From AwayToGarden.com and RobinhoodRadio.com, this is AwayToGarden with Margaret Roach. You're a weekly invitation to dig in and grow. Almost ten years ago on this program I talked about making Saurdo Starder with today's guest Sarah Owens on the occasion of the publication of her book called Saur Joe. Now a 10th anniversary edition of the James Beard Award winning book is about to arrive. And I wanted to check in with Sarah who's also an accomplished gardener to inspire us to maybe get that starter going again and do some baking with seasonal ingredients this fall and winter. So more in a moment but first these messages. Underwriting support for a way to garden provided by Colorblends wholesale flower bulbs. A third generation bulb company offering top-sized flower bulbs directly to landscape professionals and ambitious residential gardeners on the web, Colorblends.com. And by high mowing seeds, Wolcott Vermont, Flower, and Erbil Seeds that are 100% organic and non-GMO project verified. On the web, HighMohingSeeds.com and by White Flower Farm offering a wide range of carefully selected and expertly grown garden plants. On the web, WhiteFlowerFarm.com Sarah Owens, author of Sour Doe, rustic recipes for fermented breads, sweets, savories, and more has already had several very creative careers. Originally, she was a professional ceramic artist, and then she trained as a horticulturist at New York Botanical Garden School of Professional Horticulture and spent six years as a Rosary in Brooklyn Botanic Garden. In 2013, Sarah founded a bakery in Brooklyn, then eventually moved to California where she lives and gardens and bakes today. She's a popular teacher of baking workshops and offers online courses as well. And I'm happy to welcome her back to the show today. Hello Sarah, it's been way too long. Thank you so much for having me back Margaret. It's a pleasure. Yes. So you're out there. Are you in Sonoma County? Is that where you are? I am. I moved to California in January of 2020. Yeah. Oh boy, that was a year. So before we get started, I'll say that we'll have a give away of the the 10th anniversary edition of the book, Sour Joe, with the transcript of this show over on AwayToGarden.com. And before we talk about Sour Joe and baking, since we're both gardeners, I wanted to ask you about your gardening California in, you know, so it sounds like it's about five years old and what's it like? Tell us about it. Yeah, it is a completely different approach to gardening than I have ever tried before in my life. I learned how to garden in East Tennessee in Appalachia and then professionally in New York. And moving to this climate, it's definitely has various seasons. And I would say many micro seasons, but it's often divided into the wet in the dry season. And so when I think about how to plant, how to prune, how to do all the tasks that are necessary to maintain a garden, it's on a very different schedule. because of our zone or growing zone and all the different microclimates here, it's just been a really, it's been an incredible experience and a growing experience for my skillset and also just learning how to fall into rhythm with what grows naturally here. So technically what zone are you supposed to be there? Right here on this property, I would say we're probably in 9B, although if you go 20 minutes down the road, that could be a 9A, you have 30 minutes inland, that might be a 10. It really depends. Yeah, and I'm in close proximity to the Pacific Ocean. So we get a heavy marine layer, usually that rolls in in the evening. And depending on what time of the year it hangs very low throughout the morning. And that influences what can be grown here, it influences the moisture in the air, obviously. But also during the winter, it can be quite a bit colder here than other parts of the county. And that also influences particularly the fruit trees that we can grow here. So you were the Rosarion at Brooklyn Botanic Geovrosis, or do you don't mean, I mean, or do you, or you're in your big, or you're in a club, do you have herbs and, you know, what, so what's lurking in that garden of yours? And how big is it, is it in a rural area, or a suburban area, or urban, or what? Yeah, it's in an agricultural area. So I sort of wedged in between two vineyards that were formerly apple orchards. So this part of the county because we are colder in winter, we have the chill hours that are necessary to grow some really delicious apples. And we still have quite a few heirloom apples on the property. But now it's mostly Pinot Noir grapes. And that's also probably going to change in the next few years, just because of the fallout of the wine industry here. But that seems to be the way things go. I'm culturally here, but it's a beautiful landscape and I have about a quarter of an acre, so it's not a very large garden. And I am in a rental house that I am very fortunate to be in close proximity to some wonderful neighbors and people who have lived here for decades and love this land very dearly. And so I've inherited different trees, mostly fruit trees, that I know the histories and stories of how it was never planted. And the cottage that I live in is actually the former house of the orchard manager that lived here for a very long time. Oh, sweet. And that, yeah, that orchard manager loved to do lots of different types of grafting. So as I'm speaking to you, I'm looking out the window at a citrus tree that has to my knowledge about four different types of citrus. I've been grafted all onto one tree and right next to it a very prolific lemon tree. And so I've been really lucky to have these disabundance available to me. But it's great. Also, I live about a mile down the road from someone that I used to collaborate with, quite a bit when I was at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden as the Rosarian. And he is the proprietor of former vintage gardens and nursery that specialized in heirloom roses. Now it's become a nonprofit and they do rose sales on site twice a year. And so I've been very lucky to be able to resume a close friendship with Greg Lowry who is the Rosarian of vintage gardens and and acquires some of the most amazing roses that you could ever grow. Oh, you're in a in a very different climate. So I have about 50 plus roses that I'm doing. Yeah. Oh, it's addictive. It's addictive. The obsession I don't think it ever goes away, you know. But it's been really interesting because the climate is so different. The roses, their habits, their blooms, how you prune and take care of them when you prune and take care of them is completely different schedule. And sometimes roses that I grew for many years and became very acquainted with. Sometimes it's hard for me to even recognize them here because there are five times the size of what they were in New York or they bloom not just once during the spring but two more times in the late summer and then again and early winter. And it's just it's a whole different world and I'm having a lot of fun with it. Good good good. Well, maybe we'll get back to the garden a little bit but I want to ask I want to say you know I but maybe it was I think I don't 2018 I read a book by a professor at North Carolina State called Rob Done and you maybe you've read the book called Never Home Alone. I don't know if you've ever heard of it and I thought of you because oh well you've got to get it. It's fabulous because besides Never Home Alone is the title and okay and so he's sort of besides bringing to light all of the living creatures that we inadvertently share our homes with, crickets in the cellar and silverfish and, and bazillion kinds of spiders and this and that, and the other thing, all these Arthur pods and, you know, all these invertebrates and so forth. We also live with microbes like in our sourdough starter and one chapter in the book is about this story of sort of like this experiment where he's just really fascinated with the microbes in sourdough. And he develops an experiment working with some bread, the flour company, or FLO, or our company, or bread company, or something. I think it was Germany, or Belgium, or so, or anyway. They brought together a bunch of sort of, to do this test, this experiment, brought together a bunch of sourdough experts, expert bakers from all over the world to this sort of suite of test kitchens, as I recall. they gave them identical ingredients to create their starter.

