FROM BAG TO BELLY:
THE START OF A FLEDGLING BREAD BUSINESS BY MAYA OSMAN-KRINSKY
PHOTOS BY GRACE PEGUESE Like many stories, this one starts with just a tablespoon’s worth of an idea. My cranky sourdough starter and I had been together for almost a year and a half when, between mouthfuls of crust and butter, a friend suggested that I start selling my bread. Initially, I bristled at the thought. If you know me, you know that I’m proud that I grew up in a family full of lefty foodies: we have a bust of Lenin on the bookshelf in our living room, looking down at the piggy bank shaped like Karl Marx’s head (a nod to the change that hangs out in the pockets of my dad’s schleppy jeans, and to the irony of it all). I’d much rather give loaves away for free to people I know and love and not feel the need to profit off of it. I also figured that monetizing a hobby that helped me through breakups, quarantines, and seasonal depression could quickly morph it into something I no longer loved doing. But interest was there (based on an Instagram poll with a sample size of twenty-three), so at the beginning of winter quarter, I ordered seventy-five pounds of flour and a huge bin to hold it all, and I launched a business out of my apartment’s tiny kitchen. I started small with four loaves at a time: two country breads and two loaves with mix-ins, which I changed weekly. My baseline recipe hovered somewhere between the Tartine country bread, a standard rustic loaf that blends white and whole wheat flours with a long cold proof, and Sarah Owens’s table loaf, a bread with slightly higher hydration and different types of wheat flours. I began to add soaked grits and rosemary, cinnamon and raisins, black sesame and sunflower seeds, dill and flaxseeds, and olives to those breads, playing with the fermentation methods each time. I watched video after video of shaping and scoring techniques and would FaceTime my friend Riss (a real baker at a real bakery) for tips to achieve more consistent flavor, color, and crumb on the breads to which I was growing increasingly attached.
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bite | spring 2021