S1E14: Sarah Owens - Sourdough for the Soul

there's no way i'm going to spend an hour or two hours like with this dough right so i'm just going to get the dough hook on on that kitchenaid mixer and let it rip with yeast you're constantly sort of um it's kind of a a little bit of a violent you're punching it down right and you're throwing it up encouraging it with thanksgiving and winter holidays around the corner there's no better time to spend than with baker and food artist sarah owens sarah is a california based cookbook author baker gardener and instructor and she just might have the ingredients to help us learn to come to our senses with sourdough baking like with any kind of skill once you are done being so preoccupied with the performance of what you're doing you can let go of that preoccupation and really start to immerse yourself in the experience of it happening sarah won a james beard award for her first book sourdough and released her second cookbook titled toast and jam her third heirloom time-honored techniques nourishing traditions in modern recipes came out just last year today we'll talk about our mothers and sarah helps me troubleshoot my bad habits making sourdough bread and we get some delicious recipes that will complement your turkey's fixins this thanksgiving but sarah tells me it's about how we bake not what we bake i always say with sourdough you never watch the clock you always watch the dough or you always watch the starter sarah began her baking career after going gluten-free to try to resolve debilitating health issues she credits her study and practice of food fermentation with better digestive health but sarah cautions about turning a health kick into a food obsession when too much of a good thing isn't a good thing and how what she calls capitalistic pseudoscience in food marketing can mislead us the gluten-free movement really took advantage of people not understanding where their food came from or how it impacted the body oh but sarah can't we just talk about pineapple upside down cakes and apple glaze i have been thinking about apple fritters welcome to the soul of life i'm keith miller this is episode 14. sourdough for your soul i dreamt all night last night about apple fritters that's great the dreams of a baker i love it i'm keith miller and my podcast the soul of life is here to help you remember who you really are i'll bring together people who have gotten off their treadmills i'll have conversations with athletes musicians doctors scientists healers and entrepreneurs to discuss the fascinating edges of our knowledge in neurobiology psychology and physics this is the soul of life sarah owens is a california-based cookbook author baker gardener and instructor she was awarded a james beard for her first book sourdough and has written other books on baking and i'm excited to speak with her about a range of topics including health the role of food in our spiritual well-being and our holistic selves and really excited to have sarah owens here welcome sarah thank you so much for having me keith you're you're very welcome so my first question is how is your mother [Laughter] oh which one do you want to talk about first we're going to cover the whole gamut today sarah we're going to cover the whole thing i got to tell you that i um since i knew i was interviewing you today i uh i opened my fridge and i reached into the very very far back corner and i pulled out my mother my sourdough starter okay and um i opened it i'm sure you've heard many stories like this and it's been in there a few months i gotta say i went through a kick making sourdough for uh many months and some pretty mediocre loaves came out we'll talk about you know best practices today hopefully but so i opened the sourdough starter and i'm looking at it and i've i've i've restarted many bad batches of of starter before but i'm looking at this and i'm seeing chunks in there chunks right here yeah and i said that these these chunks look like wait a minute this is clam chowder so this was this was not my starter but it looked had the consistency it's a horror story it's a terrible thing yeah pulled it out started you know had got my starter kicked up again it's it's bubbling as we speak so okay all right great well i'm glad you had a reason to revive it yeah yeah me too yeah especially as it starts to get a little bit chilly outside it's perfect weather for baking it really is tell me tell me how you got started sure i was living in brooklyn at the time brooklyn new york and i was working at the brooklyn botanic garden as a curator of the roses of the rose collection there and i had been having some issues with my digestive system that now in hindsight you know i recognize we're triggered by a lot of different things diet but also stress and lifestyle and it took me quite a long time to really put everything together i was going to different types of specialists and doctors and getting lots of tests around and ultimately realized that i really needed to change my lifestyle and part of that was you know changing the way that i prepared my food and discovered fermentation in general as an ally for restoring my sort of probiotic system but also learning how to pre-digest prebiotics specifically different types of grains right so it was the the health scare that you had that really made you look more mindfully kind of at what was going on what you were putting into your body and how your body was working and it sounds like you you you started um making adjustments and and obviously you're back on track yeah i mean i i still need to be diligent about um you know what i consume and part of that is as making other adjustments as well like eating with the seasons um really cutting out a lot of processed foods and listening to my body and you know part of the journey was really recognizing that i have a personality type that has a tendency to push myself and you know the the crisis really came when i just wasn't able to function properly um i had certainly been having you know symptoms before that but it really took you know kind of a um a work and and personal uh crisis to really you know get to the point where i was ready to say okay what what's really happening right and it and it takes some time to really slow down and listen you know to yourself and listen to your body and um and it's been a journey that will continue i think for the rest of my life yeah it's something i know very well as uh as similar in my case um slowing down and needing needing to realize hey there's a lot going on stress you know being a driven kind of hard-working person as an entrepreneur and trying to make ends meet and that sort of thing right um we're going to talk today about some of your favorite recipes some things because thanksgiving and the holidays are coming up but you know speaking of health i mean the reason i reached out to you is because i had this book sourdough sitting in my kitchen for a while and that's what got me on a kick um okay got i got started making