CSB bread subscription.
Have a wonderful week!
Warmly, Ana and Brett
Would you consider baking twice a month to donate to local East End food pantries? Please join us and other local home bakers to register for Slow Food East End’s Flour Power initiative.
