Category: Food

Sourdough has a life of its own

April Repoza and her daughter Bailey own and operate Bigfoot Sourdough in Milford, a sort of a combination homestead bakery and mad science lab that goes well beyond simple loaves of bread.

“We do make artisan loaves,” April Repoza said, “and then we do all of the very standard ones like jalapeno-cheddar and pesto-parm. We make bagels and they’re sourdough obviously, but they’re New York-style where they’re boiled in malt syrup and then baked. We make hamburger buns. We make stuffing cubes for Thanksgiving, cookies, and brownies. We do sourdough pizzas. It’s endless. But what we’re known for is when people reach out and say, ‘Hey, can you make this flavor?’ and if it’s something I’ve never done, I’ll say, ‘Of course — you know, let me try that.’”

“We love taking on crazy ideas,” Repoza continued. “We made a Pizza Night Loaf that we actually folded cooked spaghetti into. We used a tomato sauce-based dough and added cheese and it was literally a whole meal. You’d cut it and there’d be pieces of spaghetti inside. We made a Demogorgon Loaf for Stranger Things that went kind of viral. But yes, so we make regular loaves, too. Our English muffins have definitely been our best seller recently. We make standard sourdough English muffins and then we do a flavor of the week; this week we’ve got banana-nut ones and then we do a sourdough coffee cake of the week. This week we’re doing a Cosmic Brownie Coffee Cake. We make a cinnamon roll of the week and this week it’s based on the concept of a ‘kitchen sink’ cookie; we call it Bigfoot’s Junk Drawer. There’s a viral trend of people holding their sourdough like men hold their fish when they’re showing off their catches, so I upgraded my sourdough one week and made it into a fish shape”

Getting creative with sourdoughs began with April’s daughter Bailey, Rapoza said.

“She had gone to college and came home for Christmas break and said, ‘Mom, I got us a sourdough starter. Let’s try to make some bread.’ I was like, ‘OK, sure,’ I’ve never done it before. I went to culinary school 500 years ago, but I was like, ‘Alright, let’s try it out.’ We both just fell in love with it and fell in love with the science. We did hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of hours of research before we even offered it out to friends or family or anything like that. I wanted to really try to perfect it before we went any further. Eventually we started getting known for our unique flavors and the different projects that we take on. Every product we make is sourdough-based, from cookies to king cakes, which we made this year. It was insane! I think we sold about a hundred different king cakes this season.“

The Rapozas started with a purchased starter, April said, but after developing thousands of batches of dough, their dough has evolved to the point of being uniquely suited to their needs. “It’s funny,” she said, “because people will say, ‘Well, I use a 200-year-old starter…’, and that’s partially true, but once you start feeding it your own water and your own flour, it changes. So it’s not the exact sourdough starter from 200 years ago. Ours is definitely its own thing at this point. My family jokes that if we go on vacation I have to arrange babysitting for our dough. My mom will come over to feed it; she’s like, ‘We never expected for you to have another child.’”

Working with sourdough, and learning to think about it as a living organism, has changed the way she looks at her baking and at food in general, Rapoza said. “We constantly look for ways to make not-so-healthy things healthy, but we also like to go kind of over the edge and make healthy things a little crazy too. I feel like you can do both.”

Bigfoot Sourdough
Where: 33 Cortland Road, Milford, 801-6265, facebook.com/BigfootSourdough
When: open Thursday through Sunday, 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Pickups can be arranged seven days a week by appointment. Special orders require notice 48 hours in advance.

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.

Time for the annual Strawberry Festival

FLOW, the Friends of the Library Of Windham, who support the Nesmith Library, is holding its biggest fundraiser of the year this weekend, its annual Strawberry Festival and Book Sale.

Mary Connelly, a FLOW member, said the event is time- and labor-intensive.

“We start meeting in September [the year before],” she said, “and then go all the way up until the end of May with the actual event. FLOW supports the library; we give about $7,000 in programming money for the teen, children and adults programs. We have supported some of the physical needs that they had this year. We helped pay for a new fence around the storybook garden that they have outside and bought a picnic table for them. The Library needed a new book return this year, and if there are other things that we can help out with as we go along, we try to support those. The Library here is a wonderful resource and we’re very proud of it. We hold two book fairs each year, one in December and then this one that’s part of the Strawberry Festival.”

The book sale goes on for four days, Connelly said.

“It starts next Wednesday,” she said, “and on Wednesday it’s for FLOW members, senior citizens and teachers. And then Thursday and Friday it’s open to anybody, after which we’ll pack up whatever’s left and take it over to the High School for the Strawberry Fest on Saturday.” By the end of the day on Saturday, the book sale will become a Bag Sale. “We provide the bag,” she said, “but then for $5, whatever you can fit in the bag, you can take home with you. Over the years, we’ve learned that we need to provide the bags; we’ve had people be a little too creative in the past.”

The key element of the Strawberry Festival however, is the strawberries. FLOW sells a lot of strawberry shortcake over the course of the day, Connelly said, serving upwards of 2,000 strawberry enthusiasts most years.

“Last year, we went through 480 quarts of fresh strawberries. Anyone who wants to learn the recipe of our shortcake is welcome to come volunteer, but it isn’t complicated.” FLOW sells a classic biscuit-based shortcake with strawberries and whipped cream, she said. “And there’s ice cream too, for people who want it.”

The Strawberry Festival is a way of recognizing the start of strawberry season, Connelly said. “It was established in 1984. Originally it took place later in the season, but now we’re just a little bit outside of it. It’s a great community builder. Last year we probably had 2,500 people come over the course of the day. It was just kind of nice and steady and everybody seemed to be having a good time. It was typical weather — one minute it was sunny, the next minute it was overcast. Then it was rainy and we had to go indoors. It’s New England, though, so there’s nothing you can count on, but the high school is big enough that it can handle things indoors or outdoors.”

Strawberry Festival and Book Fair
When: Saturday, May 30, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Where: Windham High School, 64 London Bridge Road, Windham.
What: There will be food trucks, live performances and a bicycle parade.
More info: Visit flowwindham.org.

Featured photo: Courtesy photo.