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by bardo 🍁
2022-01-17
sourdough

Local Flours Sours: Duchess Bread (Part One)

Local Flours Sours: Duchess Bread (Part One)
2022-01-17
sourdough

You know your family thinks you are slightly obsessed about something when supporting your hobby winds up under the Christmas tree in holiday gift form.

After baking some hundreds of loaves of sourdough the last couple years, I guess my family has noticed my obsession. This year I received a 5kg bag of bread flour under the Christmas tree.

But let me back up…

There is a well-known local French-style bakery in Edmonton called Duchess Bake Shop.

There are now two locations, but for years but one address served a frequently long line up of customers selling pastries and sweets from a building in a gentrified neighbourhood just west of the downtown core.

I’m not really a sweets and confections guy, but I respect a good local bakery, and I’ve stood in my share of queues for a box of goodies from Duchess.

My wife, on the other hand, will line up for a week for the right cookie. And in her quest to locate and single-handedly support all our local bakeries through tough pandemic financial times, she has become well acquainted with the online menus of many of these local establishments.

As it turns out, Duchess not only sells baked goods but also sells baking ingredients, including — that’s right — 5kg bags of their own custom bread flour blend.

Holiday mode now falling behind us as we resume our normal back to the grind lives, I cracked open my Christmas present and prepped my standard sandwich loaf dough with 500g of bakery bread flour blend.

Now details on both the bag and the website are scarce, so I don’t know exactly what makes this flour special or unique in any way. Maybe it’s locally milled. Maybe it’s a unique blend prepared for the French bakery’s secret receipes. Or maybe it’s just flour and it has been bagged for the sole purpose of supporting their charity of choice.

Either way, I’ve got a pair of loaves proofing on the counter and my obsession-meets-gift flour will soon be transformed into some delicious sourdough. It gives a new meaning to “Christmas bread.”

Check back for part two to find out how it turned out!

baking buy local gifts that are fleeting local flours sours sourdough bread guy the holidays

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about

It’s about more than just food.

It’s about a mindset and a perspective on living a full, active and interesting life.

The Cast Iron Guy blog heated up in January 2021 as a journal of uncomplicated things, life lived, and a mindset that reflects the philosophical practicality of well-seasoned cast iron frying pan: enduring, simple, down-to-earth & extremely useful.

I write regularly from here in the Canadian Prairies about things that interest me, including the artistic inspiration I get outdoors, travel, gear, growing and cooking food, fire craft, suburban and nature trails, running, and (of course) the clever and curious ways I find to use my many pieces of cast iron cookware.

On This Day

  • Local Flours Sours: Duchess Bread (Part One)
    2022-01-17
  • Recalling Quarantine Ultra
    2021-01-17

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