In-home baker’s dozen: Ancient grains and techniques prevail in local bakeries, home kitchens – Arizona Daily Sun

In December 2018, trend watchers at San Francisco-based hospitality consultants af&co. released food predictions in its 2019 trends report. Among those mentioned was a rise in utilizing ancient baking techniques.

“Bring on the carbs!” the report said. “Pasta and bread are back, alongside an appreciation for heritage grains and artisanal bread preparation.… Our bread basket runneth over.”

They had no idea how right they’d be.

“For me, ancient grains are so much about the flavor,” Adam Niesen, co-owner of Flagstaff’s A Dog’s Walk Bakery says between methodically folding a large pillow of dough over itself with a practiced hand. It’s summer of 2019 in Flagstaff and plenty of natural yeast is making its way invisibly into the growing clump in the baker’s hands. “I grew up with white bread and I associate it with good memories always, but nowadays I get to eat so much good bread.”

Niesen stands at a long table he and wife/co-owner Amy have set up in the Jim Cullen Memorial Park near their home business. They’ve brought samples of different ancient grains Neisen incorporates into his sourdoughs. Inside the small containers are assorted colors and shapes of spelt and quinoa at various stages of being processed: whole, ground, roasted. They’ll each get kneaded into the dough, later to become crispy brown bread.

Recent closures in the wake of COVID-19 have relegated people to their homes. Though we are quickly learning that quarantine does not affect everyone equally and staying at home is a privilege not extended to all, many amateur bakers have taken up rolling pin, sourdough starter and apron, and begun making that delicious staple known as bread.

The trend is saturating social media and folks are relying on neighbors for extra dry active yeast following grocery store shortages as everyone works to become the next star baker. But perhaps there’s something to this, people learning a cottage industry craft, returning to something old in origin, rather than relying on the pre-packaged; a way to knead the anxiety away, perhaps.

Niesen himself is relatively new to baking, a hobby that started three years ago and soon grew to a fulltime business.  Almost everything he crafts is sourdough-based and naturally leavened. Each loaf is baked in-house and then sold out of a small cabinet on his street or as part of a pop-up at another local business. Currently, the bakery is offering no-contact online-only ordering options.

As a whole Flagstaff is embracing the trend, and did so before it could even be called such. Several restaurants and bakeries in the mountain city have long employed artisan bread-making styles, following techniques and ingredients dating back hundreds of years. The result is a product that is not only rich in flavor, but decidedly healthier than your average grocery store bread made with quick-rise yeast.  

Wood-fired pizza restaurant Pizzicleta has perfected its bread and pizza dough recipes since opening in 2011. A long ferment time for the dough gives Pizzicleta pies a tang that isn’t found in your average crust. The Cottage, which sits just a stone’s throw away, features artisan bread as well, baked in-house and served with a dollop of herbed garlic butter.

Moving north of the tracks, at Shift Kitchen & Bar, owner and pastry chef Dara Wong makes a point to serve homemade sourdough to accompany different menu items, but her bread and butter is also a stand-alone dish. Tucked away in the Shift store cabinet, a narrow space coated in old brick, sits a rack filled with flour-dusted loaves, browned crust peeking out like small hills over the tin trays.

“We wanted to make everything in-house, to fit with the rest of our philosophy,” Wong says. “When I created Shift, I really wanted to make sure that every component was there and every component was taken into consideration, and we wanted to begin that with fresh bread so that the care is taken from the start.”

Sourdough is a complex and scientific beast, and worlds of interactions occur under the proverbial surface, noticeable to the untrained palate only by way of the end result and taste. Sourdough begins with a starter, a mass created by mixing flour and water then leaving it to sit in the open air, allowing the microorganisms—including wild yeasts and bacteria that float in the air, are found on the surface of fruit and in pollen—from the surrounding environment to multiply. The longer the starter sits, the more it grows as this stable grouping of microorganisms forms. In turn, they create fermentation reactions, effectively making the dough rise while also giving it flavor.

“It’s a slow process,” Neisen says, “especially compared to the just 40 minutes the loaves spend in the oven, but it changes everything.”

Throughout most of history, bread was made using a sourdough process based on this so-called lacto-fermentation. The process was slow and results uneven, so when modern yeast became available, sourdough breads became less common. For mass-produced bread, it also proved inefficient; it was easier for bread companies to use domesticated commercial yeast than to wait for it to gather on its own.

In taking the time to gather these wild yeasts, Flagstaff bakers reference a technique of bread making so ancient that most of its origins come from pure speculation, according to Michael Gaenzle in the Encyclopedia of Food Microbiology.

“One of the oldest sourdough breads dates from 3700 BCE and was excavated in Switzerland, but the origin of sourdough fermentation likely relates to the origin of agriculture in the Fertile Crescent several thousand years earlier,” he writes. “Bread production relied on the use of sourdough as a leavening agent for most of human history.”

“With sourdough you have way more variables of course, too,” Neisen says. “It has characteristics of its own whereas commercial yeast is more predictable.”

The making of sourdough requires stable room, flour and water temperatures in the range of 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Bakers must take special care not to touch it too often and disturb the process the starter is undergoing, but the natural lacto-fermentation is also what can lend worlds of flavor. Despite having to carefully curate the environment in which the bread is forming, for Neisen and other local bakers, it’s well worth it.  

Each morning before the sun rises, a handful of local bakers arrive at their stations, keeping a close eye on how their dough is faring. And nowadays this includes many first-time bakers, waking, trundling to the kitchen and donning their apron to continue learning the art of home-made bread.

Shift is currently accepting orders for curbside pickup, and continuing to host its first-Saturday bake sale—with ordering options also available for the latter by calling 440-5135. A Dog’s Walk Bakery is offering limited online ordering via its website www.adogswalkbakery.com. Village Baker and Pizzicleta also have curbside pickup and delivery options.