sourdough and i thought that it was you know time to step up to the plate and see if i could do it and i realized pretty quickly why most people don't really do it it's because it's so many steps and uh so um tell me a little bit about like why sourdough is such an important thing you mentioned digestibility um why why is it worth all the fuss to go through the all the steps well that's a great question and it could be i could answer that question for the rest of this interview a long story but you know there are lots of different benefits and i think one of the most to the most obvious are the flavor and you know i really do believe that food that is nutritious has improved flavor over food that has been sort of stripped of its natural ability to nourish us and so people a lot of times they just love the flavor of sourdough and it's very difficult to um to find that in a product that you buy at the store that's been standardized that standardization is also what is so challenging for us and is something that we have to really take into consideration when we embark on the journey of learning how to use sourdough but you know one of the other benefits is in the digestibility of different types of grains and that can be anything from wheat to other sort of pseudo cereals like buckwheat and other more non-traditional grains as well so you know sourdough is definitely an ally for us in terms of of getting better nutrition into our bodies it allows you know not just gluten to be pre-digested but it also pre-digests the um the bran you know the fiber fiber that can be difficult for some people and also something called phytates which don't really get a lot of attention but um you know it can be a little bit troubling for people with the tendency to have digestion issues but also absorption issues which was another one of my issues of you know being very anemic uh and just not having the digestive system to absorb what i needed to yeah yeah this was something i um spent a great deal of researching as far as what's called pernicious anemia and i'm not sure if that's what you're referring to but it was something that i was convinced that i had it was getting b12 injections and then had the the um endoscopy you know the the scope that goes down and so they're looking for in that in that procedure they're looking for malabsorption issues and you you you mentioned that you had um tried going gluten-free that was something a lot of people advise like hey what's the harm just go gluten-free i mean which is a big deal actually to try to get gluten out of your diet and it takes months actually for them to say you know and give it a few months before you can even tell so you decided after becoming um going gluten-free you decided actually no that wasn't the answer is that right you went back to eating grains and and gluten but with the twist is that right yeah so it was um it was kind of a meandering path around back to eating gluten first i had started fermenting some vegetables and and really basic just like sauerkraut and fermented carrots and things that i could put under a brine i began working with wild fermentation which is a sandor cats book and that you know the idea with that was really to just introdu reintroduce probiotics back into my system i had been um put on antibiotics as a way to decrease the bad bacteria that had been overtaking my gut and it actually created a much worse problem for me um and so the fermentation of the vegetables you know reintroduced the probiotics but then i was in a bookstore one day and i picked up a little sort of paperback manual from the 70s the first chapter was how to take your sourdough starter camping and um yeah the title of it was adventures in sourdough that's great and i was like wow this looks like the book for me but i had never considered that sourdough was just another form of fermentation and that it could you know possibly help me on this journey and when i realized the power that it had to sort of pre-digest gluten if done properly and slowly and over time then it might you know remedy the issue that i was having and i had already gone through tests to make sure that i was not celiac and that i i did not have a true gluten allergy and those two things are very different than a gluten intolerance and are very important to determine um when you're embarking on a journey of using sourdough for digestion um but you know sourdough at that point when i had that moment of like oh this this could actually be something for me became very powerful in my life not just for the digestive reasons but also the process the actual practice of maintaining a culture right that's something we'll dig into in a little bit um i want to just caveat like everyone listening who's interested in um digestive health should check with their doctor obviously get get good sound medical advice we're not medical experts here but let's dive into to the actual process a little bit um for people out there who are interested in trying um how do you feel about me referring to your your book sourdough as sort of an intermediate um it to advance kind of sourdough like i'm not sure is it for the beginner because i uh and i was really thrilled to to see that you had a video that um was new to me but when i watched i said this is perfect this is what i needed at the time because it's just watching the steps so um would you recommend this to somebody just starting sourdough tell me a little bit about how the book has been yeah well it really depends on what your goals are and also your learning style not everyone learns in the same way different people respond very differently to different types of language and with sourdough with something that is variable you know there's no one right way to make a loaf of sourdough bread and so you know when people ask me you know obviously i've written books you know i would love for people to read them and use them but when people ask me you know about the content of my books i say you know you really have to find something that you respond to and that makes sense to you and some people learn through reading and through more of an intuitive angle and some people really appreciate step one step two step three right done right and that's what i needed i kind of needed that sort of like here's what is going to go wrong and here's what you need to do and not do right yeah so you know i wrote sourdough in 2013 so i wrote it about seven years ago and it was published in 2015. and you know knowing now what i do know and having had the experience now of teaching thousands of different people in person and then millions of different people online um i perhaps would have written you know my first book a little bit differently that said you know i i like to set people up with the proper expectations and something like sourdough where you have lots of different variables from temperature to humidity to ingredients it's important to realize that there is not just a very dogmatic set of of instructions that in order to