Erie's Sourdough Culture

Erin Phillips

The process of making a loaf of sourdough bread at home can seem intimidating at first, but once you make it a part of your routine (whatever that may look like), it's really very forgiving. The loaf on our cover was made over the course of three days in the home kitchen of our managing editor, Erin Phillips.

I started my sourdough journey a little over two years ago. I've always been a fan of slow processes and generally enjoy challenging myself: I'm a knitter, a spinner, a gardener, a reader – it felt like a bread baker should also be included in that cozy list of hobbies.

Sourdough, or (very simply put) the process of leavening bread using gases produced from fermentation rather than from commercial yeast or baking powders, has been in my orbit for a while. One of the first stories I ever published in the Erie Reader back in 2020 was about the local resurrection of the Majestic Baking Company – feeling at once the soul of their old building, the awe at the giant, fire-breathing oven, and inspiration at the fact that they are able to make so much from simply flour, water, and salt. A number of my friends make sourdough (John, thank you for the many loaves over the years) and we can all hazily remember its viral explosion during the pandemic. I decided to make my own starter a couple of years ago and fully indoctrinate myself into the cult of sourdough.

I committed to a method (Maurizio Leo, you are my king), mixed together some rye and bread flours in a jar, added some water, and watched my budding starter burst its bounds as it collected the microbiome of my home, waiting for the good bacteria to triumph over the bad, and watch my very own starter come to life – ready to provide my family with homemade, nutritious, wholesome bread that I make with my own two hands.

The beauty of sourdough is that, even though the ingredients might be the same, the resultant loaves can differ wildly given the climate of your area, your home's ambient temperature, the wild yeasts you have swirling around you, the hydration level of your dough, the quality of your water, the weather or humidity, the length of time you allow your dough to rise, the duration the loaf chills in the fridge before it's baked (referred to herein as "cold ferment"). The science behind sourdough has been widely studied, and there are plenty of products one can purchase to "perfect" their own loaves, but as the owner of The Park Coffee and Bread Company, Kristen Davis shared, "People have been making bread this way for thousands of years, well before anyone had all these rules and equipment." The only thing you truly need to make bread is a well-maintained starter ("fed" with fresh flour and water daily), a bowl, flour, water, salt, and an oven. Everything else is gilding the lily.

In reality, and antithetical to a lot of the noise and (let's be honest) snobbishness in online sourdough groups, baking bread this way is not such a huge undertaking. Once you make it part of your routine, it becomes second nature. The dough is very forgiving – and there are methods available for any home baker's schedule. Start a levain (pronounced luh-VON, basically a second starter when you're ready to make a loaf) in the morning before work, then make your loaf when you get home. Pack all your baking into one weekend day and freeze loaves to have throughout the week. Mix your dough and let it sit on the dang counter all night long, bake a loaf in the morning and you've got yourself a gorgeous breakfast. The methods are endless.

In my quest to learn as much as possible about local sourdough and the people who love to make it, I spoke with a number of local bakers, all with their own, different stories about how they came to be a part of the cult of sourdough. Including the aforementioned Davis, I also spoke with Maximilian Wieczorek of Majestic Baking Company, Jessica Schultz and Vince Bartone of Herb and Honey Bakery, Amelia Madara of Madara Farms, and long-time home baker Michael Fuhrman. This is definitely not an exhaustive list of all of the folks making sourdough in Erie, and I encourage you to explore local farmers markets and grocers to find even more – taste them all, and then perhaps you'll feel inspired to start baking your own.

Kristen Davis, owner of the Park Coffee and Bread Company in Lawrence Park, shows off her 20-year-old sourdough starter. Her biggest advice to new bakers is to keep that starter happy – a well-maintained starter is the key to beautiful loaves. (Photo: Erin Phillips)

The first stop on my Erie sourdough walkabout was to The Park Coffee and Bread Company located at 4012 Main St. in Lawrence Park. I met up with owner Kristen Davis and her daughter in law as they closed up for the day. Davis has been making sourdough for over 20 years, when, as a young mother in Michigan wanting to feed her family more wholesome foods, she learned the art (and got her sourdough starter) from a friend's grandmother. It's that same sourdough starter that goes into every loaf made at The Park. Davis says that even on a larger scale (on a regular week, they bake and sell upwards of 100 loaves; on farmer's market weeks, that number is more like 300), "It's like therapy, I just love it."

"The beautiful thing is that you have all of these small microbakeries popping up, and it's all community-based. It's so much more than bread – it's a camaraderie between people."

