Dive into the meticulous world of artisan sourdough with Meg, and her venture, Moscow Bread Box. She opens up about Moscow Bread Box's early days of doorstep deliveries, its evolution to farmers' markets, and partnerships with local farms.
Find out more on Instagram or Facebook!
She will be at the Spring Fayre: 11-2:30pm April 27th!
Dive into the meticulous world of artisan sourdough with Meg, and her venture, Moscow Bread Box. She opens up about Moscow Bread Box's early days of doorstep deliveries, its evolution to farmers' markets, and partnerships with local farms.
Find out more on Instagram or Facebook!
She will be at the Spring Fayre: 11-2:30pm April 27th!
This is the Kestrel Country Podcast, where we discuss the people, places and events all around Kestrel country podcast. Thanks for having me. Well, I'm glad we could. So meg is a senior here at New St Andrews College, but she's an extraordinary bread baker. I've got to say that five times fast. So, meg, tell us a little bit about yourself, where you're from.
Speaker 2:I'm from the central coast of California, San Luis Obispo area.
Speaker 1:Which is gorgeous.
Speaker 2:It's a really beautiful place to grow up. Followed my brother up here for school five years ago now Work three quarter time at Trinity Reformed Church as a secretary. Love that. We'll be continuing that after I graduate and have turned a little side baking hobby into a business and we're seeing where that goes.
Speaker 1:So when did you start the business here in Moscow? I started baking to sell.
Speaker 2:When was that? 2022. Okay, had a delivery service going for a couple of months doing farmer's markets and then, with health, things had to stop. So it's only just in the last couple of months that I'm starting to kind of gear things back up, hoping that I can take it after graduation and really develop it into something more consistent, more sustainable. But it's had really good traction. There's been a lot of interest, it's been a lot of fun.
Speaker 1:So we're excited to see where it goes. So were you interested in bread baking back when you were younger, back in California, or is this something that just kind of started in college?
Speaker 2:My dad always made sourdough.
Speaker 1:Really yeah, before it was hip to be making it, oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Okay, oh yeah, back in the day he learned from some like Catholic priest on YouTube, like it's a kind of family lore.
Speaker 1:Did he get some ancient starter? I actually don't remember. I should ask him where he got his starter from, but you know he would.
Speaker 2:He works as a pastor, so he'd be taking appointments and we were homeschooled. He'd be like, you know, do the folds on the bread, or this is what needs to be done. So I've been around it, I've been familiar with it for a while at this point and learned the basics from him and, for whatever reason, I wasn't really on social media in 2020, but, I, somehow still got the bug to make bread like everybody else did and got very obsessive about it.
Speaker 2:Anyone who could or would take bread from me. I was like, please, this gives me practice. It gives me practice, and after a while I had people like where can we buy it, though, can we get it? How do we get your bread? So I started selling it kind of under the table, and now we're all official and legal, but you know, yes, well, that's how it goes.
Speaker 1:You know, that's how a small business has to start. I also think it's easier not to know what you're getting into when you definitely because then I don't know if you would, with all the you know so many hoops to jump through. Yes, for sure. So you had it. When you were a little kid, you homeschooled in California.
Speaker 2:Partial. Yeah, we did like a classical school that was two to three days a week and then homeschool the other days.
Speaker 1:Okay, and then so you came up to New St Andrews. What year was that, Was it?
Speaker 2:2019.
Speaker 1:Okay, so before COVID hit.
Speaker 2:Yeah, covid was the end of my freshman year. Okay, which is wild to think it was that long ago. Isn't it crazy. Oh, that's my whole college experience in this upside down world.
Speaker 1:I know Well, and it's so easy, because if you start thinking about stuff, you mark it by COVID. You know Like, okay, was that before COVID or is that after COVID? It's just funny because it's such a time marker, Such a time marker yeah. But we got to visit San Luis Obispo in 2019, January of 2019,. I believe so, pre-covid, because my sister-in-law was down there and it was gorgeous.
