We are super-proud to make our own bread here at Sheepscot General. It wasn’t long after the store opened that we realized that we wanted to make sandwiches, and not long after that did we realize we needed and wanted to make the bread ourselves. When I got nervous about scaling up quantities of sandwich bread, Anna Jansen shared her white and wheat recipes. Eight years later, they remain unchanged (though we did add seeds last year to the whole wheat). Thanks, Anna!

Our first sourdough bread was rye. When Ben set out to develop our own corned beef Reuben sandwich, a sourdough rye was a must. The recipe he developed is the one we still use today. Bolstered by his success, I began coming up with some additional sourdough loaves, and now we offer Olive Bread on Fridays, and the Sheepscot Loaf on Sundays. Rye is offered on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. White and wheat sandwich bread is available every day, and Anadama is sold on Wednesday.

Farming, beer, and bread-  that’s what separates us from hunter-gatherers.  Scientists at Stanford have authored a paper proposing that humans settled down with agriculture in order to produce beer and bread, not the other way around.  Grains were sprouted, allowed to ferment… steps which happen naturally in warm, moist climates.  What develops from there leads to either beer or bread, depending on the next action taken. Getting enough grains to make more of either would’ve been what encouraged the invention of farming. 

Once bread was established, it remained the same for thousands of years- naturally fermented, what we call sourdough.  It wasn’t until the late 1800’s that yeast was “discovered” and isolated for baking ease. And it wasn’t until the 1940’s that granular yeast was invented.  That was one lifetime ago. Commercial yeast makes delicious bread relatively quickly and predictably, and we use it for our sandwich loaves here at Sheepscot General. But sourdough is a small daily miracle.

This post follows the process of the Sheepscot Loaf, but the protocol is the same for all of our sourdough loaves. Are you ready?

Before making the sourdough bread, the starter has to be fed to get it geared up to multiply and rise well. Cat is pouring the fed and risen starter into a big bowl with the water for the final loaf. Into the mixer bowl it goes with the rest of the flour. After an initial mix, it rests for 20 minutes. This resting step (called “autolyse”) allows the flour to absorb more water. A wetter sourdough makes a bread with a more open crumb and better flavor.

The next step is called bulk fermentation, and it includes the “stretch-and-fold.” The dough is scraped into a bin to rest for around 40 minutes, then it’s folded like a business letter twice. Those folds strengthen and align the gluten. Strong, lengthy gluten allows the dough to rise higher. Look at that extensibility!

Later in the day, the dough is turned out on to the table, cut into large chunks, and formed into rounds. After relaxing for around 20 minutes, it’s gently formed into loaf shapes and placed in willow baskets. We place all our bread doughs in the walk-in refrigerator for a long slow rise overnight. zzzzzzzzzzzz….

The next morning, the loaves are turned out onto a floured baking peel, scored, and quickly baked in a hot-ish oven with lots of steam in the first few minutes.

The Sheepscot Loaf is, at first glance, a straightforward loaf. An evolved version of a recipe I found in Maggie Glezer’s Artisan Baking, there are no seeds or berries, no complicated additions. But it isn’t simple; it is elevated. The color of the dough is like milky coffee. The dough is satiny and strong because of the fantastic 75% extraction flour. The nutritional profile of this flour is closer to whole wheat than white because of how it is produced at the Maine Grains grist mill in Skowhegan. I learned about high extraction flours one summer at the Kneading Conference, and this recipe seemed to be a deconstructed version of high-extraction flour for the home baker. Why not just use our locally milled flour? I first tried the 86% extraction, then settled on the 75%. Beautiful. 

Here’s what we put in the Sheepscot Loaf:

• Maine Grains 75 % extraction flour

• Maine Grains rye flour

• Blue Ox rye malt

• Sea salt

• Well water

• Natural yeast starter (sourdough)

Bread-Nerd Alert: High extraction flour is a whole grain flour with some of the larger particles of germ and bran removed by sifting. The process actually extracts the finer flour from the coarser pieces, thus, 100% extraction is all of the ground grain: i.e., whole wheat. 86% extraction leaves behind 14% of the larger particles, and 75% leaves behind 25% in the extraction process. By contrast, in large-scale commercial milling most of the germ and bran as can be are removed, then added back in specific measurable amounts for consistency of product, but at a loss of nutritious oils and minerals.

The next time you have one of our sourdough breads, just imagine that you are eating a bread that is relatively unchanged from its ancient ancestors.

-Liza

As ever, the photographs are the Vermeer-like handiwork of Kristin Lora Dillon of Blue Horse Photography.