There’s artistry in every facet of cooking, baking, and mixology, from the composition of a dish to the garnish atop a cocktail. But when edible art is on the Christmas list, there’s nothing quite like an artful loaf of bread. With the holidays upon us, parties to attend, and supper tables to fill, it’s the prime season for sourdough art.
Quite simply, sourdough bread art is the process in which bakers score and shape their loaves before baking, to create a final product marked by intricate textures and shapes. These can be as simple as a line, designed to control the dough’s expansion in the oven and keep it from cracking, or they can be something more elaborate and original, which accomplishes the same scientific task, while also using the dough as a blank canvas for an edible showpiece that would look right at home at the center of a holiday spread.
That kind of edible art is on display at bakeries like Edmond’s Twisted Tree Baking Company, which chef/owner Robert Black describes as a European-style bakery specializing in hand-crafted, old-world-style breads and pastries. And a big part of that hand-crafted approach is in the art of it all.
“Our breads tend to be more artistic and creative,” says Black, noting that their bakers often do different scoring, like sunburst shapes or wheat patterns, on rustic hearth breads. A daily practice at Twisted Tree, not confined to the holidays, bread art is always on display, but they spice things up for the festive season, with a limited menu of special breads and pastries, like cinnamon rolls and pies.
“Part of it is artistry, but it serves a functional purpose,” Black adds. “Our flagship bread is a country sourdough, that’s just flour, water, and salt, and naturally leavened with a yeast in the form of a 10-year-old starter, derived from a natural yeast that’s in the air.” The bread takes three days to make, from first mixing the dough and allowing it to rest, to refrigeration and shaping. “The day before we make it, it’s portioned into boules, and they’re put into a wicker basket lined with pastry cloth, which creates the shape of the final product.” They’re dumped upside-down, and scored with a bread lame (aka a French razor blade) immediately before hitting the oven. “That lame actually creates what’s known as an ear for the bread, and it allows some of the natural pressure to escape and to rise. There’s a natural skin that forms on the outside of that, so scoring serves a functional purpose, and it can be a single score down the middle, or elaborate little scores.”
In addition to other artistic, party-ready breads, like challah (which they offer on Fridays), Twisted Tree always has some kind of sourdough bread art to choose from, with holiday pre-order forms available on its website.
Elsewhere, pastry chef Alyssa Ulrich is planning to make bread with Christmas tree scorings for the holidays at Harvey Bakery & Kitchen, while more bread art can be found on a regular basis at places like Big Sky Bread Co., Jack’s Bakehouse, and especially for things like buttery milk bread and focaccia, 30th Street Market.
