The Fire Island Rustic Bakeshop -- artisan baking in an Anchorage tradition

Anchorage has a tradition of warm-hearted artisan bakeries, from the Bread Factory of the 1970s to today's Fire Island Bakeshop. Andy Davi and his friend Kathy had spent a year cooking at the old Bridge restaurant that was located in the Quonset Hut across from the Sears Mall, and were ready for something more. With visions of baking the tastiest and healthiest bread in Anchorage, they opened The Bread Factory at 835 I Streetin the fall of 1971. Dense loaves of Tassajara bread arrived at the front counter from the kitchen, along with hearty sandwiches layered with avocado and sprouts, fragrant vegetable soups to be sopped up with chunks of whole wheat rolls, and huge rich cookies for desserts. Anchorageites loved the wooden wire spool tables, the mismatched thrift shop chairs, the Indian-print bedspread decor, and the steamy warm air on a winter morning.Nothing was done by halves – Andy’s thick black curls and ringing laughter, and Kathy’s answering voice brightened both our home and the restaurant.

A decade later, Anchorage oil wealth scattered office buildings everywhere, replacing The Bread Factory and the handful of other small businesses with glass and concrete blocks. Andy went back to Monterey and his family of Italian fishermen, and Kathy moved on, as did we all. But a few years ago, a new bread shop opened not far from the old Bread Factory, and though its offerings are rooted in a different set of traditions, it has the steamy windows on a winter morning, and the bright welcomes from its owners.

 Jerry Lewanski and Janis Fleischman created the Fire Island Rustic Bakeshop at 1343 G Street in 2009. Retired from directing the Alaska State Parks (Jerry) and from service as a principal at a local high school (Janis), they have the clear eyes and grounded vigor of people who love to hike the Pacific Coast Trail and take their vacations in bracing wilderness. Why then are they baking some of Anchorage's most creative breads?

                                         A spring afternoon at Fire Island Rustic Bakeshop.

    “I’ve been cooking all my life,” Jerry said as he showed me through the bakery. He handed me “The Taste of Bread” from his library.”The French professor Raymond Calvel brought back the traditions of his country's breads -- to Japan, all over the world -- he showed the science and art of it. If you want to know how to make bread right, this is where to start."

"The Taste of Bread" guided him in the days when he was figuring out how to turn out the perfect French loaves from the hand-built brick oven in his backyard. After retiring, Jerry headed to the San Francisco Baking Institute to master the skills needed for baking on a larger scale. Inspired by European shops, Jerry and Janis started Fire Island to bring "the best ingredients, the best tastes, and the highest standards of bread making" to Anchorage."

                                         Seeded loaf.

      "Any baker will give you a recipe,” he said. “It’s the ingredients that you use, and the work and artistry that you put into it that makes the difference. We can spend a year or more refining our recipes before offering something new. It takes that long to get it the way we want it to taste.”

                                          Fire Island Oven.

Baking is fraught with uncertainty. Even the finest wheat flour varies in its rising and taste depending on the weather, the humidity in the air, where it was grown, how it was stored, and dozens of other factors, most of them not under the control of the baker. Yet Fire Island turns out the same delicious breads, day after day, season after season. Jerry pulled several scales off a shelf next to the tables where the assistant bakers work. “Everything gets weighed, sometimes to the hundredth of a gram,” he said. “You have to start there, and then comes the art of knowing how the dough should feel when it’s ready to bake. Do you need to add a bit more water? More flour? Those things come from experience, and constant attention to details.”

                                          Mixer in work area at Fire Island.

We talked flour – the basic ingredient in everything except the coffee in the Bakeshop. Jerry said that all of the wheat flour is organic, and comes from Central Milling in Utah. Two of the Giusto brothers from the San Francisco baking family started the company in 1867, and still take great pride in their wheat and its preparation. Fresh-ground flour doesn’t absorb water well, or develop the desired texture when kneaded and baked. Central Milling inspects each batch of flour, and ages it for two weeks until it's ready for the water, yeast and fire. Jerry and Janis experiment with other grains as well -- rye and oats appear regularly, and they've tried many of the ancient wheats – kamut, emmer, einkorn, and spelt.

                                          Classic French baguettes.


Jerry described the natural yeasts that they use, a topic of great controversy among bakers. “Really, a pedigreed sourdough starter is not necessary,” he said. “Yeast is everywhere – in the air, on the flour itself. I use yeast from grapes, along with starters that I grow myself.” He keeps the starters healthy by feeding them regularly and watching their temperature and environment. Most of the breads are supplemented with a small dose of commercial yeast, needed to replicate the taste and texture of classic French bread, as recommended by Professor Calvel.

