And Beyond

I had arrived at a point where I understood fermentation, knew how to control it. Equally important: I now had mastered the bien cuit style that people would come to know me by. After nearly fifteen years of learning from some of the best in the business, I was ready to strike out on my own, which is how, in 2011, I ended up on Smith Street in Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill neighborhood, a hotbed of new restaurants. In all my travels, though, I had yet to find perfect grains. Or if I found good grains, they weren’t from the region where I was baking, which meant the flour in my starter was unacquainted with the wild yeasts in my workrooms. I wanted to remedy this because I’ve always subscribed to the idea that “if it grows together, it goes together.”