Other people's kitchens: Slow Fire Bakery

On a chill December day in Northern Vermont, Slow Fire Bakery is a haven of warmth, the air thick with the rich tang of sourdough. The steamy windows frame a landscape of bare trees, and the cement-grey sky illuminates a bakers’ workbench, raised on cinder blocks and covered with the same fine coating of flour as every surface in the simple room. The space is dominated by the graceful arch of a brick oven which the bakers, Katie Ekstrom and Scott Medellin, built by hand over the summer. While patiently baking in tiny batches at home, they built layer upon layer of bricks; like the naturally leavened breads they bring to the Farmers’ Market each week, the growing oven would not be hurried.

When the cement shell finally cured and hardened, the trickle of pastries and enriched breads that Scott and Katie brought to Saturday market became a torrent of loaves. Their miche, a hearty mix of wheat and rye flours shaped into a substantial round, became a favorite of mine, eaten toasted and slathered with sweet butter and a sprinkle of sea salt. Their diminutive ladybugs- wheat rolls studded with chunks of barely sweet chocolate- are wonderful too, as is the raisin bread, a complex, crusty loaf that redefines the insipid and spongy raisin loaves that line grocery shelves and won’t survive a single dunk in hot tea.

My baking season ends with October’s last outdoor market, but Slow Fire brings their baskets of bread to Burlington all winter, as well, so one Friday I drove to their bakery outside of Jeffersonville to spend the day with them, and watch their loaves take shape. I was struck by the quiet and the beauty of their workspace (notwithstanding the Steely Dan playing on the computer). Windows on three walls bring the winter sun inside, and as I watched the bakers from my cozy perch near the oven, the loaves taking shape in their hands evoked the rounded hills that enclose their valley.

They worked all day. Scott tipped vats of soft, wet dough onto the floured workbench, corralling the spreading mass with a metal scraper, and forming chunks into loaves that he proofed in canvas nests, called couches. Unlike many commercial bakeries that can proof their bread in carefully controlled conditions, Slow Fire manages proofing conditions the old fashioned way; the oven’s roaring fire warms the air, and they strategically open windows lest the bread proof too quickly in the heat.

As the sun swung low across the sky, the bread grew puffed and ripe, ready for the oven. Using a wooden peel with a long handle, Katie and Scott slid the loaves into the heated cavity, some breads sitting directly on the brick deck, others insulated by a sheet pan. Baking with wood is a dance of time and temperature- as the oven slowly cools in the hours after the fire is swept out, the loaves must be ready, and neither under, nor over-proofed.

First in the oven were the rustics loaves, breads that need intense heat to form their hearty crusts, then, as the oven cooled, the sweet and savory tarts, then finally, the delicate enriched breads, like the cardamom-scented Swedish Braid that they shaped into elaborate wreaths for Christmas.

It had long been dark when they slid trays of tarts into the oven. Katie and Scott folded the edges of a flaky, buttery dough around jewel-bright slices of apple, and a richly flavored potage of lentils and sausage. When they emerged from the heat, they were puffed and golden- I ate a lentil tart, still warm, and loved the contrast of the creamy interior and crisp, flaky shell. This, after all, is one of the great luxuries of a baking life- to bite into a tart at its own perfect moment, catching crumbs in an open palm, while drinking in the wafting, buttery steam of the kitchen.

I left the bakery with a bag full of warm bread, walking past the great pile of split wood, and inching up the dark, muddy path to my car. The fogged windows glowed yellow in the dark yard, and the scent of baking mingled with the grassy smell of sheep in the crisp air. Scott and Katie were still at their workbench, shaping the last of the loaves when I turned onto the shadowed curves of their road, and headed South towards town.