Her bakery is also a cafe and serves prepared food, incorporating fresh baked sourdough items like bagels, English muffins, pretzels, and cinnamon rolls, along with their bread, into the creations they serve. And all of their loaves are baked in small batches (she has a single Rofco B40 brick oven which only bakes eight loaves at a time) and all are baked after a cold ferment which helps deepen the sourdough flavor.

Davis hosts regular sourdough classes at her bakery and is proud to say she's taught over 1,000 people to make sourdough throughout her life – additionally she has online sourdough classes available through her website theparkcoffeeandbreadco.com. Keep an eye on their socials for upcoming in-person classes.

Davis's main piece of advice for budding bakers is to maintain a good starter. "Having a starter that is taken care of is the most important thing. Also do not be intimidated – you might not have the most gorgeous, artisan loaf, but you'll have good bread that you made with three ingredients that is healthy for you."

Mirroring that starter advice, I spoke with Maximilian Wieczorek from Majestic Baking Company to get an update on their operation since that 2020 article was published. Taking over the main baking responsibilities from owner Cam Spaeder, Wieczorek also feels that the best bread begins with a happy starter. "Make sure your starter is fed – as long as your starter is fed, you'll have a nice productive bread. If you leave it in your fridge for a while it won't have the oomph it needs to make your bread grow. Patience is also key."

Expanding their hours and their wholesale offerings recently, it's now easier to find Majestic Bread's products throughout Erie – they supply all of the hoagie rolls for the 6 Pack House of Beer (you might recall that I went off about how incredible their combo sub is in last year's Food issue), the Erie Food Co-Op, Duran's in Waterford, as well as pop-ups and at farmers markets throughout the year. The group has also expanded their regular menu, relying less on specials – you can pre-order from their website or walk in to enjoy their Erie sourdough, rye, hippie bread (seeded, whole grain), milk bread, jalapeno cheddar, onion parm, and kalamata olive thyme, among others, all made with their sourdough starter.

If you're ready to get started on sourdough but don't want to go through the challenge of making your own starter, just show up to Majestic Baking Company (at 1501 Walnut St.) with an empty jar and Wieczorek will happily share some with you.

Herb and Honey owner Jessica Schultz and bread baker Vince Bartone make nearly all of the bakery's leavened bread-based products from their Masa Madre sourdough starter – one that traveled with Schultz from West Virginia when she moved to Erie. (Photo: Erin Phillilps)

Also happy to part with some of their sourdough discard for the sake of recruiting home bakers, Herb and Honey Bakery doles out free jars to anyone willing to try, all offspring of their 12-year-old starter, which is lovingly referred to as Masa Madre (which literally translates to "mother dough," the Spanish word for sourdough). Owner Jessica Schultz mentions, "This is something we've cultivated here so it should be something that everybody has access to."

While the starter came with Schultz when she moved to Erie from West Virginia, the main bread guy at Herb and Honey Bakery (located at 516 Cherry St.) is Vince Bartone.

Bartone was a home baker well before he got started at Herb and Honey, getting his own starter going in 2019 and he brings that experience to nearly all of the leavened goods at the bakery, which include their caraway rye, multigrain and classic loaves, any brioche dough, cinnamon rolls, egg bombs, bagels, and pretzels.

All of Herb and Honey's breads get a cold ferment overnight before being baked the next day. "This means we can bake the loaves fresh for people in the morning, but also it promotes that good lactobacilli growth, giving the bread more tang," Schultz explains. "If we did it all in one day, we might have a big buoyant, nice looking loaf, but the flavor wouldn't be there."

Schultz adds, "I love how place-based sourdough is, you catch different strains of yeast on the west coast versus the east coast." In every place she has lived, Schultz began a new starter and was interested to find how differently they behaved and tasted depending on the environment. "One of my most distinct was started in Rhode Island in peak summer – her smell was salty and had a different bouquet. She liked a really hot rise to have a nice crumb."

If you're interested in getting started but want someone to show you, Bartone teaches classes regularly throughout Erie – at the library, the Hagen History Center, as well as at the annual Fermentation Festival organized by Wild Field Farm proprietor Stephanie Ciner and held at Grounded Print Shop. Bartone's best advice to new sourdough adventurers, "Don't be disheartened if it doesn't happen the first few times. Keep at it, take your time."

And Schultz mirrors that advice, "Be patient for your loaf to rise. You're going to bake door stoppers, it's just going to happen. Most of the time it's because you haven't waited long enough." And be willing to adapt, "The microclimate of your kitchen is different. Here, we adjust recipes according to the season, things change and that's the beauty of it – being more in tune with the changes. In that way it's more difficult, but also more worthwhile."