 And what about croissants? I wondered, having attempted them myself on occasion. “We roll them and turn them all by hand,” he said, showing me the recipe. It includes egg, a tiny bit of sugar, whole-wheat and white flour, yeast, salt, and of course, butter. “We use organic salted butter, and Plugra unsalted butter. Only the best. There’s never any GMO product – we quit using corn for the most part because it’s so hard to get non-GMO corn any more.”

                                          Challah breads and rolls are on the menu every Friday.

It’s not all about challah, or rustic rye, or a dozen other breads that vary by the day and the season. Fire Island customers order from a menu that runs the gamut from elegant fruit tarts to chocolate chip cookies, to muffins and cupcakes. Jerry said that they are always trying new things. He didn’t think there was such a thing as an edible scone, but Janis made them not only edible but delectable. Now the scones are favorites, and people arrive early  to be sure of getting a savory spinach scone with Asagio cheese and sun-dried tomatoes.

                                          Apple, cheddar, black pepper scone.

As he walked through the small front work area, showing off the 6,000 pound Italian oven with five stone baking surfaces, and the mixer that swirls 80 pounds of dough at a time, I thought about standing on the other side of the Fire Island counter watching six or eight bakers bustle in that same space. Without ever brushing elbows, they pull croissant trays from the oven, shape baguettes, top foccacias with browned portobello mushrooms and slices of Dubliner cheese, and ask each customer in the crowded line for their orders.Their grace and good cheer shows the awareness of themselves in space possessed by expert dancers and athletes, and the professionalism that marks every aspect of the business.

                                         
When  I left, Jerry was joining Janis and their daughter in a small sunny office at the front of the shop to design the summer menu. The large black dog, Mac, lay by the front door keeping an eye on passers-by. Next time I go in, it will be as one of a steady stream of fans who travel from all over Anchorage to get their fix of a kale and Gruyere croissant, or a classic French baguette. The Bread Factory is a distant memory, but its spirit of the kinship of bread is alive again at the Fire Island Rustic Bakeshop.

Toys for the kids -- everyone's welcome.


To get there: Fire Island Rustic Bakeshop is located at the corner of 14th and G Streets near downtown Anchorage. Hours are 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. They serve croissants, muffins, and breakfast pastries, breads, foccacias, sandwiches, cookies, tarts, pies and cupcakes; coffee is available too. Call (907) 569-0001 for information about what breads are on the menu for the day. Their website is http://www.fireislandbread.com/.

1343 G St  Anchorage, AK 99501
(907) 569-0001

Makeyour own Alaskan sourdough starter: Learn from Alaska's master bakers

                              Sourdough starter, ready to use. [Teri Carns photo, 4/20/2013.]


Tangy sourdough bread was the perfect food for the gutsy would-be gold barons who poured into Alaska in the 1800s. They slept with their starters, lumps of flour and water alive with yeasts and healthful microbes, in pouches around their necks. In the morning they mixed a nugget of the starter with flour and water, let it rise in a bowl during the day, and baked it in a Dutch oven (a cast iron pot with a lid) over the campfire in the evening. The round, fragrant, golden-crusted loaves satisfied even the hungriest miners.

                        Sourdough flatbread, fresh from the oven. [Teri Carns, 4/20/2013.]

Few things are more immediately gratifying than buttering a slice of sourdough bread hot from your own oven. Simple and satisfying, sourdough is on CNN's list of the top 50 classic American foods. You can create a starter the same way that gold seekers did. Once your starter is thriving, you can make dozens of simple or complex recipes, from breads and flatbreads to pancakes and muffins. Depending on how often you feed it, the starter will taste sweeter or tangier. Below, you'll find advice from Alaska's premier bakers and a recipe showing how anyone can recreate the flavorful breads.

Sourdough starters are living colonies of yeasts and microbes that feed on the starches and sugars in grains, fruits, or vegetables. Water, oxygen, and the right temperatures keep them thriving. Like other living creatures, they need food and water every day or so, unless they are hibernating in your refrigerator.

Kirsten Dixon of Winterlake Lodge on Alaska’s Iditarod Trail creates a sourdough starter by slicing apples and adding them to a bowl of water with a little sugar. She sets the bowl in a warm spot in her kitchen until the yeasts and bacteria have begun to take root in their new home. Whether you start with apples or all-purpose wheat flour (the most common choice), yeasts and microbes that are always in the air or on the fruit and flour settle into the welcoming environment. As the culture grows, it should smell yeasty (not sour or moldy) and look bubbly and healthy.

Baking with your own sourdough starter makes each bite burst with complex flavors. Leavening dough with natural levains (sourdoughs) keeps loaves fresh for days, says Janis Fleischman of Fire Island Rustic Bakeshop in Anchorage. Your culture's yeasts and microbes grow so well that they prevent invading microbes from gaining a foothold.

