Bee Sting Bakery Visit
If you take a walk through our bread aisle, you may see some impressively dark loaves marked as a product of Bee Sting Bakery. As owner and lead baker, Heike Meyer would say “Don’t fear the dark crust!” This week, Heike led a tour of her bakery and a class on the wonders of sourdough baking. She and her husband, Jens, who she affectionately introduces as Chief Oven Manager, together run this picturesque and self-sustaining bakery out of their home in Fairfax, VT.
A sign on the door invites neighbors and friends in with Willkommen and Welcome scribbled across a chalkboard. Although quietly secluded in the woods, Heike jokes that the smell from her wood-fired oven lured curious neighbors over when she and Jens moved in. As she invited her guests in for iced tea, they mingled and enjoyed the herb and vegetable gardens, explored the European-style bee house, and marveled at the view behind the barn.
Heike is a master of sourdough baking. When I think of sourdough, I think of the typical hearty loaf, with a pleasantly pungent sour and bitter flavor. As it turns out, sourdough baking goes far beyond this. Heike explained that sourdough starters can be used for just about any type of bread baking from flaky croissants and olive oil brioche to dense, sprouted grain bierbrot (beer bread).
Sourdough is a fermented product; using just water, flour, and the natural environment allows naturally occurring wild yeast cultures to ferment the flour-water mixture to provide the beautiful flavor that sourdough gets its name from. This starter culture is refreshed (meaning a small piece is taken out and reintroduced to a new mixture of water and flour) a few times before baking. This helps make sure the culture will be active and healthy enough to bake with. Not sure what to do with the leftover? Heike recommended adding small pieces to other doughs for flavor or adding it to an active compost pile. It’s amazing how very alive this product is. Heike illustrated her instruction with bowls that contain an active starter culture and another that has dough ready for the class to use.
As she talked about the cultures and the compost working symbiotically together, it was impossible to ignore the respect she has for this work and how seamlessly so many food and environmental systems are working together in harmony.
Profits from her bakery go to a variety of organizations, many of whom are putting in efforts to grow more local grains here in Vermont using sustainable farming methods. Heike uses a grain mill in her own kitchen to get the freshest flavors from these nutritious and consciously cultivated crops. Bee Sting Bakery is right in the middle of the local Vermont food system, nourishing its people, fueling the local economy, supporting farmers with integrity, and bringing awareness to each part of it in every way she can.
Her passion is engrained in every single detail of her bread-making. She explained the carefully thought out plan for the scoring (etchings) on top of the loaves that allows the active dough to expand out of the crust. The wood fired oven at the back of her kitchen is no different. To bake the rustic loaves, Jens explained how the heat in the oven must be stored and held inside from an earlier fire. Heike and Jens together start the fire as early as 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning to give it time to reach an incredible temperature of over 600°F! Then, the ashes are scraped out and the cave of the oven is sealed to keep in the heat. Once prepared, the dough is quickly loaded into the oven and doors are once again sealed. Twenty minutes later….
…we have bread! Heike’s master hands whisk the hot loaves out of the oven and eagerly break one open so we can see the crumb, the soft, dense, chewy middle of the bread. The dark crust, she explains, bakes quickly in the high heat and holds in the moisture, producing a beautiful soft crumb when it comes out.
Later in the class, participants made sourdough flatbreads and Heike’s enthusiasm was contagious. She played with the dough a bit and it did not stretch as much as needed for her flatbread. “I overworked it.” I envisioned a cartoon caricature of yeast with a face and tired eyes. The dough has...personality. It’s very alive, and wants to be treated with care and respect. Later in the day, Heike described herself as a facilitator—her hands were a gift meant to shape dough, and shape bread. Her work, she says, is a labor of love. I think the yeast can tell.
Participants seemed to get just as excited for pita bread bubble pockets as she does, and beamed with pride as they stuffed their bread with homemade ramp pesto, local cheeses, and tomatoes. The outcome was incredible.
At the end of the class, folks mingled outside the bakery on picnic tables and lawn chairs, enjoying the spread of food and the beautiful summer weather. Jens offered espresso and cappuccino to the people who wanted to stay longer, and the relaxed conversations flowed in German, English, and Italian. I was sad to have to head back to Burlington and leave this storybook place, but Heike and Jens invited us to come back again. I think we are all looking forward to it!
Keep your eye out for another upcoming class at Bee Sting Bakery in August! Stay up to date on our upcoming classes by signing up for our bimonthly Classes and Events Newsletter.