Amelia Madara runs the cottage bakery Madara Farms from her home. She got started making sourdough bread, like so many others, during the pandemic, and saw unexpected success that eventually turned into a business. (Contributed Photo)

Amelia Madara started small, making loaves in her kitchen, like so many others, during the pandemic. "For me it was failed attempt after failed attempt and I was so disappointed. The bread was a hockey puck, but something about it wouldn't let me walk away. I would try again and again – finally something just clicked and my starter grew like crazy and I was finally able to make that one decent loaf." That win started a whole business Madara didn't see coming. "Through all of my failed attempts, I really got to understand the process from a hands-on place. Over time I started giving loaves to a friend, then she would tell her friend. I'd give loaves as teachers' gifts, and people started asking if they could buy them," Madara explains.

She started small with a "bread club" as a way to share loaves and also improve her own skills, and it eventually blew up into Madara Farms. Known as a "cottage bakery," she operates out of her home but is licensed and inspected through the state. At one point, she had her oven running for 12 hours a day and could only make four loaves at a time, so she ended up building a bakery in her basement with a commercial oven and mixer.

In addition to ordering bread directly from her website at madarafarms.com, Madara also sells loaves at the Country Superette on Route 8, Jo's Brooklyn Bagels on West 38th Street, and the Breakfast Place on East 38th. She is also a regular at LEAF Open Markets throughout the summer, as well as at the seasonal Copper Carriage markets and Goodell Gardens events in Edinboro. She also holds regular workshops at a nearby church, demonstrating how to make sourdough through every step, with patrons walking away with their own starter and a freshly baked loaf. Visit the aforementioned website for information on upcoming classes.

"My biggest advice is not to compare anything you're doing to anyone else – everyone has their own technique. Comparison is the thief of joy," Madara shares.

Longtime home baker Michael Fuhrman found a passion for breadbaking during his time spent living in Germany and experiencing all of the beautiful breads that European bakeries had to offer. (Photo: Erin Phillips)

The final stop on my local sourdough journey led me to the home of Michael Fuhrman, a hobby baker who has been baking bread for decades. Fuhrman's collegiate dance education took him to Germany, where he lived and worked for years. While there, he states, "I fell in love with European bakeries and the bread – it was amazing. When I came back I was inspired to make my own." It was in 1988 when Fuhrman began baking traditional yeasted breads, then in 2000 he was given a book by his sister, Bread Alone by Dan Leader, which introduced him to the concept of sourdough – and that was his spark. "When I first started making this kind of bread, it turned out terribly but the flavor was there. I must have spent hundreds of dollars on flour in those early days as I was working it out."

As he got used to the feel and techniques of sourdough, he began giving his practice loaves to friends and family and everyone really seemed to like it – that encouraged him to keep going.

For those of us who bake bread, including Fuhrman, it can often feel like an inherent, natural inclination. Fuhrman explains, "My mother's grandfather was the main baker in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania. In that family, they were all cooks and chefs. My mother owned a catering company, my brother owns a couple restaurants. My family on my dad's side were called Pfister, from southern Germany, and the name Pfister means 'bread baker' so there's got to be some kind of genetic driver in there."

Fuhrman's schedule allows for most of his baking to happen on Sundays, which was the day I visited – with jazz music playing in the background and homemade kombucha bubbling on the sideboard – he had three different doughs going when I stopped in. Post-it notes were stuck on the wall indicating the timing and progress of all of them to stay organized. In various bowls and containers throughout the kitchen were a bubbly poolish, a white rye with dill and caraway seeds, as well as a medium rye with caramelized onions and a custom-made German spice blend.

Fuhrman's advice for fellow home-bakers? "Never give up. Stay with it – it's a skill that requires time, just like the bread itself. If you stick with it, it will pay off."

In today's world of constant rush, instant gratification, and disposable everything – the art of sourdough is a welcome opportunity to slow down, to relish in a process that doesn't work unless you allow it time, patience, and space to grow. It is an activity that human beings have been engaged in for millennia and every time you make a sourdough loaf, you are tapping into that ancient human history. Intentionally slowing down, especially when it comes to the food we're eating, is a benefit – to both our bodies and our souls.

If you'd like to get started on your own sourdough journey, the Erie County Public Library has dozens of books available to get you started. Visit erielibrary.org or visit any of the bakeries' websites noted in this article for information on classes or bread for sale:

The Park Coffee and Bread Company at theparkcoffeeandbreadco.com

Majestic Baking Company at majesticbaking.co

Herb and Honey Bakery at herbandhoneybakery.com

Madara Farms at madarafarms.com

When not feeding her starter (affectionately named Starty McFly, an homage to the greatest cinematic masterpiece of all time) or working on a loaf, she can be found at erin@eriereader.com