“There are so many experiences and stories of lockdown and you know, I know, how important baking was to so many people. Sourdough in particular. We know that when we feed our starter it comes alive. We know that we renew it and we see it respond, and we create a dough and we see it respond. And that life and renewal that came out of it, I think, was also another positive element. People going through the confusion and that awful time that we had. But also then the connection that it gave people… it was huge and it brought a lot of us together.”
“In February of 2020, I was looking at commercial spaces, building out a business plan, and trying to decide between moving into a space or building a space… and I was like set to meet in March to create our own space in Bentonville. And then, obviously, March 2020 everyone’s lives changed significantly and my my choice either scale way up and take a huge gamble and buildout a bakery in the middle of a global pandemic or scale way back and move back into my house, and bake out of my house again…”
“I use my sourdough starter, I don’t use my discard when I’m making cookies… and I maintain my acidity in my feedings, so i’m never going to have a super sour. If I’m looking for that well then I’m going to look for a grain that will be a little more active faster, and maybe leave it to bloom a little longer… and see how the flavor is changing and imparting on the cookie dough.”
“Sourdough…. It’s like a meditation for me, it’s getting my hands into the dough, feeling the dough, connecting with the earth, connecting with the Spirit. And it’s helped me so much. It still does. This is, perhaps, not the material point of sourdough, it’s more like a spiritual one.”
“We opened those bags of fresh flour, it was like ‘holy smokes!’ We’d never experienced something like this before. We had always just had white flour that was all about function and performance and not so much about aroma and flavor. And so we said, ‘we’ve got to do this, this is like nothing we’ve ever experienced before.’ So that was the impetus.”
“I use my sourdough starter, I don’t use my discard when I’m making cookies… and I maintain my acidity in my feedings, so i’m never going to have a super sour. If I’m looking for that well then I’m going to look for a grain that will be a little more active faster, and maybe leave it to bloom a little longer… and see how the flavor is changing and imparting on the cookie dough.”
“I think I really relate with people who picked up sourdough during the pandemic. I think sourdough, for me personally, provided a lot of structure in my life at a moment when I was really lost and didn't know what was next for me. I would wake up everyday, feed my starter, see what was going on with it, go to the blogs and read about it, and learn something new about it everyday. It was kind of a distraction at the time and also a really great way to have structure in my life at a time that was really confusing and I didn't have any.”
“I was a chef for 10 years but I always stayed behind to help out on pastry, or I was always helping out on bread. That’s kind of where that little bug comes from. It was all yeasted bread back then, did all the kind of scrolls and rolls, and gradually… I got Dan Leopard’s book, The Handmade Loaf, which is something I had when I was about 20, 21 and that was something I would just sort of play around with if I was at work or at home and just read and fantasize about making these sourdough breads from all over the world.”
“And that’s what we’d been working towards….I was going to bed and waking myself up with alarms to go and fold dough and go downstairs and shape, and my wife would be pushing [me] and she’d be saying - it’s fine, it’s not going to be forever, just carry on, and eventually we will get enough for this to be able to be it. - So that was about a year that we juggled and that last contract came along and I quit from my job - that was it. It was a simple decision to make then.”
“It’s hard for me to talk about bread without talking about people. If I was just going to write a book with sixty recipes, I couldn’t do it. To me, the experience of baking, and the people who are baking, are just as important as the recipes, and I find it’s motivational to read about people like this…”
“If you think about it, without Instagram there would be no pan. I mean, even if I invented it, would would I have done with it? How would you reach bakers? Without the community that sustained me and that I’m giving back to, there really would be no pan. There would be no way. It’s really unbelievable to me.”
“I wake up in the morning and wash my face with soap that my friend made, I pour myself a cup of coffee that’s coffee roasted by somebody I know, every step of my day is built around the people that live here…. that’s my heart and soul… they support my business, I support their ventures and it's like a huge collaborative effort … and feel like that's step one. It’s laying the ground work within your community to create a web of support”