Speaker 2:It's a lovely place. Yeah, All my family's back there and not planning to move back right now but there's a bit of my heart for sure, I believe it.
Speaker 1:15 minutes to the coast and yet all the wineries, and it's really fun. Yeah, hard to beat. I was surprised and I don't know why. I probably shouldn't have been, but how Western it felt, you know, like the cowboy country feeling, and I don't, I think California, and I think that's probably why you're thinking coastal or you're thinking surfer or you're thinking you know, produce, but it was fun to see all of that yeah.
Speaker 1:So a little ranching town. Yeah, it was really fun. Okay, so tell us about your process with bread. So you started in 2020.
Speaker 2:Where'd you get your starter? My best friend, jane Rush. She baked, I think, in Virginia. She was part of a bakery there and she's just like she's a queen. She doesn't even use a recipe, she just like goes by, vibes and it turns out every time.
Speaker 1:She knows the feel of the bread.
Speaker 2:She's that good, so I got some starter from her and just started. I didn't, and still don't, actually have an oven in my apartment. You don't.
Speaker 1:So where do you bake?
Speaker 2:My landlady, god bless. Her lives upstairs. She lets me pop up and use her oven once in a while, and then I bake at the church. We have a kitchen there, so I'll be moving in May to an apartment with an oven with an oven I'm so excited about that'll make my process a lot easier.
Speaker 2:Oh, I'm sure, um, but just started. Just started whacking things together to figure it out and get a feel for it and started baking in my toaster oven. I like I love actually looking back at pictures and it's like, okay, it was only like three years ago and it looked like that, like it's really actually come a long way since then. And then, yeah, just kind of following people online watching different YouTube videos, and there is so much particularity like people get really, really uptight about sourdough things, and I don't like that.
Speaker 1:Like. I am an intuitive person. I don't want to be more artistic than scientific. Don't tell me what to do. I am an intuitive person, I don't want to be More artistic than scientific, maybe.
Speaker 2:Don't tell me what to do. I want to do it myself, so figuring out what worked for my schedule at that point. As a full-time student. I was out of the house from like 6 to 11 every day.
Speaker 1:Right. So how do you do the full-time, how do I make it all work? How?
Speaker 2:do I make it work for my schedule, and that, I think, has been the beauty of sourdough for me is that it's extremely flexible and it can work how I want it to work for my life. Someday I'll maybe teach a class on that.
Speaker 1:See, I do think that's pretty important, because that was the thing for me. I didn't grow up with sourdough bread, and then, of course, the sourdough bug is going, and so I tried it first using oh shoot, now I'm not going to remember it the super elaborate, intricate Like the Tartine method.
Speaker 2:Tartine, it was yes.
Speaker 1:And so it was like oh man, Okay.
Speaker 2:So you're reading through the instructions 25 minutes and then I have to, but that doesn't work with the schedule of like oh, but I'm running around to get kids or oh.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry starter, you're just on your own now and you know, and so it was kind of like and then later, it was the idea of the artisan made simple is that book, yeah, or sourdough, made simple? I've seen it, but I've, yeah, you didn't use that one. Okay, that definitely helped, and then it was that mentality of it just has to work with our schedule.
Speaker 1:So if the loaves are a little bit flat, or the rise time, or we didn't do any folding. Yeah, you know it's like okay, this is when we can bake it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is when we can make it. Any bread that you like to eat, that your family likes to eat, is successful bread. Like there's, you know, so much finickiness you can get into and that's fun. Like the longer I've baked, the more I've enjoyed experimenting with, like getting really particular on things and really perfecting my system, yeah, and I've liked that. But I dislike the mindset that that's necessary to make good bread and that it really is and can be accessible to anybody if they want to.
Speaker 1:Well, it makes it much harder to get started If you're kind of just entering here the threshold is actually really low.
Speaker 2:It's actually really low and very encouraging yeah.
Speaker 1:So, with your student schedule, tell us how you made that work. Gosh, I don't even remember Teach a mini class here without teaching a class.
