Sourdough Geek Out
While tons of folks are avoiding bread and carbs like the plague, the team at Atticus bakery, located in New Haven, CT, has their hands deep in delicious sourdough, and are crafting incredible new loaves of bread everyday. For the first time in generations, wheat is being grown in the state and milled fresh for these exceptionally delicious sourdough breads, and I, am totally in love. The folks making it are in love not only with the bread, but every every detail of the process. I jumped at the chance to geek out with them about bread baking, growing wheat, and why they care so much about what they do.
Charlie Negaro Jr, manager of Atticus Bakery & Bookstore and Josh Kanter self proclaimed “dough boy” Head Bread Baker for Atticus Bakery.
Atticus Bookstore & Cafe first opened in 1975, and is owned by the same family that runs Chabaso bakery which ships fresh and par baked ciabatta breads to grocery stores all along the east coast and into the midwest. The 4 ingredient ciabattas made with yeast, are what they built their business on have served up in the cafe for decades. That is until two years ago, when the second generation in the family, son Charlie Negaro Jr, took over as cafe manager, and hired baker and sourdough fanatic Josh Kanter to transform their bread baking from yeasted ciabatta loaves to the sourdough breads they make today.
A new country sourdough loaf, made with 50% “high extraction whole wheat” flour.
On a mission to remove mass produced flour grown with pesticides from their bakery, the teams has set out on an ever evolving journey of experimentation, that they hope will someday have an impact on baked goods, the earth, and grain growing well beyond the cafe. Charlie and Josh joined me at Baobob Tree Studios to talk about every gooey detail of their successes and challenges with bread.
The 6 pictures below are thanks to the fabulous instagram account of @joshcrumby. Check out the counter top grain mill for turning CT grown grains to flour for the first time in generations!
Geeking out for real. In the 30 second photo shoot, they couldn’t even stop analyzing the bread ;-).
