Slow Food, Travel, Craft Beer

Not being just about cycling and farming, but all things sustainable and (in particular) delicious, it was all but a requirement that I spend some time with the folks at Tinder Hearth Wood Fired Bread while I was visiting in Maine. Twice a week roughly five hundred balls of dough go into a wood-fired oven and come out again crispy on the outside, warm and moist on the inside.

Run by the members of a communal living community of about 13 people, Tinder Hearth bakes bread every Monday and Thursday. The money from the sale of bread goes towards sustaining the business, and supporting the house.

Everyone shares everything there. Food, bills, and music. It was my first taste of real communal living where everyone is very free to do as they please while doing enough work that everyone is happy and healthy. Not for nothing, it was a great set up. But back to bread…

I arrived on the same day as the health inspector. It may not look like an industrial kitchen, but everything is meticulously clean and well organized, and passed another health inspection with flying colors.

Dough is mixed either by hand or by their rebuilt, gigantic, stand mixer. The dough is put in food-safe plastic tubs to allow the yeast to do its magic and the dough to rise.

While all this ingredient and dough mixing is going on the massive wood-fired stove is heating up. Early in the morning a fire is lit inside the oven. The fire will burn all day as the masonry absorbs the heat.

When the dough has risen and gone through all the kneading and folding it is weighed and shaped into the different loaves. The bread bakers at Tinder Hearth attack massive piles of dough with speed and efficiency. Very soon these large tubs of dough become weighed, shaped, and organized trays of sour-dough goodness.

The loaves then go into the walk-in cooler to sit until the oven is ready. It’s now about 1 a.m. in the morning. Two bakers wake up and start the baking process. The coals are scraped out of the oven, the racks are taken out of the freezer, and tea is made in the kitchen next door.

The oven temperature is closely monitored by electric thermometers inside. Remember that no heat is not being put in, the heat comes from the brick and other masonry.