be successful you have to master the skill but to become a better baker you really have to start honing your intuition and that involves waking up the senses and developing observational skills and at that point you know that's when we we start to become better bakers and to really make the process our own and make it sort of fit into our lives rather than our lives sort of having to be morphed around this particular set of instructions or processes right and that's what i feel like this is so important to talk about because so many people that i work with in mental health and in on the treatment side of things um are struggling to find meaningful things that um that take time and that are not just another thing to worry about um you know we can give them cognitive behavioral sort of strategies and tools but then even that becomes a burden and something to worry about and it almost sounds like you're saying when you can you can approach baking and and um and even harvesting and growing foods and sourcing your foods from a from a more flexible state and from a place of receptivity it sounds like yeah yeah you know i think it's one of the things that we've learned this year is we really can't control everything even when we think we're in control right it's it's uh really kind of an illusion and that that even saying that can make people feel very uncomfortable and like you've pulled the rug out from underneath them but um you know i think when we embark on something a journey of learning a new skill whatever that might be um you know it's all about expectations and it's all about opening yourself up to the experience of doing it rather than really focusing on the end result and that's when we we embark on a journey of mindfulness of you know paying attention to what something smells like what does it smell like now what does it smell like in an hour what does it feel like right now what does it feel like in four hours um and you know that is a commitment of sorts of of letting go and like you said just being receptive to what is actually happening in the moment right you mentioned learning styles and of course we are going to talk about a little bit sort of mothers in a minute but you know starters are referred to as mothers and you know we have i think an attachment to the figure that is teaching us the person whether that's you in your writing or someone we're watching on youtube so we you know it's just something about our brains with the mirror neurons that we have we we kind of need to see and when we see something we can model it and then we can say oh i can do that that's me what you're doing is what i'm doing um let's get into the the how-to a little bit having said all of this about which which about how important the process is and we'll come back to that a little bit but let's talk about like some of the basics um what what's a novice to expect can you go through kind of a basic starting sourdough sure yeah um well you know expectations are really you know just your priorities and everyone has different priorities in life um you know some people embark on the journey and they really want to make that big crusty bowl of of of sourdough that looks like everyone else's yours and they're beautiful but by the way the ones that you're doing and the scoring that you do they're just the images are just beautiful we'll have them on the on the website yeah it's just so gorgeous yeah thank you um so that's a very you know common place for people to start and um there's certainly nothing wrong with that at all you know other people start from a very different end of the journey they want to really focus on whole grains and using local ingredients and supporting their local grain economy which is where you know my personal interest has has developed over the last couple of years um but it's important to identify where you're headed when you begin if you don't know where you're headed it's hard it's hard to get there right well let's just say i'll to run with this a little bit like i'm gonna just get my flower from the safeway or from the giant supermarket right and you know so let's talk about that am i am i using bread flour i mean without giving a course on like all the different kinds of you know gluten involved but like what's different about sourdough how are we what are we doing what are we grabbing off the shelf and then what can we expect when can we expect a loaf of bread right so um so i should just say that all of my books are written using stone ground flour um so not flour that you grab off the shelf um so there there does have to be you know a little bit of adjustment and it doesn't mean that the flour off the shelf won't work right um but we we do need to understand that there are lots of different types of ingredients um and some of them have been standardized like the flour you get at the grocery store and and a lot of them have not been particularly if you are buying regional um you know flowers that have been grown in your particular climate and ground in a different way than the industrial sort of processing so we do need to identify you know what the differences are and that there may have to be adjustments sure but really you know for a lot of people it's um just kind of wrapping your head around what what is this thing called sourdough and um you know why is it different than a packet of yeast that you buy at the store exactly yeah and does it take all this time that it seems like it it is supposed to take you know am i gonna have to be like watching this thing like a child or a pet so that's usually kind of where i begin the conversation and you know creating a starter creating a culture is really really just combining flour and water together and when you understand the magic that happens from just combining those two seemingly very inert ingredients um you know that's that's an incredible very powerful thing that can happen in your kitchen with very minimal investment it's really amazing right people i think think that they're supposed to be like eggs and milk people that really are not spending a lot of time in the kitchen like what's in this well flour and water and so the bacteria comes from the air that's uh in our kitchen it comes from our hands or our utensils right is that correct so the bacteria in each batch of starter um in each batch of flour has its own bacteria right so so correct can you speak about that a little bit yeah so you know a starter is a symbiotic relationship between bacteria and yeast so there are sometimes dozens and dozens of different species and subspecies of microbes that are all sort of living together in this particular culture and that culture can be similar or different to other people's cultures but it is a reflection of your hands it's a reflection of the ingredients you're using and those are all sort of influenced by your conditions around you including temperature humidity humidity and other things but really primarily what we are trying to culture is the microbial community that's