Quinty Bakehouse Sourdough

Baking fresh artisan bread is very time consuming and uses a natural fermentation process similar to that of making wine and cheese.

Quinty Bakehouse sourdough is leavened slowly with a natural Starter, with each loaf taking a total of 3 days to make. Baker’s yeast (commercial yeast) is never used in our sourdough breads.

The Mother is also known as starter, culture, chef. A starter is not an artificial additive, it is a living organism. With proper care and daily feeding starters can live forever. Our starter began its life as organic grapes, water and organic flour. Our starter is was born is year 2000. It has been the soul of hundreds of thousands of sourdough loaves. The starter will continue to improve with age and refine the flavour, crumb structure, and crust of our sourdough bread.

1st the mixing of water, flour, salt with the mother culture, this starts the fermentation.

During the fermentation process the natural yeasts are activated commencing the development of the gluten, which is essential for the structure of the bread.

Proving or retarding is a long and slow process. The dough is allowed to sit in a warm humid environment for many hours. Retarding is where the dough sits in a cold environment. Manipulating the temperature and humidity during the fermentation is a skill which has a huge impact on the quality of the finished product.

Shaping the bread by hand gives us total control over the unique shape and style of the finished loaves. This is a hands-on skill learned over many years.

The loaf is shaped and put into a linen cloths to keep the shape of the free standing loaves during proving.

Slashing happens before the bread is baked using a sharp scalpel and this causes a release of gas from the bread and allows the bread to spring into shape during baking. This also give the loaf a unique decorative look.

Baking the breads directly on the hearth stone in a large gas fired deck oven. This ensures heat enters the bread quickly which promotes “oven spring” and a crisp crust on the bread. Using steam during the beginning of the bake creates an even better oven spring and results in a caramelised shiny crust.

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