Photo via Getty Images
The battle cry “seen one, seen ’em all” is the resistance I fight when herding family to a distant pizzeria, bagel shop or bakery. My offense goes like this: “Essentially, dough contains just three ingredients, water, flour and salt, but think of how different it tastes!” Yes, there’s disappointment. But when the baker is nimble, it’s worth crossing city limits to slather the creation with butter or bury it under cream cheese. Especially if that bread springs from local, rather than commercially available, yeast.
I discovered such zesty, air-pocketed bread one night at The Broken Tulip, a light rye sourdough, proudly displayed. Slices were cut as needed, which was often, and served with house-cultured butter and labneh (strained yogurt). I had to fight not to make a meal of it.
Photo courtesy The Broken Tulip
David Crabtree-Logan, chef and co-owner at The Broken Tulip, has made bread without purchased yeast — think of those little packets at the grocery — in every kitchen he’s led, as part of a desire to master all aspects of his realm and to serve good food from a hypernative environment. His starter, made from ambient yeast, is roughly 3 years old — about the age of the restaurant itself. Also referred to as the “mother,” starters are dough that has been left to ferment and cultivate wild, naturally occurring yeast. Adapting to whatever environment surrounds it, every starter will always be unique.
Crabtree-Logan says his loaves are “85% water in relation to 100% flour, of which 20% is Wades Mill Rye flour and 80% is King Arthur Special Patent white bread flour. The only other ingredient is sea salt and water. [The dough is] fermented for between 18-30 hours depending on the temperature in the kitchen and of the water in the dough, which is quite wet and sticky.”
Crabtree-Logan has been known to give away nubs of that starter. Loaves are $8 each, available with 24 hours’ notice.
The yeast starter for Chewy’s Bagels RVA (Photo courtesy Chewy’s Bagels RVA)
Even less common than wild fermented breads are wild fermented bagels, but you can find them at Ellwood Thompson’s, Little House Green Grocery, Outpost or at the pop-up Chewy’s Bagels RVA. Baker and owner Ashley Cricchio makes upwards of 700 hand-formed bagels weekly.
Chewy’s bagel dough blisters under its crust. It’s that transition, biting into an exterior that cracks rather than sinks under tooth, hitting a chewier, slightly acidic inner dough, that levels up the rounds. The flavors spin a complex web, rather than a single strand of sweet carbohydrate. Cricchio dubs Chewy’s the “Richmond bagel” because it’s smaller and crustier than chewy New York-style bagels, but less dense than a wood fire-baked Montreal bagel. Her favorite topping? Plain cream cheese and Moldova sea salt.