Right? So they have these, you know, laboratory-like kitchens identical ingredients, the same flour, the same, you know, everything the same. But of course, when the starters were done, none of them were the same. None of them had the same, I don't know if you would call it flavor smell right because what is what I think is in maybe it's in Korea's known as

hands None of them had the same. I don't know if you would call it flavor or smell or because what is what I think is in maybe it's in Korea is known as hand flavor because of microbes of us. Sourdough is a lie. Exactly. So I just I mean I'm sorry that's sort of a long-winded story but it just delighted me so much. The idea that there's this signature in working with sourdough, right? So I wanted you to tell me a little bit about that if that sort of resonated with you. It does. And in fact, I had forgotten that I had worked with a scientist named Aaron McKenney, who is also a lecturer in scientists at North Carolina State University who has worked with Rob Dunn. We were able to do a workshop together in 2019 in North Carolina. And it was fascinating to me because she really brought the scientific element to something that I often approach very intuitively, at least at this point in my baking practice, but it's so fascinating because we are learning so much more about this microbial world. And as a gardener, I think that there has been a lot of traction in terms of understanding and learning more about the relationships

that plants have with soil microbes. And that's really where I started with my understanding of sourdough was having this appreciation for the unseen world of soil. And then learning how to apply that those concepts to a sourdough starter. But fortunately, we have many different collaborations and labs and universities that are working toward further understanding these relationships. And Aaron McKinney helped me understand that within a sourdough culture, often when I teach about it, I speak of it, I sort of reduce it down to bacteria and yeast. But she really helped me understand that there can be up to 70 different microbes, species and subspecies of microbes within one culture. And that culture, that sourdough culture, is influenced by so much, by the baker themselves, whether they are a gardener, whether they have pets, you know, all these different aspects that we may or may not think about on a daily basis. But all of that contributes to, like you said, the signature flavor. Right, and in that experiment, they also swabbed the hands of each baker, and you could tell whose starter was who's from that as well. The chemistry was saying, you know, it's crazy. It's totally crazy. It's wonderful. Yeah, and it's alive, right? It's