on the flower itself and so you know in heirloom in my third book i really try to encourage people to use flour that's alive that is very different than industrially processed flour which has very purposefully been processed in a way to remove the the life from the flour is that the same as if we if we get unbleached flour sarah or or when you're speaking about stone ground flour can you say what the difference is how does that come into play sure it's um it's kind of a long um consideration but basically the the mechanical process of stone grinding versus roller milling so stone grinding is usually two round stones that sort of sit on top of each other the grain passes through and all of the elements of the original grain come out in the flower so you have the bran the outer coating which is the fiber you have the endosperm which is the majority of the grain and that's kind of the white part that we see in flower and then you have something called the germ which is where a great deal of the nutrition a lot of the micronutrients and also the oils and the flavor lie within the um the grain now that germ once it is ground and comes into contact with air or you know oxidized it immediately begins its process of degradation um and so you can kind of think about it like you would uh nuts you know once nuts are sort of stored at room temperature and their oils you know uh become oxidized they they begin to go rancid it's the same with flour and so industrialization roller milling was created to uh to create a product that could sit on the shelf for up to a year or more without um compromising the integrity so they're really trying to take the bacteria out that could make it not shelf self-stable well it takes out the germ and studies have shown that the majority of the microbes that are naturally present on a on a grain of anything are hanging out around the food source which is um you know the germ and so when you compromise the germ through roller milling which is basically removing the germ then you're removing a huge portion of the microbial load but also the natural nutrition of the grain that's why most flour that you buy at the store if you look at the ingredients even if it's unbleached it's been enriched we went through a period of time after roller milling was developed in the late 1800s where there were very serious nutritional diseases that were developing and we realized collectively that this was because of the the stripping of nutrition from flour and so government mandates were put in place a place that you actually had to if you were roller milling flour you actually had to put those nutrients back in now all of those nutrients are synthetically manufactured that are put back into it seems like we're doing it all backwards right well you know it just takes a very different infrastructure in order to support stone ground flower and we'll put some links up for sure for people on the website for places where we can sources that you might recommend yeah and there's a on my website ritualfindfoods.com there's a tab for resources and it lists every stone ground flour mill that i know of in the united states cool and i've started to list it's not comprehensive yet i've started to list mills in other countries nice as well for one of the first things i'll do after after we're done recording this is get some stone ground uh sustainably harvested flour um so yeah say more about the next steps so you you've got the flour you've got the the source flour and uh and what do people do with mixing flour talk about the hydration and all that sure so the whole point of going into the the mechanical processing of flour is that stone ground flour is going to be much easier to create an active healthy lively starter that's going to be more successful for you in your kitchen right so that's that's the whole point of that conversation linking it to sourdough of course there's other points as well like nutrition and flavor but stone ground flour is going to uh create a very active starter in a very short amount of time so without a lot of comfort a couple days i mean is that about the ballpark i mean like i'm doing probably two feedings to get to revive my old starter which yeah at least from my knowledge was not um inedible because it had they had the alcohol the hooch on top which was basically saying that this thing was starving uh itself and then you know it's also very black which my understanding is that that's fine you just don't want to see colors is that correct if you see funny letters or like colors then that's a bad sign yeah so when you're first starting out it does it it can take a couple of days two to three days to really start seeing fermentation activity and when i say that i mean like you're seeing bubbles popping the surface you may see if you're keeping it in a clear jar you may see um fermentation bubbles on the side of the jar and you will most likely smell uh fermentation activity as well now before you know the starter really gains its equilibrium between the different microbes it may smell a little funky you're listening to the soul of life podcast with me keith miller every week i bring you a new episode that hopefully inspires you to reflect more on who you are and who you want to be in this rapidly changing world if this time we share together moves you somehow closer to who you are or lights up parts of you that have been unplugged i want to hear from you and please share the love take a moment to find the soul of life podcast in the social media where you hang out on itunes facebook instagram or youtube and let me know who you are a little cheesy or a little s used to me it's sweaty if you're used to sourdough bread you're like yeah that's that's starting to get there yeah so you know once the starter finds its kind of own rhythm and you're able to double it in size within you know eight to twelve hours depending on your room temperature um then you're pretty much ready to go with creating bread now the maintenance schedule um can be a little different depending on how you maintain your starter but ideally you don't put it in the fridge right you keep it on the counter you're feeding it daily or or i encourage people to keep it in the fridge it's less maintenance it's less work it doesn't mean that you can't produce i keep my starter in the fridge i feed it let me ask you a couple times a week so a couple times a week if you want to make a batch and you've got your starter in the fridge it's it's it's dormant so it it does it need to eat before you take that sample out for your bread yeah yeah so you have to remember that when your starter is in the fridge it is um sort of inactive but it's still um it's still metabolizing the food that's in the starter there's also within the starter you know there's different types of bacteria and yeast and all of those thrive at different temperatures in the refrigerator you're going to start to get a lot of um acetic acid buildup you'll start to get the hooch and sometimes when that