Food Artisan: La Tartine

I love to shout about people who do good, especially when it comes to food. I knew when I visited La Tartine that I wanted to do a lot of shouting. I hope everyone can hear me...

Nick Anthony and his French wife, Laurence, opened La Tartine, Australia's first certified organic sourdough bakery, almost 15 years ago. They moved over from France where they made traditional pain au levain – proper heavenly sourdough with nothing but organic stoneground flour, spring water and Brittany sea salt. This beautiful bread with its distinctive sourness, chewy open crumb and sweet, crackling crust is the reason they set up their own bakery on Wisemans Ferry Road, Somersby here in NSW.

Instead of French ingredients, these Central Coast-made loaves use organic flour from Gunnedah, filtered tap water ("there was no way we were using tap water after our daughters complained their bath water stunk like a swimming pool!") and Murray River salt.

So what is sourdough? Well, it's bread raised using natural yeasts – wild yeasts that are all around us. The sourdough process starts off with a natural leaven made up of flour and water that's left to ferment with the help of these airborne yeasts. This leaven is mixed with more flour and water to make a dough, then it's cut, weighed and shaped into loaves – all by hand at La Tartine. It's the long proving, though, that makes a great loaf.

Jan Hackenberg, one of Nick's bakers, and one of those infinitely charming people who draw you in with talk about their craft, did just that. He talked to me about bread. He told me that a properly fermented sourdough is much easier for the body to digest. It's how we should eat bread.

And have you wondered about those cheap loaves with a sourdough label? Well, that's all they are. Commercial yeasted breads made sour with added vinegar. Sourdough, as Nick pointed out to me, is more than just a sour bread. It's all about the fermentation and the proving; the sourness is simply the end result. You can always tell a slow-fermented loaf by the air bubbles all over the crust.

The stoneground flour they use is creamy and coarse. It's beautiful. Modern powdery roller-milled flour, on the other hand, is stripped of its nutrient-rich wheatgerm and bran.

But here's why they scared me. They work really hard; they lug back-breaking bags of flour and cut loaves from early morning till late at night. Slow food is always really hard on the people behind it. It's passion that drives them. But they can't get dedicated folk who share the same passion to work as hard as they do. They never last.

It's so hard on them they don't even want their children doing what they do.

What happens in years to come when Nick and Laurence want to retire from 14-hour days at the bakery? Who will take over and sell us sourdough at the markets?

Will there always be someone like Jan who cares enough about slow food to work this hard, or will traditions eventually die out because the appeal to earn quick money making cheap food is too great?

People nowadays don't want to make bread this way, or cheese... They don't want to age their meat and they don't want to properly cure their bacon. Slow food is becoming a rare thing.

It's there if we look for it. I'm always looking for it. Writing about it. I know that helps.

If you live near me, look out for La Tartine loaves – they're sold in most good grocers around Sydney and the Central Coast (or head to the bakery on a Friday after 3pm and meet them in person). If you live in London, read the piece I wrote for Homes & Gardens on London Bakeries – it was always a good day when Graeme walked through our front door with a St John's loaf. If you'd like to try and make your own, then come back here. I'll be making my own sourdough very soon. My pat, pat, rub, rub rhythm is working well...

What's your idea of slow food? Do you wish it was the norm? Do you live near lots of wonderful artisans?

Follow me on Facebook or here on Blogger and you'll know when I get it together to start sourdough at home. 



Another artisan: Cocopure

Slow bread

I pitch lots of ideas all the time. Some get commissioned, some don't. Of the ones that get the go-ahead, there are stories I would happily write for nothing. La Tartine, an organic sourdough bakery here on the Central Coast, was one such piece.

It was the school holidays, or in our case, preschool holidays, so Luca came with me. He sat on the floury floor and drew. He drew the mixers and he drew their fruit loaf.

His Mummy talked to the bakers. The bakers that make the best kind of bread. The same bread that was made thousands of years ago. The oldest kind of bread.

His Daddy took pictures (although I hasten to add that I took this one!)

I could have talked to them all day, but they had hundreds of loaves to roll, shape and prove. They had been there since early morning and wouldn't leave till just before midnight. Their days are long and very physical. But they do it because they're passionate about sourdough. They believe in bread made this way.

In what was really only a few hours, they managed to inspire, teach and even scare me.

The inspiring part is why I started my food artisan series. They're definitely next in line. I'll be writing another post very soon to celebrate the people at La Tartine. (I'll explain why they scared me – and I don't mean Halloween scary.)





Sweet orange dishwasher powder

Remember trying to pat your head, rub your tummy and stamp your feet at the same time? If you master one at a time, it's much easier to attempt the next thing. If you try it all at once, it all falls apart.

That's how I feel about running a home. I want to make my own sourdough so we can start getting away from yeasted breads. I want to look into sourcing proper grass-fed meats. I want to make yoghurt and cream cheese.

But I can't do it all at once. It isn't just a question of making something or finding out about it. It's a process. It's about getting into the habit of doing all these things so they become part of the head-patting, tummy-rubbing, feet-stamping ritual and you don't notice it. 

When I started making bread a few years ago, it felt like an effort. And it was until I found my groove. I tried a few breadmakers, then I invested in a Thermomix and I now mill my own flour. Making bread happens as naturally as brushing my teeth. It's a habit and I just do it. 

Thoughts of sourcing organic fruit and vegetables consumed me for months. Then I tackled it head-on and made a habit of driving into the country with Kian every Monday afternoon to the local co-op. I don't have to think about fruit and veg anymore.

So now I'm tackling other niggles. I mentioned laundry detergent once, but it doesn't niggle me as much as dishwasher powder. The conventional powders are full of chemicals, and the so-called green tablets are pricey.

I spotted a tub of borax recently and I started thinking about making my own (domestic borax is a naturally occurring mild alkali that cuts grease, absorbs odours and leaves everything glistening.)

I mixed up a batch this morning. A cup of borax, a cup of bicarb, a quarter cup of salt and a quarter cup of citric acid. I had a bottle of sweet orange essential oil in my bathroom cabinet, so I added 20-30 drops into the mix and gave it all a good shake.

It's easy to make, the dishes came out clean, I don't have to worry about poisoning my family anymore and we save a packet. I won't bore you with all the figures I worked out this morning, but it works out exactly half the price per kg compared with the main brand of powder and almost five times cheaper than the 'green' tablets on offer – although I didn't factor in the oil. It would still be cheaper.

Oh, and white vinegar works a treat as a rinse aid.

It hits home more and more every day: we don't need most of the stuff they're trying to sell us out there.

So, are you going to try it? What would you like to make a habit of? Can you pat your head, rub your tummy and brush the kids' teeth all at once?