Sunday’s We Bake Bread with Christine from Maid In The Shade in San Jose CA
On Sunday's We Keep Calm and Eat Bread with Christine from @maidintheshade83 who is based in San Jose California and is navigating 2020 with sourdough and food. Christine is also a Disney/Star Wars/Gaming/Game of Thrones nerd.
How did your love for baking start?
I’ve been baking for years because for much of my life I was gluten intolerant. I had to make my own food especially since gluten free food wasn’t widely available at the time. After the birth of my son, my body changed and I didn’t need to be GF anymore. As for sourdough, I’d always wanted to try but it wasn’t until quarantine when I had the time to devote to it.
What emotions provoke you when you bake?
I feel tremendous amounts of love when I bake. It makes me feel like I’m doing something good for my family and friends. Always happy.
What are your favorite things to bake?
I love baking bread, obviously, but cookies are a close second. Oh, focaccia is a favorite too.
What’s been inspiring you lately?
I see so many people in the bread community making challenging things and that’s what keeps me inspired. Also, if it’s ok to say, the US election has inspired me greatly. Feeling good about that!
What does bread symbolize for you?
Family. Plain and simple.
What is the most challenging part of baking bread?
Eating it all! No I’m all seriousness, keeping up with my obsession while working a full time job and having a family. Baking bread takes time.
What’s the most important thing to you when baking?
The most important thing to me when baking would have to be the art. I love creating stencils that bring in different fandoms and I love sharing those even more. Bread and art are universal.
What are some things you’ve learned about bread?
Science. I’ve learned so much by having to tweak my baking to the weather and seasons. It’s given me a newfound passion for learning how food is made and what each ingredient does. It’s fascinating.
How do you like to eat your bread?
Any way! But on day one, fresh and warm with cold butter or oil/balsamic/herbs. After that, I make avo or ricotta toasts for breakfast, or cut up into croutons for a Caesar salad. Served with cheese on a charcuterie plate is also great!
Sunday’s We Bake Bread with Kendall of Flour Child in LA
Kendall of @flour____child is a California native living in LA. who was recently featured on former VP Joe Biden’s Instagram account.
She is a copywriter for a social impact - focused startup up by day and a baker by night. She is happiest when “eating some form of carbs and cheese while singing along to Taylor Swift.”
How did your love for baking start?
I remember baking a lot with both of my grandmas as a child. My dad’s mom taught me how to make bread and my mom’s mom taught me how to make what is still my favorite cake recipe ever. My mom always baked a ton during the holidays to give out plates of assorted cookies to friends and family and I loved helping (and mostly eating) alongside her. My dad was always big on making educational cupcakes for my sister and my birthdays every year to share with our classes which was such a fun way to celebrate.
What emotions provoke you when you bake?
I find baking so calming. It’s a nice moment to disconnect from work, the news, social media and just focus on one thing. Then there’s the excitement of getting to share and eat what you’re making!
What are your favorite things to bake?
My grandma’s Sand and Dirt cake recipe (mentioned above) is a long process, but one of my favorite things to eat. It’s a double-layered chocolate cake with mint frosting and semi-sweet chocolate melted on top. I rarely make it, but when I do it’s heaven. I’ve only been baking bread for the past year or so, but I played around with a couple of recipes and created my own garlic rosemary loaf that I could probably eat solo in one sitting.
What’s been inspiring you lately?
So much has happened this year and there are so many causes I’ve wanted to support, but knew I only had so much money to donate myself. After baking bread for a few friends during quarantine, around June I decided to start baking in exchange for donations to a few key causes. The response from my peers was so encouraging! Shortly after I found Bakers Against Racism and saw other bakers on Instagram doing similar bake sales to raise money. I’ve raised over $700 at this point for Black Voters Matter Fund, Fair Fight, ACLU, When We All Vote, and the Biden campaign.
What does bread symbolize for you?
For me, bread is all about bringing people together and spending quality time over a shared fresh loaf of bread.
What is the most challenging part of baking bread?
Honestly, it’s not eating the whole loaf at once!
What’s the most important thing to you when baking?
Bread brings me so much joy—both making it and eating it—and I just want to be able to share that joy with others when I give them a fresh loaf.
What are some things you’ve learned about bread?
Every time I make a loaf, it always amazes me how few ingredients you really need.
How do you like to eat your bread?
Any and every way! My go-to ways are just warmed with some butter or in a nice toasty grilled cheese.