happens you know it really drops or really lowers the ph it creates a very acidic environment and for the most part the yeast that we're cultivating can tolerate that but they their activity may slow down quite a bit if the ph is a little bit too low or if it's been in the refrigerator for a little too long right so do you ever just dump it out sarah is it is it better to just start from scratch if you if like i've had the i've had the the starter in the fridge for probably a couple years and i've used it off and on is there value to keeping that heritage you know going uh you know i think culturally and socially there is something about you know when somebody hands me a 100 year old starter right i mean that's just you know it's just an incredible thing that a that a society a culture of people would choose to nurture something for that long there's something very very um beautiful about that said that starter is not going to make a better loaf of bread than the starter that you've had for two weeks right so maybe on the poetic scale it's very high you know and on the on the mindful scale like or i should say for i had a guest marcia bianoroot who was a geologist and she was talking about timefulness and that idea of investing in these long projects right exactly so cool yeah i mean we always have to um when we're talking about anything whether it's you know nutrition or sourdough cultures you know we always have to keep in mind that there is a science behind whatever we're doing and and with the sourdough culture every time we feed it we are reviving and multiplying a population of microbes a lot of these microbes they will double in size and in population very very quickly and so what are we looking for die very very quickly right you're right yeah that that it can go right into the tank um what are you looking for in the active starter when is it ready to make bread you take it out of the fridge you give it a feeding which by the way for people new to this you can you can explain this better than i can but it's it's 100 hydration can you explain that sure so um you can feed your starter in lots of different ways and there's no wrong or right way as long as you are feeding the amount of starter the equal amount of flour you can adjust the hydration or the amount of water that you use but you really do want to make sure that if you have 50 grams of starter in your jar that you're feeding it at least 50 grams of flour right okay so your kitchen scale is essential people need to know that you've got to get a scale that measures grams ideally this is not for somebody who's just going to eye and that's really true like you really have to get this hydration correct and so um you first of all you're measuring well how much does this yeast weigh or this starter weigh and then you're then putting in your double you're matching it uh 50 if it's starter weighs 50 grams you add 50 grams flour and then 50 grams water is that right yeah if you want to keep it 100 hydration so that just means you have equal parts flour and water in your starter got it you can keep an eighty percent hydration starter which means it's going to be thicker more pasty you can keep 110 hydration starter not perfect um well it it's really again it's just you know you really need to make sure you're not starving the starter by under feeding it got it flour yeah so then once it's you've got it going you've got it fed it's bubbling overfilling the jar maybe right it's doubled in size and how long does that should it be doubling in size at room temperature yeah so it depends on your um the temperature of your kitchen or wherever you're keeping your starter for most people at this time of the year when it starts getting a little bit chilly um that can be upwards of 12 hours for other people where it's you know people write to me in the tropics all the time and they say you know my starters doubling in size in like five hours yeah so again it's like you i always say with sourdough you never watch the clock you always watch the dough or you always watch the starter right um and so if your starter is doubling in size in five hours that's the peak time to use it if it's doubling in size in eight or 12 hours that's the peak time to use it or harvest it right so if you're intending to make bread you know you want to pull it out of the fridge give it a feeding before you make lovin which goes into your bread your starter has to work really hard to leaven a whole loaf yeah but there's lots of other recipes you can use it for as well yeah and your book is full of many different kinds of recipes the sourdough book at least and i i want to just make sure people are aware of that this is not just about sourdough there's so many different things you can do and it's just inspiring um so so walk us through now and one of the things that i i'm inspired by watching you on the video and we'll put a link to that video as well a couple videos that you have but one of the things that inspired me was besides getting the stone ground grain is um getting rid of disabusing myself of the dough hook okay right like i just i make my yeast spread and it's the dough hooks in there and it just i usually like to do it like a double batch and so i'll freeze a few and have so i'm just like i'm there's no way i'm going to spend an hour or two hours like with this dough right so i'm just going to get the dough hook in on that on that kitchenaid mixer and let it rip and i think i've paid a price probably i know i've paid a price in my in texture and with sourdough right it's a non-starter right no pun intended here but like like use your hands with sourdough right can you speak to that sure yeah so you know using using your tactile sense of feeling does a couple of different things for us particularly when we are using ingredients that have not been standardized it allows us to pay a little bit more attention to how those ingredients are responding to things like water time and temperature throughout the dough making process the dough changes um when you first mix it it feels incredibly different than uh or it should feel incredibly different in the beginning than when it's ready to shape and um you know by using our hands we can really judge the differences um in in that transformation yeah and i'll be honest with you most of my batches are they're going in the oven and they look like you know they're basically i skipped the folding process that's the stretching folding yeah exactly right okay yeah and you realize who you're dealing with here sarah yeah and so you know a lot of times when people tell me that they're having a hard time with their loaves maintaining their shape particularly after they come out of the fridge you know that's just one of a couple of different things either the gluten hasn't been developed enough for it to capture the the fermentation gases or the gluten has been digested too much too much you've waited too long and it's over proofed and it started to to break down so much that it's losing