The best bread on Vashon Island appears four days a week, still warm, on a small 3-tiered shelf in the bakery department of Thriftway, the main grocery store. It’s always a great day when I remember to get there before it sells out. More often than not, that little shelf is empty.
Bill Freese, of Bill’s Bread, has been baking sourdough bread since well before it was cool. I admit to being a bit behind on culinary trends, but I just recently started noticing sourdough bread everywhere. It was the topic of radio interviews, book reviews, and highlighted on menus. Here on Vashon Island, with a population of only about 10,000, besides Bill’s Bread, a new sourdough bread subscription service started this summer, freshly baked sourdough could be found at island farm stands, and it seemed to be a popular hobby amongst nerdy young men.
What is Sourdough Bread?
Bill delivers his loaves a few times each baking day, but it’s still easy to miss out by arriving too late or not reserving a loaf. I’ve never seen a loaf left in that basket after 5pm. As I became aware of this hot new trend (ha!) I realized I had no clue what sourdough bread actually was. What made it different from any other bread? I did a tiny bit of googling — found a great video about Bill’s Bread and thought I’d pretend to be a journalist and dig a bit deeper. Bill’s Bread doesn’t have Instagram, Facebook or even a website. The only contact I found was a local phone number on the outside of the brown paper bag my loaf came in. So I called.
My secret hope was to be invited to see Bill in action. I knew from the video that he’d built a wood-fire brick oven on his property and I imagined being surrounded by all those gorgeous loaves, taking in the heavenly aroma and witnessing him at his craft. But nope. Bill was very clear that he wanted no part of a visitor or any publicity. He was already making all the bread he cared to (and selling out each week). But he did offer to meet to talk sourdough.
We met at the Vashon Island Roasterie where he can be seen many days sitting on the porch in his black beret sipping coffee. On the table was a piece of paper with a few notes and a tiny Tupperware container of milky goo.
He generously explained the basics of sourdough — that not long ago, before commercial yeast was developed about 160 years ago, all bread was sourdough. All bread was made using wild, fermented yeast. This cool new bread trend is how bread has been made for thousands of years. For any bread nerds out there, check out this lecture on the 6000 year history of sourdough bread.
Bread made from wild yeast is much healthier and easier to digest. Some people who can’t tolerate gluten can sometimes eat sourdough bread. The healthy bacteria and slow fermentation process convert the proteins into a more digestible and healthier food.
What is Sourdough Starter?
Sourdough starter is the naturally fermented wild yeast used for leavening in sourdough. It’s simply water and flour joined by the good bacteria or microbes that are in the air all around us. It is a matter of putting some water and flour together in a container and giving it some time. Sourdough starter can last forever and some bakers have starters they can trace back hundreds of years. Some even name theirs (not Bill) — In the radio interview I heard the author named her starter Dottie.
At the end of our meeting, Bill gestured to the tiny container of starter he’d brought. “This will teach you more than anything I can tell you.” Um, ok.
A New Hobby?
Bill scribbled a recipe: 500g flour, 350g water, 11g salt and 150g starter. “That’s bread!” he said, “Let me know know how it goes.”
I didn’t have the heart to tell him I had no intention of baking my own bread. I was perfectly happy buying his each week. My plan had been to interview him for an article. I wasn’t looking for a hobby — especially not one that required twice a day feedings. (Yes, it needed to be maintained with regular additions of water and flour.) I mostly wanted to be around bread, and of course to consume it — not to add extra hours of labor to my daily life.
But…. I felt a responsibility to this little ¼ cup of goo. Bill was so generous with his time and knowledge. Coming from him, the starter felt quite special. I felt chosen by this little bit of goo — of course I would take care of it. What was the alternative?
I took it home and fed it twice a day for 7 days before trying my first loaf (Bill told me to do this, I’m not sure why). Then my 2nd and 3rd. So far I’ve baked a ½ dozen loaves. A few were amazing, a few flat bricks, but basically edible. Only one went straight into the compost.
I’ve gotten hints from my milky goo — sometimes bubbly and happy, other times flat and watery — but I’m not quite able to decipher what it’s teaching me yet.
Even though we don’t yet speak the same language, I like having the starter around. There’s something nice about knowing that at any time I can add some water and flour and then a bit more of those and like magic it will become bread — the best food in the universe.