Speaker 2:Let's see, this is my sophomore year. Sophomore year was wild with my schedule.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because you were going full-time student.
Speaker 2:Full-time student plus a million and one other commitments. So it was really. The days were long and the nights were short.
Speaker 1:But you still loved the sourdough.
Speaker 2:But it was enough to yeah, enough to really make it part of my lifestyle, so I'd feed my starter before I went to bed. That was a varying time, sometimes that's 11. Sometimes that's one. Whenever it was, I'd feed my starter, leave it on the counter, go to bed.
Speaker 1:Okay. So when you feed it, were you weighing anything, or was this like eyeball? Nope, nope.
Speaker 2:Just till it's a good pasty consistency and call it good. I still don't, for whatever reason. I'll measure everything else by grams. I will not measure feeding. My starter Can't be bothered.
Speaker 1:Do you, do you have any tips for like the sheer level of sticky than crazy hard. You know that the starter gets.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I prefer it to be a little bit on the like wetter side, just cause it's easier to work with Um. So it's roughly one-to-one by volume flour and water Um. But, however, I've started making it a little thicker, um, but not not much. I don't really want to have to like work at it, like just feed it, make it easy, and I only keep. I keep a very small amount of starter in my fridge. Okay, pull that out, you know, sometime midday, whenever I think about it, feed it and then I'll use it back down to. So I don't have a discard.
Speaker 1:I don't ever discard. You never do a discard. Okay, so you just eat it. How?
Speaker 2:much I need it. Use it to make bread, put it back in the fridge. Nice, okay, so that keeps it again really easy. I don't know.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I don't understand why people do a bunch of discard things. That seems stressful to me.
Speaker 1:Well, because I'll pour some out. But then what happens on my jars? It gets all like so so crusty yeah and so then I'm like okay, fresh jar, but then that old jar I have this hesitancy to throw away sure, and you're like then it's sitting there soaking for days, yeah I'm trying to get avoiding, avoiding, avoiding yeah um, so I think yeah, you can very much.
Speaker 2:Keeping it in the fridge makes it really easy to have a low maintenance starter that you only feed when you need it and then you're not wasting flour or time or you're not worried about it dying on the counter if you don't pay attention to it. So that works out well. Feed it before I go to bed, Wake up at that point in time between probably 4 and 5, and mix. When I first started I just mixed everything together. Now I hold out salt and add it in later when I first started, I just mixed everything together.
Speaker 1:Now.
Speaker 2:I hold out salt and add it in later.
Speaker 1:Oh really, but mix it all together. What's the reason for holding the salt now?
Speaker 2:Holding out salt is a process called auto-leasing, so it allows the flour to fully absorb the water and the longer you auto-lease, the more base gluten structure you're going to get Okay, which actually allows you to pay less attention to it, do less folds and still have a pretty nice texture on your bread.
Speaker 1:So at what step do you add the salt when you do it that way?
Speaker 2:So I just I mix flour, water, starter until it's kind of just like a shaggy dough. Ignore it for half an hour, an hour, go back, add the salt a little bit of water, sploosh it in. Yeah, and then I'll start folds. To this day my bread's lucky if it gets three folds like I don't pay that much attention to it. Um, if I'm doing a big batch, I you know I'll pay more attention, because I it's 50 pounds of dough that I don't want to throw out the window, yeah um, but if I'm just baking for myself, it doesn't get a ton of attention and that's, it's fine.
Speaker 2:Um, mix it together in the morning again, like if that's first thing when I get up read my Bible, eat breakfast, whatever. Give it a fold. Get ready, pack up my bag. Give it a fold. Leave the house. It's on the counter, it doesn't, doesn't come with me, it just hangs out there and by the time I come home in the evening, shape it it, stick it in the fridge.
Speaker 2:Uh, if things go according to plan. You put your shaped loaves in the fridge. Yes, yeah, yeah, and that's excellent for a lot of reasons. One uh, it scores a lot easier out of the fridge when the dough's cold. Two if you end up not being able to bake it in time, you can just leave it in there. I've left loaves in the fridge for two or three days and it changes a little bit but like it's still totally edible and you get some really good flavor after fermenting that long, Shape them, put them in the fridge Again.