its gases or your flour is over hydrated right and that's the thing that we have to understand is that a recipe for sourdough may have to be adjusted depending on what ingredients you use even standardized ingredients that are bought at the store if you're living in the desert of arizona or southern california it's still going to perform very differently than if you're using that same brand or that same flower and you're living in puerto ri puerto rico or if you're living in new york or in maine so give it you're saying patience is a virtue here feedback from your dough but yeah um you know as far as the steps that's important right it's got to be folded i love the way it was very i mean it was it was really i gotta say it's relaxing just to watch you work with the dough right to to to see the way you handle it and and that it's um um that you make sure that you don't deflate it that's one of the things one of the mistakes i think um for me as a novice going from um you know yeast bread to you know basically they tell you deflate it roll it out and then let it rise again right that second proofing and yeah no way right that's a no-no so you're like keeping the the moisture and air in there yeah yeah um you know with yeast you're you're constantly sort of um it's kind of a a little bit of a violent you're punching it down and you're throwing it up encouraging it uh with sourdough you're you know you're always trying to nurture it to um to grow and expand um and it's it's it is a very different process and it's it's very difficult to even compare the two right um because they they are just so different but you know i always tell people with learning how to use something like sourdough um it may sound like a huge investment of time two to three days to make a loaf of bread but you know your hands on time is is actually quite limited to moments of five to ten minutes it's just it's you're really developing patience as a skill as much as you are just learning how to handle the dough but really you know like with any kind of skill once you are done being so preoccupied with the the performance of what you're doing you can let go of that preoccupation and really start to immerse yourself in the experience of it happening and and once that develops then you can become a little bit more intuitive you kind of know what to expect you know the process i always compare it to um you know when i i learned how to scuba dive a few years ago and it's one of the only um hobbies i have that i haven't turned into a profession but one of the reasons i i wanted to learn was because i wanted to overcome my fear of of water and um and so for the first you know uh month or so of trying to do it uh it was really just about kind of letting go of my my fear of xyz you know fill in the blank um and once i really understood how to use my equipment how to use my mask how to you know do all of the things that i had to do i could let go of all that preoccupation i had with you know what was holding me back from the experience and i started to look around and i started to see the coral and the fish and the you know all of the beauty of the experience and was able to relax into that and and become a part of it whereas you know i was always sort of thinking of myself as i'm here and the water's there and the you know danger is here and you know and that just all faded away you know and it became this really um powerful experience um and it's the same with you know it's the same with sourdough it's the same with learning how to throw a pot it's the same with you know growing your own tomatoes you kind of have to learn the the framework of what it is you're doing mixing flour and water together waiting you know shape shaping it in a particular way right like and you're by the way you're the first rosarian or former rosarian i've had on the podcast it's amazing someone who is like literally as a horticulturalist you worked and you cared for roses anybody who works with flowers knows how finicky right those uh plants can be and you know at the same time you're developing i think the monastic traditions going back in ancient times the contemplative traditions the spiritual traditions were all about sort of bringing a a centeredness to the work and becoming one with the work and becoming one with um the outside if we go out to go in and we go in to go out and that's it's almost like the same thing we're talking about with food and with yeast and with sourdough um i do want to ask you about your your real mother because i get my baking soda twitch from from my mother certainly and it's it's been something that i think i can track uh based a little bit on my moods you know if i'm anxious about something you know it's nothing like um just following a recipe start to finish even i and i i think this is true you know uh my brother um took apart his 1966 ford uh pickup truck and reassembled it he's an engineer but that's a big project right like restored it huge project but like i think these these uh projects especially long ones or even medium term ones there's something to see you can see the results with so many things that feel out of control in life if you're a parent if you're if you love somebody things are not in our control right and so baking a loaf of bread is one of these things that can give us that sense of centeredness and without realizing but my i know for sure that's something that's kind of a center piece of my mom's uh personality and and you know kind of futzing around the kitchen and doing her thing and that's something that i've picked up and that's you know i've something sort of expanded what about your mom and or you can speak about your parents i guess but is there any relation to this yeah i mean i i grew up you know in a huge family of uh mostly women that were uh you know fetzing around in the kitchen and um so you know there were always beautiful smells coming from the kitchen um and you know different sort of characters my mother really didn't like me being in the kitchen she would rather me be out from underneath her feet and she's a little bit to be honest with you very she's actually very territorial kind of aggressive in the kitchen i have to admit i'm the same same like i'm like get out of my way like i'm just gonna you know i'm not at my best yeah um but you know my there were other uh women in my family um both of my grandmothers really invited me you know into into their space and um you know i remember my granny owens i kept a jar of starter that had a horrible smell and i will say even now like it was a really terrible smell and i remember it um it was very accurate very sharp um but you know being in the kitchen um in in my family at least was um you know it was a a very sensory experience uh no matter whose kitchen it was and it it brought the outdoors and i grew up in a very rural area where we grew a lot of our our food and um it was the connection i spent most of my childhood outside you know i was told to go run uh go do whatever i wanted to