Masa Madre: Lucia Meneses
Lucia Meneses, 28, didn’t grow up baking cookies or cakes. As a child in a Cuban family in Westchester, she remembers playing with pizza dough her grandma gave her, but baking? No. After graduating fr...
Artisan Bryan : Making Sourdough Sexy
On his YouTube channel, Artisan Bryan – Bryan Ford – raps about making sourdough and pizza in his portable Ooni oven. On Instagram, he posts mesmerizing videos of shaping dough and gorgeous textured still lifes of croissant cross-sections, mottled arepas, the bubbly surface of rising focaccia, a cloud of flour tossed by his hands. His website adds stories and recipes (in Spanish, too) for creations like sourdough Cuban bread, chocolate babka, pastelito de piña and his renowned pan de coco. Since the time we scheduled an interview with him, he announced plans for publishing a cookbook and creating Ironside Bakery with Toscana Divino Hospitality Group.
It’s an impressive list of accomplishments for Ford, born in the Bronx to Honduran parents and raised in New Orleans, where he got his accounting degree while working as a line cook. He met his future wife there – “we baked a King Cake together” – and helped friends cater events. Three years ago, they moved to Miami, where he got more serious about baking. “I started having some standards,” he says. “I had more time to practice.” He rented a commercial kitchen to make his bread and worked for a while at Sullivan Street Bakery and El Bagel.
Photo 1: Artisan Bryan weighs flour Photo: Bryan Ford
Photo 2: Traditional baleadas Photo: Bryan Ford
Ford was a natural choice to tap for the new Ironside Bakery, says Tommaso Morelato of Toscana Divino Hospitality Group. “I love his passion,” says Morelato. “He’s knowledgeable about natural leavening and sourdough techniques.” The bakery will include whole-grain breads in a variety of shapes and flavors, domestic milled flour and local produce.
For Artisan Bryan, the collaboration will let him bring his own roots into sourdough products, he says. He’s planning a muffaletta sourdough, incorporating the olive salad in the bread dough instead of on it. His version of traditional pan de coco uses sourdough, which makes it fluffier. And the bakery will extend his vision on the nature of bread. “Bread is nourishment. It’s a form of sharing. What’s better than bread?”
ARTISAN BRYAN
artisanbryan.com
Follow @artisanbryan on social media
IRONSIDE BAKERY
Opening this summer • 7580 NE 4th Ct., Miami
pizzaironside.com
Bryan will also offer baking classes at Ironside.
Masa Madre: Lucia Meneses
Lucia Meneses, 28, didn’t grow up baking cookies or cakes. As a child in a Cuban family in Westchester, she remembers...
Sharing Sourdough: Aunt Natalie's Friendship Bread
Twelve years ago, writer Ellen Kanner wrote in the Miami Herald about her aunt Natalie’s experience with Friendship...
Communities Near You
Related Stories & Recipes
Sharing Sourdough: Aunt Natalie's Friendship Bread
Twelve years ago, writer Ellen Kanner wrote in the Miami Herald about her aunt Natalie’s experience with Friendship Bread, a cinnamon-y quick bread made with a sweet sourdough starter intended to be s...