At CRAFTkitchen, we take pride in everything we feed our community, but one thing we pay extra special attention to is our bread. We’ve all bitten into a slice of sourdough that, from behind the pastry glass looks so good, but, for some reason, ends up disappointing when it comes to texture and flavor. This, my friends, is a total travesty, because, as we all know, food letdowns are the worst kind of letdowns.
On the flip side of that, we’ve all had that hunk of fresh bread that makes us weak in the knees. So, what’s the difference? What takes bread from a simple slice of substance that’s just there to keep your tuna salad in its place to a piece of holy goodness that we’re absolutely positive was sent down to us directly from the flour Gods above solely to make our lives worth living? Well, we would argue the starter. Just as all’s well that ends well, we believe all’s well that begins well.
Today, then, we wanted to break down a bit about our starter. We’ll try really hard not to chef-geek out on you, but bear with us while we dabble in some oh-so-sweet science:
A starter is what, quite literally, starts a batch of dough that eventually turns into a big hunk of baked bread. (You “feed” a starter flour to begin making dough.) The humidity and moisture levels in the area where the starter originates make or break your final product. Where the starter comes from, then, makes all the difference. It’s the reason chicago pizza is, well, chicago pizza. It’s the reason the bagels in New Jersey are so damn good, and it’s the reason sourdough from The Bay tastes better than anything you’d get in a land-locked area. You can follow a classic Chicago pizza dough recipe to a T, but, if you start it using a Las Vegas starter, it just won’t taste the same. You follow? Good.
That’s why we are so school-girl excited (we’re chef-geeking out pretty hard right now) that our starter comes from a company called Central Milling in the oh-so-moist Petaluma, California (just minutes from The Bay). Quite literally, we’re bringing a piece of The Bay home to Las Vegas…and we’re excited to say you’ll be able to taste it in our breads. We’re also feeding our starter Keith’s Best and Artisan Organic Wheat flour, and we plan to bake sourdough, ciabatta and pretzel bread daily. We are so thrilled to share a quality product that we’re oh-so proud of with our community. After all, you can take the starter out of The Bay, but you can’t take The Bay out of the starter. So swing by soon for some warm bread to help you get through this cold weather.