when i heard the the car horn or the bell come back home it's time to eat or it's time to do whatever um and so you know being in the kitchen was a bridge between you know those two worlds and um for you know my mother and my grandmothers it was a way to nurture the family and um and they were all very good cooks very simple very rustic very country cooks but um sounds like it's in your bones and it's just it was just a natural outflow of of of the women in your family especially absolutely and you know i think the um the critical thing i sort of realized in having moved to new york city and having the type of personality that i do where i'm just i'm a very driven person um and whatever it is that i'm doing i'm very immersed in that um i became a little bit disconnected from you know i was working outside every day um but i can't became a little bit disconnected between um you know how my food was was nurturing me where it was sort of coming from um how it was being even manufactured what that meant and that's sort of something that um you know has become very common in our everyday kind of um lifestyle is this sort of um capitalistic pseudoscience of you know different kind of uh food movements you know the and the the gluten-free movement really took advantage of people not understanding where their food came from or how it impacted the body and certainly there's nothing wrong with you know not eating gluten but it's very important to understand you know where something is coming from and why it is doing what it's doing um yeah yeah i i wanted to pull out a thread there if we can play with this for a little bit um you know like like some dough here right let's work this work this a little bit together that that you know i wonder how you feel about this idea that activism because i think so many so many of us are drawn to certain causes and want to right wrongs we all care about justice we we all care about um i think when we when it's brought to our attention people especially kids uh it seems to be a natural human tendency i think to want to see things um work and at the same time i think activism i wanted to say does not replace our spirituality you know i think that's a mistake that that we can make by um not realizing that oftentimes um trying to make something happen make change can leave us in a very closed and rigid state yeah you know and our body was is designed to be both open and closed depending on what what what the needs are and so it's not you know i think a lot of times we fall in love with this identity of standing up to this or promoting that or um and not realizing that our posture i mean just like in yoga or in sports like our posture becomes then um the problem you know so it's almost like these neuroses or obsessions i don't want to call them addictions but certainly food is one of the the most common compulsions that people can develop that can be quite severe you know and often the treatment in treatment we're trying to help people desensitize themselves to kind of just eating without worrying about what they're eating not being so concerned because we're trying to treat the eating disorder for example so you know just trusting your gut basically is what we say all the time but then what that means is like i'm hungry i'm going to just eat what's in front of me as opposed to where did this come from and who made it and was it made the way i need it and all these things that can limit you know cause us to restrict your thoughts yeah oh gosh that's um the big question it's big and it's it can be a little bit complicated but i think that you know you said it you really have to develop a trust for yourself and um and to really give give that trust to yourself to make um decisions that you know we can't we can't be perfect all the time you know um but we have to trust the pro the process of giving power back to ourselves um and and being able to to listen to our bodies um without judgment um without expectation and to really you know accept and and and love ourselves and and when we are able to to do that you know that is incredibly powerful within our communities and within the people the relationships that we have let's talk about your favorite recipes i know the holidays are coming up if you have any things that you can suggest for us and and just kind of point to and we'll we'll be able to put these up on the on the website what what are things that you'd have in mind or recommend for people to make during the holidays there's plenty of recipes in my book sourdough um that are seasonal as well as toast and jam and also an heirloom um i also have you know a patreon account where i've been posting four recipes a month that are very much inspired by seasonal produce sometimes just inspired by chocolate but can't go wrong you know chocolate's always in season you know i want to encourage people to to visit your patreon account and and and note that i you know as a i'm going to call you a food artist i mean i think people um you know can maybe have the impression that oh you know someone has published a book that they must this must be easy for them to make ends meet you know i i'm i'm kind of imagining you as an artist in that you depend on people valuing what you're bringing and what you're providing so i want to just offer that to people to check that out and support you what's one recipe on the thanksgiving table what would you want to put on there what's what's your go-to well i might give you two there's a butternut squash and dried cherry bread that um is it's you know it's incredibly seasonal you don't have to use the dried cherries it's a delicious loaf um if you don't you can also use dried cranberries yeah because cranberries are around yeah um and you know the the dried fruit gives like a pop and also a nice texture to the bread but it's uh the color of the butternut squash loaf is very thanksgiving it's a warm sort of glowing yellowish orange same with the sweet potato bread and also the beet bread the beet bread doesn't retain its amazing color once it's baked but there's a really nice feeling of that again those root vegetables that have a little bit of sweetness which complements so many other flavors of the season like the bitterness of things like cabbage and brussels sprouts and things that we also see on the on the thanksgiving table sounds delicious most often yeah so i like i encourage people to to make those breads that have a little bit of sweetness for the thanksgiving holiday because i just i think it complements everything else on the table so well but if you uh want to skip over the bread and move on to something that's like a a dessert uh something that is very easy and um does not rest upon perfection is something like a galette where you're making a very rustic sort of pie dough you can make that in advance and keep it in the fridge or in the freezer and then thaw it roll it out and you can fill it with any kind of seasonal fruit and a little bit of sweetener most people use sugar and there's