Reg is the head of our bread team, and he’s been with Grizzly for 3 years. Before then, he worked in a cafe bakery after his time at university. After all this time working with bread, he can touch a dough and diagnose issues in fermentation, shaping, and hydration, adapting the process as needed to cater to the sourdough. Invaluable for consistency in making bread, these skills also give him a know-how necessary in bread recipe innovation.
But even with the expertise of our bread team, testing new recipes can present challenges that require adaptations, transforming an initial concept into something quite different from the first iteration. A few months ago, Reg started running with the idea of a sourdough loaf reminiscent of cornbread with jalapeños and chiles. The weeks that followed led to test after test, taste after taste, and ongoing collaboration with the bread team to resolve issues he faced with the doughs. His first iteration used creamed corn and jalapeños, but the dough couldn’t accommodate the moisture. Allowing the dough to proof for longer and increasing the oven temperature wasn’t enough of a solution, so he pivoted to pressing whole corn kernels to expel excess water. This plus the addition of corn masa still wasn’t enough, leaving a loaf with nice flavour but a gummy texture.
Moving in a different direction, Reg roasted the corn and jalapeños in the oven first, both enhancing the taste of the ingredients and evaporating the vegetables’ high water content. He kept corn masa in the mix for the complex flavour it imparts, and folded the roasted ingredients into the new sourdough. The batch was divided and shaped to rise in loaf tins, and the final product was a sliceable and delicious savoury sourdough with just the right amount of moisture, studded with roasted bits of jalapeño and corn and warm with the subtle smoky heat of chipotle chile.
While the process is similar to our white sourdough, Reg says that the carefully manipulated add-ins “take the savoury aspect of a bread’s flavour and really push it in a way unlike any of our other loaves.” Originally motivated by the idea of a unique bread for a toastie or a savoury french toast, Reg grins when he offers a surprising suggestion: “Strangely, it’s really nice with peanut butter.” Whether or not you're brave enough to give that a go, we know our new Roasted Corn and Jalapeño Sourdough can be enjoyed in so many different ways. These loaves are only available in our shops on Fridays, so plan to stop by, take one home, and let us know what you eat it with!