Daniel Martin of Wild Oven Bakehouse in Juneau says that the warm, slow, mildly acidic fermentation of natural sourdough leavening releases nutrients locked in the grain, making the bread more digestible. Communities of wild yeasts and microbes accomplish this much better than a single type of commercial yeast. The bright tastes of naturally yeasted sourdough bread signal both a delicious meal and one that uses local ingredients to create healthier food.
   
Ways of making sourdough starters abound, with some cooks encouraging the use of prepared yeast to boost the activity of the wild yeasts, and others relying entirely on what's found in the air and on the flour that you're using. You can mix in plenty of water or leave the starter dough fairly dry. This straightforward and easy Exploratorium version uses only local wild yeasts. The website explains in detail how to keep your starter healthy and happy once it's going.

Mix 1/4 cup white flour with 2 tablespoons water in a small bowl until it turns into a dough. Knead for about five to eight minutes until springy. Cover the bowl loosely with a towel and let the starter sit in a warm spot for two to three days, until it's moist, wrinkled, crusty and smells sweet.

Throw away any crust, add ½ cup flour and enough water to make a firm dough. Cover and leave for one to two days.

The starter should look new and fresh. Remove any dried dough and add one cup of flour. Cover bowl with damp cloth and leave in warm spot for eight to twelve hours. The starter is ready to use when it looks like a regular fully risen bread dough, and springs back when you poke it with your finger.

                               Sourdough flatbread, ready to bake. [Teri Carns, 4/20/2013.]


Now you can use the starter in most sourdough recipes by breaking off a small chunk, mixing it with more water and flour, and letting it work its magic in the dough. The recipe  gives the correct proportions and directions for making loaves of bread. Many other recipes are available in books and on the Internet.

                             Sourdough flatbread, ready to eat. [Teri Carns photo, 4/20/2013.]

Save a small piece of the starter in the refrigerator, then refresh it again as above and use it in another recipe. Some starters are more than 100 years old; you can leave yours to the great-great-grandchildren in your will.

Sourdough legacy at Alyeska Bake Shop

Turnagain Arm, north of Alyeska Bake Shop. Photo by Teri Carns.

What’s older than you, and me, and anyone we know, but still bubbling along cheerfully? Answer: The sourdough starter at the Alyeska Bake Shop in Girdwood, Alaska. Those tasty sandwiches and pancakes that tempt you after a brisk winter ski are made with historic Alaska yeasts. A gold miner near Fairbanks gave some starter – a mix of flour, water, and colonies of living yeasts and edible bacteria –  to the owner of the Sourdough Lodge on Richardson Highway in the late 1800s. Those same yeasts have been growing and multiplying, raising and flavoring Alaskan breads ever since. In 1964, Werner Egloff who built the Alyeska Bake Shop stopped there on his way north, and the lodge owner gave him both starter and a pancake recipe.

Lucky me – on Easter Sunday, half a century later, I overheard a woman asking the staff if she could have some of that same starter. The answer was “yes,” so emboldened, I asked for a bit too. Brooke Bjorkman, baker and chef, gave me a cup half full with fragrant, creamy batter (leaving room for the starter to grow), and talked about its lineage and care.

“We double the starter twice a day,” she said, by feeding it two parts flour to one part water. The mix stays about the consistency of a good milkshake, a little thicker than pancake batter. The frequently-fed starter gets used for white sourdough bread and pancakes. But “Michael Flynn, the owner, lets some of the starter go a couple of days or longer between feedings. That makes it more sour, and suits the rye and whole wheat breads that he experiments with.”

Bjorkman said that the starter is sturdy stuff, as might be expected for something still going strong after a hundred years or more. When the Bakeshop closes in late October for its annual cleaning and refreshment, the starter goes into the refrigerator and is fed only every other day. Bjorkman said that her aunt dried sourdough starter for traveling by spreading a thin layer on waxed paper. Once the water evaporated, the aunt packaged up the powdered starter, then rejuvenated it by mixing with flour and water.

Alyeska Bake Shop treasures its starter. “If the building is burning down, save the starter,” is the staff motto. Years ago, a new employee accidentally threw out the starter. The owner hastily drove two hundred miles to Homer where another colony of the same starter was growing to bring some back to Girdwood.

My kids don’t know this yet, but along with the family jewels (of which there aren’t many), they’ll inherit something maybe more valuable – a sourdough starter, way older than me, that came to Alaska during the gold rush days.

Alyeska Bake Shop is in Girdwood, Alaska, next to the day lodge at the ski resort. It’s open year-round from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. (8:00 p.m. on Saturdays). Check out the menu,. Seating is available in the restaurant, or get your food to go. The Sourdough Lodge is still at Mile 147.5 on the Richardson Highway (according the the Copper Valley Chamber of Commerce), but as of this post, does not have a web site.