literally alive and you write about in the book, that's just out again in the 10th anniversary edition, the book Sourdough, you write about, you encourage each of us to experience Sourdough or the in all of its four seasons because you say that we should try to see firsthand how our starter changes character in each of those seasons. Again, it's alive. It's not the same on a cold, wintery day, a dry day, as it is in the human heat of summer. And so it tells a little bit about that. So it changes too, right? Even the same starter changes. Yeah. The, yes, the composition of the starter, the behavior of the starter changes, and the way that we must respond to that also, of course, changes depending upon what our desired outcome is. And in the book, there are many different recipes. Some of them use starter as a leavening agent and some of the recipes use it more as an ingredient. But when you are using sourdough starter as a leavening agent, you are trying to encourage the activity of both yeast and bacteria. And the yeast in particular, the byproduct of yeast fermentation is carbon dioxide gas. And that is what leavens are bred. So if we're making bread, if that's the desired outcome, is to have a loaf that has a good rise and a good oven spring. And all of a sudden, it is turned cold and rainy, which has happened today as we're recording this podcast. We got the first rain of the season, very exciting. Then we really have to take into consideration how the temperature and the humidity and all of these different environmental factors are going to influence the speed in which our dough ferments. Yeah, so in learning to be kind of not a master, but more experienced with this our dough, one has to take note of these things, has to patiently observe, I guess, and feel our way through it, right? I mean, because it's not just something you can say. Put a cup of this and put a table spoon of that and a quart of this and there you go. Put it in a 350 oven. Thank you very much. It's about percentages, right? It's not that way. It's about percentages of, you call it the baker's math within the book with Sourdough that every ingredient is expressed as a percentage of the total flower weight, the total weight of the flower. That's considered the 100% the flower weight and you know, how much hydration the starder has and oh my goodness. So we really have to be open to learning

and understanding and embracing again this very exciting, very versatile living thing that can do so much and not just to make bread rise but as a flavor as an ingredient as well in other recipes. It's something that I think it requires presents. I find that gardening and baking, they have so many parallels in this requirement of us to really be present with a dough and be observant and take in what the dough is trying to tell us. In addition to just simply the craft of learning baking, there are kind of two different things. And I think that I really try to encourage folks who have never baked bread before, whether with sourdough or with yeast, to really start with a recipe that speaks to them, that seems appealing, that seems delicious, and repeat that recipe many different times if you can, to just acquire the skills that are necessary. And this is something that whether you're learning ceramics or gardening or baking, you have to learn the technique or the skill before you can really understand the nuance of something or learn how to respond to something intuitively. Yeah, hopefully you get a rhythm, you get a groove, right? You find your way with it and then once you have that, you can experiment a little more. Yeah, and you can make it as complicated as you want. And we do, and we sometimes do. So I will say that I will include a link with the transcript of this show over on awaygarde.com to our sort of vintage conversation from again, almost 10 years ago, like I spoke about in the introduction of the actual how to start or making. And so that people might like to listen to that and be a recipe and so forth as well. But I was curious, you say in the start of the 10th anniversary edition that one thing that has changed a lot is the availability in those in suing 10 years, is the availability of different kinds of flowers than were available back then. Does that, and then does that mean different starters? what's going on with flowers and does that affect the starters? Every time I say flowers, speaking to you as a gardener, I want to say, spell it out again. I'm sorry, it just keeps sounding the homonym, right? It keeps sounding wrong to me. Flowers and flowers. Absolutely, it definitely has influenced this selection that we have.

And... Yeah, flowers and flowers. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. It definitely has influenced this selection

that we have. And I should say that this could be a whole podcast conversation. But what we've seen over the last 10 years in particular here in the US, and I think also throughout the world is this moving toward smaller systems of agriculture that have allowed communities in different climates to grow more specifically climate-appropriate grains for their region. And, you know, not all wheat is made the same. I was just in Italy, in southern Italy, where Durham wheat is the predominant type of wheat grown there because of its very dry, drought-like conditions during the summer and very intense heat. That type of wheat would not do very well in a wet humid environment during the summers of British Columbia, for example. And so these various smaller farm systems have moved toward very specific types of grains, whether it be wheat, rye, barley, or other types of grains. And those grains are becoming more available to to bakers, also being milled in very different ways. So we've primarily learned baking over the last 150 years from roller-milled flour. This is a very industrial process. And now we're seeing the smaller farming systems turning to stone milling. And stone milling retains, it can retain all parts of the grain, the brand, the germ, where all of the flavor and the oils reside and also the

indisperm. And so when we're getting whole grain flour that's been grown organically and stone milled, this type of flour, you can imagine, you know, how the microbes in a starter are going to respond to this type of flour. There's so much food available.