Sunday’s We Bake Bread with Emerald who lives in Phoenix
Emerald Green (@thegemthecolor) is a 32 year old bread baker and artist living in Arizona and is also a a bread artist for @proofbread and the cofounder of @bakers4good which is a collective of bakers in the Greater Phoenix Metro Area changing the world the best way they know how: through baked goods.
How did your love for baking start?
My mom taught me how to cook as soon as I was old enough to assist in the kitchen. After college when I was living on my own, I realized I still hadn’t learned how to bake. I had a friend who had a range of dietary restrictions who was lamenting about not being able to find any bakeries that had cupcakes she could eat without making her sick. So I ordered a specialty cupcake book to make her cupcakes as a surprise. I haven’t looked back since.
What emotions provoke you when you bake?
I love the alchemy that comes with baking. Mix some things in a bowl and watch the magic happen. Makes me feel like a wizard.
What are your favorite things to bake?
I work in an all sourdough bakery, which happens to be where my passion is. More than anything else, I love to intricately score bread and then eagerly wait for the results.
What’s been inspiring you lately?
My specialty is decorative bread scoring. For my scoring designs, I am often inspired by the environment around me (the Arizona desert), produce that is in season, animals, portraits. As far as flavors go, I enjoy bringing Korean flavors into sourdough bread. I am half Korean and half German. Bringing the flavors of Korea inside an artisan loaf of sourdough bread is like the culmination of my heritage.
A lot changed for me when I started to see bread as an art medium. I’m always challenging myself to see what the limits are to manipulating bread in different ways. It’s challenging but lights a childlike wonder in me at the same time.
What does bread symbolize for you?
Sourdough bread is universal. Every culture has their own history and traditions when it comes to naturally leavened bread. It’s one of the most basic and essential food staples. It brings people of all walks of life together.
What is the most challenging part of baking bread?
Like everything else, it’s a skill. It takes repetition to build up the muscle memory required. Sourdough is a long process that’s a refined science but also necessitates a level of intuition and flexibility. It’s a lot of hands-on hard work.
What’s the most important thing when baking bread?
Patience with both the process and yourself. There are so many factors that come into play to have a successful loaf of bread. Keeping detailed notes, being mindful of temperature and timing, and not feeling defeated when a loaf doesn’t come out the way you’d hoped are all important as a bread baker.
What are some things you’ve learned about bread?
Every sourdough loaf is unique to the baker who made it. The microbes that live on your hands have a relationship with the microbes that live in the dough. The more you are touching your bread as you’re mixing, folding, and shaping, the more those microbes flourish and become an intrinsic characteristic of your bread. I think that’s the coolest thing.
How do you like to eat your bread?
Most often I’m eating it as avocado toast with a bed of arugula tossed in a light dressing and topped with fried eggs. However, the simplicity of a toasted slice of bread with a pad of butter is undefeated.
Sunday’s We Bake Bread with Sarah who lives in Chicago
Sarah Mispagel Lustbader of Sarahlustbagel on Instagram is a former Michelin star pastry chef turned loaf lifer who lives in Chicago.
Check out her Instagram HERE
How did your love for baking start?
My love of baking started pretty young, maybe when I was in 1st grade? My uncle Brian was an amazing cook. I have very fond memories of going to see him with my family. He would have music on loud, singing along, cooking with what felt like a ton of things going at once. Everything he made was incredible, and it clearly brought him such joy to be able to cook for his family. I told my parents I wanted to be a chef, but every time I went into the kitchen to make something, I veered towards the pastry side. I eventually went to Culinary school when I was 20, and completed a course in baking and pastry. I worked bakery jobs for a few years, and my first love was bread. I eventually transitioned into restaurant pastry kitchens when I moved to Chicago in 2010. I most recently won the executive pastry chef for Sepia restaurant (one Michelin star), and its sister restaurant Proxi (Michelin bib gourmand). I was with them for 3 years and then left my employment with them to work in a bakery, Lost Larson, to dive back into my passion for bread making. I was with them for three months before the pandemic hit, and have been out of work since. I've been doing my best to continue baking bread and learning with my husband, who is also a bread lover, during this time.
What emotions provoke you when you bake?
A sense of calm. I am a very routine driven person. I like to start and end every day the same if I can. I like that there is a routine and a pretty clear set of guidelines to follow for the bread baking process. I always get excited, though when I bake, and I can peek into the oven through the glass and see an ear forming on my loaf and see it getting a really good rise.
