Jeff Laine, owner of Europa Crust
If you’ve done any sourdough baking — hell, if you’ve only read about sourdough baking — coddling the bread starter, mixing flour, water and salt until they are elastic, rolling the loaves, creating steam so the boules form a crackly, tanned crust, you begin to understand the elusive, laborious craft.
Sourdough baking is ancient. Christopher Columbus traveled with a bread starter. California gold miners put San Francisco sourdough on the map, and in their sleeping bags, cuddling the ambient yeasts to keep them alive.
At Europa Crust bakery, owner Jeff Laine nurtures his starters, Harriet, Henry and Hazel, in a 700-square-foot boulangerie. He does all the work, from making and mixing to cleaning and ringing up customers, alone.
Workdays are more than 12 hours. At age 57, Laine is lanky and likes to rock goofy T-shirts. He’s only been baking for two years, beginning at home at the start of the pandemic after he was laid off from his job in spice sales. In August 2021 he opened Europa Crust.
I spent a day with Laine in his shop at 1321 1/2 E. Main St. to watch the Old World magic unfold.
7 a.m. Laine preheats several double-decker ovens to 550 degrees, brews coffee, puts out the cafe table, props open the front door and positions a fan to disperse the smell of freshly baked bread onto Main Street.
Tip: Line a home oven with square paving stones to increase heat and diffuse steam.
Laine pops loaves into the oven.
8 a.m. The oven hisses. A cast-iron pan filled with heated stones is hit with cold water, creating steam. Laine bakes two loaves of each of the seven varieties of bread sold at the bakery. He will bake to order all day, replacing only what he sells.
Hazel, the rye sourdough starter, and Henry, the white, San Francisco-style starter, are fed water and flour. The starters will rise until 11 a.m.
Tip: When using a cast-iron skillet to create steam, cover the oven door with a towel when adding the water to the pan. This keeps spatter from potentially shattering the glass.
9:30 a.m. The day’s first sale is half a loaf of “Poilâne” sourdough, named for the French bakery Europa Crust emulates. Poilâne sells thousands of loaves daily, in various locations, all serviced from a central commissary. This is the business model Laine hopes to achieve eventually. The customer pays with a 20-dollar bill, and Laine makes change from a cabinet drawer.
Laine’s baking prowess comes from mail-ordering a loaf of Poilâne sourdough, then cooking from the cookbook, “Poilâne: The Secrets of the World-Famous Bread Bakery.”
Laine pours cold water onto heated stones to create steam.
10:00 a.m. Laine scalds milk for Finnish sweet bread, nissu. The browned, sugar-crusted braids are laced with cardamom and perfectly accompany hot coffee, of which his great-grandmother, who immigrated from Finland through Ellis Island, drank seven cups a day. It’s her recipe.
Sales are brisk. Laine feeds the starters again. He runs the dishwasher, cleans the counters and starts a load of laundry.
11 a.m. A collection of secondhand Kitchen Aid mixers whir. “In order to avoid commercial mixers, the dough doesn’t need to mix that long,” says Laine, as he stretches and folds bands of dough, pulling them up past his chest, then letting them drop. “Commercial mixers make tons of bread, but they only mix — no stretching. We do the stretching to avoid buying a floor mixer. Eventually we’ll get dough dividers, because stretching 60 loaves a day is tiresome.”
The first rise is on the counter, then the doughs go into bannetons — baskets used for the long, cold ferment that the rye, whole-wheat French and San Francisco white sourdough, along with Italian, five-grain loaves and baguettes, undergo in a 38-degree fridge. Cold fermentation is crucial to flavor development.
Tip: Always clean as you go. Laine is constantly washing pans before the dough can dry.
Finnish sweet breads, or nissu, await baking.
2 p.m. Laine cuts the dough into loaves, reshaping the San Francisco, rye and wheat into miches, large and rustic loaves that were traditionally meant to feed a family for several days. After they have rested, he scales them into 900-gram balls before knitting them into 2-pound boules. “This is the most skilled aspect of baking — the balls must be tight to hold form, but not so tight they lose volume when the dough doesn’t produce gas,” he says.
Tip: Dust dough with rice flour, rather than wheat flour, Laine advises. “Rice flour has no gluten,” he says. “It’s dry and absorbent. It’s good for managing dough.”
2:30 p.m. The timer goes off. Laine removes the nissu from the oven and sprinkles it with sugar. “I have never had a job where time goes so quickly,” he says. “I’m baking on demand. We have hot bread all day.”
Customers visiting the Shockoe Bottom bakery
5 p.m. Laine lights up the sourdough sign outside. The shop closes at 6 p.m., but often stays open later. Laine cracks the door, and the full, yeasty scent of hot bread stops pedestrians, who almost always turn back and buy a loaf.