Yes, your starters, your dough.

Interesting. starter gonna respond to this type of flour. There's so much food available. Yes, your starters, your dough. And so fermentation, yeah, fermentation really goes crazy when you feed a starter that's been used to being fed with store bought industrial flour that you buy off the shelf. And then you feed it stone ground, freshly milled, whole grain flour. The starter just kind of explodes in activity. And if you're used to it taking eight hours to double in size, all of a sudden it takes four to six hours at the same temperature. It's just a whole other creature. Not just in its behavior, it its fermentation behavior, but also in its flavor.

Again, because you're retaining with the stone milling, and often these smaller systems are turning toward, not always, but often turning toward heirloom varieties of grains that were really grown more for flavor than for yield.

Then we're also getting these really complex flavors and and and cult even colors of of bread that we haven't seen before. And so it's just it's a whole other world. It's like you know a painter that only had red, blue, and green, and they're in their palette,

and now there's like 25 different colors to play with. It's a totally different canvas. It's a totally different landscape. And so I think when I wrote Sourou, when I wrote my first book, I was beginning to play with some of those flowers. I was beginning to work with Iancorn and Emmer. And some of those that spelt. And some of those are definitely featured in the book. But now we're seeing so much greater access to these different types of flowers. And it's really a very exciting time to be baking. So in the last minute or two, I just wanted to ask you, so do you have one starter? And it can service all of these different flowers. Or do you have to have now, like, do you mean? Is it? I do. I have one flavor. I have one starter. Sometimes I do keep two starters. Sometimes I'll keep a brown rice starter to make gluten-free brads. Okay. And then a wheat starter. When I was in New York, the last five to seven years I was in New York. I kept primarily a ride, fed starter. And when I moved to California, I think my starter was a little upset with me because it just went, it went, it's turned very strange. It was a strange flavor, it was a strange odor. So I switched, when I moved to California, into feeding my starter with whole wheat. And I have kept it since 2021. I've kept the same starter fed primarily with whole wheat. And that starter, I travel a lot now to teach. And when I travel, I travel with it as a stiff starter. And I refer to it as stiffy. And I revive stiffy wherever I go using whatever the local flower is. And then I work with that starter in that location. And then at the end of the workshop or the retreat, I've been creating another step starter.

I bring it back with me to California.

And in this way, I feel like I'm incorporating

the microbial footprint of everywhere

that I've been in addition to the footprint

of my home in California and the flowers that I use here.

And it's become a very resilient, very active starter. And it's been fascinating to watch it. I almost want to create a travel blog just based around the adventures of Stiffy. Because it is such a creature. Crazy. Well, it's been fun to talk to you again. I hope we won't wait another 10 years Sarah Owens author of Sour Joe, Rustic Rests of Fees for Fermented, Breds, Sweets, Savories and more, which is just coming out in its 10th anniversary edition and we'll have the giveaway with the transcript over on O'Lay to Garden.com. And I'll talk to you soon, I hope again. Thank you so much for having me Margaret. It's been a pleasure talking with you. And thanks to all the rest of you for tuning in to now don't miss an episode you can subscribe free to the podcast version of the show on Spotify or Apple podcasts and you can find me anytime at awaytagarden.com and on Facebook and on Instagram as at a way to Garden and happy gardening and baking meantime. Underwriting support for a way to garden provided by Colorblends wholesale flower bulbs, a third-generation bulb company offering top-sized flower bulbs directly to landscape professionals and ambitious residential gardeners on the web, Colorblends.com. And by high-moving seeds, Wulke Vermont Vegetable, Flower, and Erbil Seeds that are 100% organic and non-GMO project verified. On the web, HighMohingSeeds.com and by White Flower Farm offering a wide range of carefully selected and expertly grown garden plants. On the web, whiteflowerfarm.com.

A way to garden with Margaret Roach is a joint production of

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