Right before the world shut down in January of 2020, I started to dabble in teaching myself to make bread, and it quickly became an obsession. With all this newfound free time, I was determined to make a loaf of bread similar to the pain au levain at Old Town Bakery in Key West, Florida. That’s where my love of baking began, as a barista slinging pastries and bread behind the counter of my favorite little bakery in the entire world.
Between now and then, I’ve spent countless hours with my nose buried in bread books, Instagram, Reddit and YouTube content in pursuit of breadmaking. I have also spent countless hours of trial and error baking that resulted in a lot of flat, sad bread. I am not a formally trained baker or pastry chef, I am a self taught hobby baker turned full-time baker. Through the process, I’ve learned to appreciate ingredients and where they come from. Who grew the strawberries in your galette, who grew and milled the flour in your loaf of house sourdough, who raised the cows that made the whole milk for your brioche…and so on. It is my hope to connect you to your food, through time honored baking techniques and thoughtful ingredient sourcing.
All of my bread is leavened using a starter, a microculture of yeast and bacteria. This is simply flour and water combined, left to ferment. The wild yeasts and bacteria in the environment and on the grains will proliferate when the conditions are juuuust right, eventually maturing into a beautiful bubbly concoction. The starter is then used to make a levain, the life source and leavening agent in sourdough bread. All of the flours used in my breads and pastries are organic and stone-milled, preserving the integrity and nutrition of the grain while imparting a unique flavor.