Speaker 2:if I'm on top of it the next morning, they get baked. If not, the next time I get a chance they get baked, and you know, it's pretty straightforward.
Speaker 1:So you've well no, but that's really great though, because you are making it crazy flexible Like I've never refrigerated the loaf?
Speaker 2:I don't think. And that's super fun and you can like, even if you don't have time to shape them. Stick just your bulk dough in the fridge. Like it's only going to get better the more time you give it. So I actually put a pretty low percentage of starter in my dough so that I can be gone for 12 hours and it hasn't overproved by the time I get home. Gotcha, and that like long, slow fermentation process. I find both convenient because it's flexible, but also actually provides more flavor than if I put more starter in.
Speaker 2:it rose really fast and I didn't have like the time for it to really develop that complexity.
Speaker 1:No, that makes. That makes a lot of sense. It really does. So when you have figured this structure out I assume originally it was just kind of like this has to work. This is when I'm available, but now do you measure everything? Have you written this down? Is this something that you repeat, or is it always just by your gut?
Speaker 2:No, I definitely have it down to a science at this point, but I liked starting without measurements because it allowed me to get an intuitive sense of what was going on and not just like this is what somebody told me to do, so I'm doing it. It was like oh well, when I change this factor, this changes. So I'm actually developing a mental concept of holding out the salt is having this effect, or doing this many folds, is having this effect? Or doing this much water versus this much water is having this effect, like seeing the correlation of why change different elements, and then I can decide what do I want? How do I work back to what elements I pay attention to? So I'm working out of like a 75 to 78% hydration at this point. So a thousand grams of flour, 750 to 780 grams of water, 15% starter, 4% salt Also. Actually, a higher salt percentage is going to slow your fermentation as well, which is okay, also good for flavor, right, um, and that's like pretty standard. I've messed around with different have you ever salted?
Speaker 1:have you had an over salted loaf? Um, I don't think I've had that happen.
Speaker 2:You haven't had that no, I, I mean, I also have a really salty palate. So I've ever been like, well, that's too much for me, yeah, and you can mess with different flours, you can mess with all sorts of different things.
Speaker 1:When you started, what were you using for your flour?
Speaker 2:Winko flour? Yeah, both bins. Yeah, yeah, you really can use whatever's available to you. And what about feeding your starter too? Same thing. Yeah, at this point I get flour from the restaurant supply store. That's a little bit nicer. But whatever you have on hand and sometimes I find if my starter is like kind of unhappy, feed it a little bit of whole wheat, something that has a little bit more like grist to it, to try and help, you know encourage the flora, get the colonies, yeah, whatever Give it something to work with, but yeah, kind of whatever's on hand.
Speaker 1:That's great. I like that too, because it makes it again easier to start Part of it. You know it's like if you don't have space for a million different kinds of flowers you just don't have space. Yep, yeah, so that's pretty fun, although it is really fun to experiment with the flowers too, because I use a high, high gluten um shepherd's grain, yep, frequently that's usually what I got at home right now yes, my go-to, which is pretty fun, um, but if you don't have it, you don't have it.
Speaker 1:So tell us a little bit about how the moscow bread box started to take shape. You had people asking if you could buy it. So then what was your next step?
Speaker 2:let's see. I think first step was deliveries. Um, I started doing I think I probably posted on Kirk or Ladies, I can't remember at this point you know Saturday morning doorstep delivery for bread and I started doing bagels and English muffins and it was just different days of the week, so it's during the summer I had the time to do this Different days of the week, deliveries for different types of things and then started to try to consolidate to just like a weekend bake it all out and deliver. There's a couple different iterations there. And then a friend and I decided to get a booth together at the Troy Farmer's Market, which is such a lovely little market.
