There are few things more comforting than a piece of warm homemade bread slathered with butter and molasses. It’s one of those sensory moments where I can render up a taste, a memory, and sense of place just thinking about it. The breadbasket was often on our dinner table growing up. While it’s still a typical offering at a restaurant or event dinner, bread and butter has been mostly banished from the family dinner table with many watching their carbs and sinful saturated fats. But with the return to simple pleasures and the call for comfort food in the fall, a little bread and butter can really hit the spot.
Christena Hubbard owns Crust and Crumble in New Glasgow, N.S. The home-based bakery has tummies all over her community rumbling for one of her speciality loaves with a smattering of flavoured butters. She jumped on the sourdough bandwagon after the confining days of COVID when mastering a sourdough starter became a main event on social media.
“I started experimenting with sourdough last winter,” says Hubbard, adding that her grandmother and mother baked beautiful bread. “Growing up I always had homemade bread. I would look at the sandwiches that other kids brought to school wishing I had lunch made from store-brought bread. I didn’t know how good I had it. But my husband had the opposite experience, so homemade bread is really something special.”
Since launching her business last winter, she has been satisfying that sensory experience for a growing list of clients. For now, she keeps her distribution close to home to maintain the freshness of everything she bakes.
Sourdough is Hubbard’s bread of choice. It took her several weeks to master her unique starter formula and she’s been carefully tending to her recipe, feeding the culture and keeping it at the optimal temperature so it performs its magic in her growing repertoire of sourdough recipes that include cookies and lemon loaves.
Sourdough bread is an ancient art, known as the mother of all doughs. Makers from days long ago and modern-day bakers like Hubbard keep their recipes close to their chest.
Once a starter is established, the simplest concoction of flour and water, it grabs natural yeast from the air. How you baby that culture is the secret to success. Hubbard suggests finding a recipe in an old cookbook.
“I watched a lot of videos and made a few attempts before I got it right, and I think it will be something that will need continued learning,” she adds.
There is a science to making the starter, but once it’s going and you take care of it, you can keep a starter alive for years. Some starters get passed down through generations.
Hubbard says that while the starter can be challenging and can take a few tries, making the bread is a breeze. “It’s four ingredients: starter, flour, water, and salt. Its simplicity is why it has been an ancient art that has lasted.” She adds that during COVID when ingredients such as yeast were scarce, people turned to sourdough to pass the time and make something comforting.
Sourdough is a food that is good for your gut, as are most fermented foods.
“Sourdough is also known to help regulate blood sugar and has a lower glycemic index than other breads so when you eat sourdough, your blood sugar does not spike,” says Hubbard, noting that some people with gluten sensitives, with the exception of celiac disease, can tolerate sourdough bread because of the way it digests.
With more science and knowledge about the gut micro-biome and how the bacteria in your gut, good and bad, can influence your overall health, there is more reason to bring back the breadbasket — if you fill it with sourdough.
All buttered up
Take your breadbasket to the next level with a beautiful butter board
While Christena Hubbard is not ready to give away her secret sourdough starter, she does share a few recipes that anyone can put to the test once they have made their own or talked a friend or family member into sharing a small sacred sample. You can also buy sourdough starter, but it still takes time and attention to maintain.
Hubbard, who also dabbles in interior design, collaborated with her friend and colleague Allison Gaudett to create a beautiful bread and butter board for Saltscapes that is as much a feast for the eyes as for the tummy. Christena used several of her favourite bread recipes, including a sweet little loaf of molasses sourdough, and whipped up a variety of butters to satisfy everyone’s cravings. Their creation takes the breadbasket to a new level.
Christena hopes that their creation will inspire home bakers to experiment with their own butter board designs, and has included instructions to make a smaller board using everyone’s favourite, molasses butter.
Recipes
Recipes and styling by Christena Hubbard and Allison Gaudett.