The second annual Sourdough Bread Contest is coming up. The event serves as a fundraiser for the historic Dewey Hall in Sheffield, Massachusetts. It was built in the late 19th century and named after Unitarian Minister Orville Dewey, a town native, Williams College graduate, and founder of the Sheffield Friendly Union Library Association. The Dewey Hall nonprofit aims to raise $35,000 this year to continue its maintenance and operation. Katy Sparks of the Edible Natural World series on YouTube is one of the judges for this year’s sourdough bakeoff on March 3rd. With the deadline for bakers to enter approaching on February 20th, WAMC spoke with Sparks about the contest and how to bake the bread.
SPARKS: It's a fermented culture. So, you get a sourdough starter. Sometimes you can make it yourself with wild yeasts that are circulating in the environment, or you can be given one, and you use it as leavening. So instead of using yeast, you use the sourdough culture, the starter. It’s similar to a starter for vinegar, which they call the mother. In this case it’s called a starter. And what happens is, then the fermenting process, while you're sort of ripening the bread dough, it adds much more complex flavors to breads than if you're using a commercial yeast, and it also apparently – this is a really nice sideline – is it sort of predigests some of the gluten. So even people who – not people with real celiac disease – but people who might be a little gluten intolerant or sensitive often can eat sourdough, because it's a really traditional way of making bread and it really breaks down some of these glutinous proteins and it adds so much flavor.
WAMC: Now you're serving as a judge in the contest. Tell me, how do you evaluate sourdough? And what are you looking for for a champion loaf?
That's a great question. A lot of it is the visuals. You know, did it get a beautiful color in the oven? Did it rise? And does it, you can sort of just see, does it look like something you want to cut into immediately and, you know, carve off a hunk and slather some good spread on it? So, that's the first thing. The next thing is the texture and what we call the crumb. You know, what does the inner, the bread part of the bread apart from the crust, what does it look like, feel like, smell like? So, you're using all your senses as a judge. And really, the last thing you do is a tasting. And again, you're looking for a balance between the sort of fermented, complex flavors, but also just a real, the appropriate amount of salt, you know, that it has balance and it has range and depth of flavor so that again, you want to keep eating. It’s not something that you go, well, that was okay. You really want a bread that just almost compels you to keep eating it.
There are three categories to the contest. Break them down for me, what are the different sectors of sourdough you'll be sampling at the event?
So, the three categories are traditional sourdough, and you can do any variation of grains. Some people like to do spelt or farro. You need enough gluten and wheat, I think, to really get the structure you need, but you can add various grains, but that's still in the traditional sourdough category. The next one is a gluten-free category. And the third one is what we're calling the embellished category. And that's when you're really adding other non-bread ingredients like caramelized onions or dried fruits, nuts, seeds, spices, it could be turmeric and ginger, you know, lots of different things that allow people to really express their creativity and their range.
What is sourdough’s role in the Northeast? Is there a relationship between the bread and this part of the United States?
What about the Northeast that sort of creates a lot of bakers is connection to the land. People just really, really connect to what we grow here in the Northeast, sort of emotionally as well as practically. There's a lot of farmers markets, there's a lot of direct to consumer, you know, whether [it’s] CSAs. So, there's just, there's an emotional tie I think that a lot of people here have and because, you know, sometimes you have to go big distances between where you live and a market that would have a good loaf of bread, often people learn how to bake themselves and find it really just a practice almost, because when you have sourdough you have to feed the starter all the time. It's like sort of like, you can't leave your pets for too long. It's sort of that idea. So, it just brought that connection that people feel to the land. And then we've had some absolutely stellar practitioners, bakers, like Richard Bourdon on who founded the Berkshire Mountain Bakery, which is just, I think it's almost like a mecca for bakers. People come to learn from him. And I remember when I was living in New York for years and years but my parents were still in Vermont, I would make sure to swing by his bakery in Housatonic and load up on amazing not only breads, but you know, pastries, everything dough from a sourdough culture. So that was, it still is an incredible resource for us here in the Berkshires.