Speaker 2:It's so small and one cheap, like it made it really, you know, achievable. I could go paid 10 bucks and have a booth there and not be worried that if I didn't sell something I was like up a creek without a bottle um, but also, you know, the regular customers know me, I got to know the regular customers what they liked.
Speaker 2:That was really fun. Um, so we sold there and I stopped doing deliveries because that was like conflicting on Saturdays and it was. Yeah, I was planning to pick back up with deliveries once market was over and then health did not permit. So, as I'm kind of reopening and bringing Moscow Breadbox back to life, I'm hoping to lean more into like a weekly pickup. I'm hoping to lean more into like a weekly pickup. Okay.
Speaker 2:Or so like right now, wing over farm, is where, like every Friday, you can find there's going to be bread available there, and that saves me a bit of the hassle of having to deal with deliveries and like all of the particularities of individual orders, so just, so wing over farms and where's their stand located? Let's see, they're nine, 11 mountain View.
Speaker 2:I believe so. Just up past the water park on the left, beautiful, beautiful spot, great people Highly recommend it out there. It's really cute and that's been fun. I've only been there for about a month, but I think that's it. People sold me out in like a couple hours. Last week it's gotten faster and faster.
Speaker 1:How many loads are like a couple hours. Last week it's gotten faster and faster, so how many loaves are you stocking there every?
Speaker 2:week? Oh, not much. I started small just to kind of see. I don't know the foot traffic through here. So I think the first week I had like four loaves and it took the weekend, and last week I had like six loaves and two focaccia and it sold out in a couple hours. So the hope is to right now in the midst of school and still not having my own oven, we'll see how much I can scale up. But, once I graduate and I have my own baking set up, I'll hopefully be able to scale up there and I think I might add Wednesdays there as well, because that's their CSA pickup day.
Speaker 1:And is it something where people can just put cash in or pay via.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's Venmo and a cash box and you pay that all directly to Wing Over and then I sort it out with Jenny.
Speaker 1:But that's a cash box and you pay that all directly to wing over.
Speaker 2:And then I sorted out with nice, with Jenny, yeah, um, but that's great, and I'll be at the spring fair this weekend yeah, depending on when this drops.
Speaker 1:I know 27th. We're putting this one in last minute. We'll see if we can get it to drop before this. But if it does drop before this, tell us what the times are for the spring fair this weekend.
Speaker 2:Spring fair fair is 11 to 2 30 at the fairgrounds this saturday, the 27th. Okay, um, I think the spring fair is usually smaller, which means you probably have a better bet of getting something, because I sold out in like an hour and a half at the Christmas fair, oh no, okay.
Speaker 1:So it's 11 o'clock, you got to be there. What are you planning on selling? I'll have regular loaves.
Speaker 2:I'll have regular focaccia, I'll have caramelized onion and pesto focaccia. That sounds really good, and then the ones I'm most excited about. I'm making two different kinds of danishes, so I'm going to do a cream cheese apricot danish and a marzipan raspberry danish. Those sound good. So all sourdough yeah.
Speaker 1:I'm very excited about it. Get your cup of coffee, get your danish. Yeah.
Speaker 2:And then continue to shop and you have a little walk around.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it.
Speaker 2:I feel like they're all just fun. That's a good problem.
Speaker 1:I like like I've never.
Speaker 2:I've made probably I don't know upwards of 1,500 loaves at this point and I just don't get tired of it, like I really enjoy. Every time I take the lid off the Dutch oven it's like ooh, look at that, it's so fun. But that's I mean pretty much in terms of process. That's pretty rote at this point. I just started figuring out danishes for the fair. It was like a thing I wanted to learn and that was super fun and super rewarding. I enjoyed that. I mean, they're all fun in their own ways. I'd say one of my favorite things to eat is bagels sourdough bagels but they're a huge pain to make. I don't really make them that often anymore, but those are. They're all fun in their own ways and I've got several things on the list of like okay, baguettes are coming up, like I got to learn.
Speaker 1:baguettes, I got to learn sourdough croissants.