lots of different recipes that i have for that in all of my different books but there's a fermented pie crust in heirloom um that's really i think very delicious it's very easy um and you can fill it with anything from you know apples to pears that sounds amazing yeah and with something like thanksgiving where you have a lot of really heavy foods you know i some people love making cakes and there's lots of upside down cakes particularly um sourdough has a few that are really delicious but um you know i appreciate something that's a little bit lighter you know you can cut a small wedge of it maybe serve it with a little bit of ice cream [Laughter] or whipped cream and you know the the nature of a gallet is that it you don't want it to be perfect you want it to be really rustic and kind of free form and so the you know the beauty of that dessert is is in um it's kind of unique outcome uh so it kind of it takes the pressure off a little bit you know especially when you have a lot of different things to get on the table if you are celebrating um a large spread this year i mean some people are like you know traditionalists and and in my family i'm going to just call out my you know my dad like would you know wants to have those those certain things that we've always had for thanksgiving and we're not getting together this year i think so many people are not getting together this year it's really uh an amazing and and difficult time for a lot of people i want to notice that and and i want to encourage people to try some something new i mean this might be a way to break out and break the mold so to speak um yeah and your books are fantastic they're beautifully illustrated as well as your videos i think really come across really well for people and by the way the holiday season you know for gifts i think these books make great um gifts for the holiday season i think i want to encourage people to to check them out one question that you mentioned about dessert have you ever um back to dough here have you um what is it like to do fried sourdough because that's that's one of the most fun things we do in our house like i've got some extra pizza dough we just fry it up the next day and you know button butter and convection sugar cinnamon um you know like you get at the state fair somewhere but what about fried sourdough have you ever done that yeah so um it's funny that you asked that because i i have been thinking about apple fritters and i had i dreamt all night last night about couple of quarters that's great the dreams of a baker i love it [Laughter] but yeah no you can certainly um if you i always recommend that if you want to to fry dough to do something that is a little bit enriched so something that leans a little bit more toward a brioche like you would make a typical donut and you know you can use sourdough to leaven any type of bread it doesn't have to be a crusty hearth loaf it can be a brioche style doughnut or an apple fritter or you know any anything else that you can everything imagine yeah and the the difference is like with all you know naturally loving doughs compared to yeasted doughs um is that it it takes a little bit longer and depending on how sweet the dough is you may have to adjust the kind of leaven that you use or the hydration [Music] in some recipes you know it's recommended that you kind of condition your starter to feed a little bit on some sort of sugar whether it's granulated or honey right um but you know all that said it's it's not very difficult to um to make a brioche style dough actually it's it's the topic of um my november patreon we're focusing on i'm doing um a butternut squash uh brioche style that sounds solution dough that is very versatile it's very flexible you can use it to make dinner rolls you can make it to use cinnamon rolls you can fry it i have to go do it right now it sounds great yeah i mean you know and you can once that dough comes out of the oil you can roll it in cinnamon sugar i mean there's good stuff so many different um things you can do and it's uh it's fun you know it's fun to play around and get creative and see what happens it is fun i'll admit to uh seeing what would happen if i you know i like to make pancakes from scratch oh yeah put a little bit of sourdough starter in that just for kicks i mean it didn't i didn't let it sit around you know i just baked it you know and cooked it and it was was you know it just gave it a little more body it was it was yeah like you said it doesn't have the you know you can't really depend on it necessarily unless you're really spending the time with it for it for its rise um but it's going to give it a little bit of a flavor and if you like buttermilk pancakes i think you're going to like sourdough in there a little bit too yeah absolutely definitely well so great to talk to you sarah owens you can find um your books people can find your books online you want to say anything else about where they can find you we'll put links to your patreon account which is one of the ways that you sustain yourself yeah anything else if you need more information about you know how to become a better better baker if you are familiar with my recipes and my books then the patreon is is helpful um you know because that's really kind of um it's not a beginner's sort of platform and it really is more about how to hone your intuition how to bake with stone-ground flowers more whole grains and unrefined sugars it's fantastic i think it's going to appeal and especially during this time people do have more people more time on their hands those of us who i guess have the privilege i will say to have to be able to work from home you know thank goodness that's um okay for us and at this point a lot of people working from home they want something new to do and they want to take up baking or or really invest more in it more i know i'm playing the guitar more i'm baking more and so i really recommend your books sarah owens thank you for being with us today thank you for so much for having me thanks for listening to the soul of life this is keith miller oh and don't forget please leave a thumbs up or a like for this episode wherever you're listening so that others like you may find the soul of life i mean really it's not every day you get to share the soul of life with someone okay so you can post a comment or question on souloflifeshow.com i'd love to hear from you and please subscribe now to get the next episode i look forward to sharing more of my soul of life with you i like it and it's not harsh to my eardrum all right i will go i'm just gonna get the dough i'm just gonna get the dough looking on

Channel: The Soul of Life

Views: 4,687

Keywords: sourdough bread, Sarah Owens, baking, Thanksgiving recipes, fermented foods, how to make sourdough, sourdough starter, sourdough gluten free, sourdough pancakes, bread recipes, what is sourdough, how to make bread, sourdough levin

Id: OiVmTX5FZSA

Length: 65min 18sec (3918 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 20 2020