What are your favorite things to bake?
I bake exclusively with sourdough starters when I'm making bread, so even a simple country oaf has a great flavor depth. My current favorite breads are honey oat for peanut butter toast or a great veggie sandwich. But I think everyone knows that pickled jalapeños and cheddar cheese makes what might be the best bread of all time.
What's been inspiring you lately?
Lately, I've been thinking of different flavor combinations for bread, and how they would lend themselves into being incredible sandwiches. Earlier this year, my husband and I made bread filled with caramelized onions and gruyere, which we then made into roast beef sandwiches. So things like that.
Advice for someone who would like to get into bread baking?
Be patient, and follow the recipe! All of it! Talk to someone you think has a good handle on the basics of bread baking, and ask for a recipe they like and trust. And follow every step exactly. Like in a science experiment, you need to have a control group. If you go rogue, you won't know if something did or didn't work because it was a mistake in the recipe, your understanding of it, or something you decided to do that was not written in the steps.
What does bread symbolize to you?
I love bread because, at its core, its a simple, honest, comforting food. It takes skill and attention to detail to make it properly, but its made from ingredients everyone has access to. Every culture has a relationship with bread and their unique recipes.
What is the most challenging part of baking bread?
Being patient to wait until its 100% cool to cut into it.
What's the most important thing to you when baking?
When I bake for the sake of recipe testing, of course, I want every loaf to be perfect, but if it isn't, I'm happy as long as I learned something from the bake. It's satisfying when you get something right the first time, but that doesn't happen a lot. So as long as I can use it as a tool to decide what would create a better product next time, I'm happy.
What are some things you've learned about bread?
It can be a lot more forgiving than you would think. I've made some bread that I've baked thinking that it would most certainly be garbage, and it turned out great! If you've come that far, it's always worth trying to bake it. Unless you forgot the salt, then its disgusting and trash.
How do you like to eat your bread?
Toasted with peanut butter and hot honey on top or in sandwich form, my husband makes an amazing sandwich, and when I'm feeling low, he makes me "emotional support grilled cheese," they always make me feel better.
Baking Bread on Sunday’s with Andra from Romania
Sourdough Explained is passionate for sourdough baking at home. Which is about patience, perseverance and commitment. About joy and satisfaction. About life.
Can you introduce yourself and where are you located.
I’m Andra, originally from Romania, but living in London for more than 4 years now, a city I absolutely love and would never leave. In my day to day life I’m a marketeer, working for a paint company. Couple of things I love besides baking: traveling, food and cats.
How did your love for baking start?
I’ve been baking bread for 6 years now, but i’ve been using commercial dry yeast for most of this time, until last year, October time when I’ve met my starter, Hector. The moment of truth was when a friend invited me over to taste the sourdough she has baked at home, after attending a sourdough class. I was amazed by sourdough you can m(b)ake at home, so close to the loaves you could get in a bakery, so I accepted right away her offer to share with me some of her starter. Have been baking every week since then, and probably every second day (if not more often) since the lock down. It’s delicious and baking it is addictive.
What emotions provoke you when you bake?
Joy and accomplishment.
What are your favorite things to bake?
Chocolate & dry cranberries sourdough, if only you could imagine the smell in my kitchen. And of course, the sourdough pancakes on almost every Sunday morning
What’s been inspiring you lately?
A strong desire of improvement, there’s no such thing as the perfect loaf, it’s all about continuous learning. The power of the home-bakers community and how much can be achieved with so little.
Advice for someone who would like to get into bread baking?
It’s all about patience, perseverance and commitment. Failure is inevitable when baking, that’s why you need to keep your confidence and enthusiasm. Also, if you can get a starter from a bakery or another home baker, I would encourage you to do so, as sometimes this is the critical step in getting you started.
What does bread symbolize to you?
Childhood memories - my grandma used to sell sourdough when I was little, so basically I grew up with it and the smell of a good bread
What is the most challenging part of baking bread?
Getting to know the texture of your dough and what a good dough should feel like. But also learning to know when the dough is perfectly proofed.
What’s the most important thing to you when baking?
The crumb, but also getting a crispy crust.
What are some things you’ve learned about bread?
That baking sourdough can quickly become addictive. The good kind of drug I’d say.
How do you like to eat your bread?
I always save the last bite of bread to end a meal, this is how much I love bread.