Speaker 2:We're going to learn. Like you know, I've got things on the to-do list that I'm hoping. I have a lot, of, a lot of faith in how much time I will have after. I graduate but things I'm hoping to learn, you know, come summer come the next phase.
Speaker 1:So Moscow Bread Box will be continuing this summer. Are you going to be at the Troy Market again? I will be.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so at least once a month is what I've set up for for now. I might add other markets. I have a wedding lined up and I'm hoping to kind of ask around about events. You know would be happy to bake for private events, that sort of thing. That's not really something I've like advertised about yet, just because I feel so uncomfortable marketing myself, but hoping to leave some space open for that over the summer. So I'll post you know where I'm at on social media. If anybody follows along, you can see what weeks I'm at the market and when I'm not, and that sort of thing.
Speaker 1:And how to contact you. So what is the social media handle for you?
Speaker 2:I'm most active on Instagram, which is Moscow Bread Box. I'm also on Facebook, but it's more just the automatic post to Facebook from Instagram.
Speaker 1:So if they want to get in touch with you, is it best to DM you on Instagram.
Speaker 2:Instagram's great yeah, and I have an email as well, but that's really, you know, seems kind of formal, I know.
Speaker 1:Instagram's pretty easy to get out there. Okay, tell us where the name came from.
Speaker 2:This is actually kind of funny Part of the story. I was baking and, you know, selling to friends at this point, so this was spring of 2022, I think and went to dinner at a friend's house and there was another gal there who I kind of knew, mallory Struble, you know. We were acquaintances and just got to chatting and I was like, oh, you know, like someday it'd be so cool to actually sell bread for real, like go to the farmer's market. And she was like we should do the tri-farmer's market. And I was like we can just do that.
Speaker 2:I don't know, that seems kind of scary. And she was like no, we should just do it, like I'll bake some stuff, you bake some stuff, and we'll go to the farm. It's small, Like it's literally. It's so chill, it'll be so fun. And so this person that we like barely knew we hit it off, we started chatting, we decided to sign up for the farmer's with the name and we baked there that summer and then she got married and you know, kind of on to her own adventures and I kept the name so perfect.
Speaker 1:yeah, that is sad. To mallory's dribble, yes, which is pretty great, and you kind of, I guess. Oh, yes, she's married, but it is pretty great when you have some of that again, that barrier to entry, some of those things that just remove the elements of well, why not? Yeah, just go ahead and do it. Yeah, yeah, just try it. Figure it out, yeah, yeah. Well, that's really really fun. Okay, let's, as we wind down, any final thoughts about it. I mean, we could go into deep into the process of understanding what the folds do, and all of that too, but is there anything about sourdough specifically that you wanted to share?
Speaker 2:I don't know I I enjoy bread so much because it's so tangible. I think is something I keep coming back to when I'm thinking about okay, why am I doing this? Why am I trying to start a business? Why am I trying to? You know, what am I doing with this?
Speaker 2:Um, it's a really tangible outworking, especially coming out of college, coming out of academia, and like so much time in your head You're like, okay, what do I actually do that can actually love people, bless people and provide hospitality to people. And that's like really been the driving force of why I like to bake in the first place Like it makes people happy and I love that. Like I love being able to feed people and hoping that as I expand a business out of it, that provides means for other people to bless other people you know, around their own tables and that you know, if I end up teaching classes, if I end up writing something I don't know, like that makes it available, like wanting to make that available. Yeah, both the kind of gratification of really hands-on, meaningful, rewarding work and the joy that that brings to the people around them.
Speaker 1:Well, I love it and it's true, like getting a loaf of sourdough and just kind of ripping into it is delicious, hard to beat. It's really hard to beat. You don't need butter, you don't need anything, it's just stinking good. But well, that's really great. So, meg, thanks so much and hopefully we get this out in time. But then come see her Saturday. Come say hi At 11 o'clock at the fairgrounds, yeah, and we'll make sure and post your Instagram handle and all of that in the comments too. But thanks so much for coming. Thanks for joining us. Like, share, subscribe. We'll see you next week.