Sourdough Baking with Regional Flours - A Weekend Workshop with Sarah Owens

Interest in sourdough leavening continues to grow, with many home bakers curious to use locally grown grains and stone ground flours in their bakes. In this 2-day weekend workshop, we will explore baking with a whole grain sourdough starter using local- and regionally-sourced stone ground rye, spelt, oats, and wheat. Through the mixing, shaping, and baking of sourdough breads and pastries, we will discuss how to approach baking with regional whole grain flours to unlock unique, terroir-driven flavors and digestibility.

Join author Sarah Owens as she guides you through a weekend of baking from her James Beard award-winning cookbook, Sourdough. It's the 10-year anniversary of the book with a new anniversary edition coming out in October 2025!

In this 2-day weekend workshop, you'll learn to make and bake bread and pastry that's high in local and regional grains, using a whole grain sourdough starter. This includes a beautiful crusty hearth bread, a focaccia-inspired flatbread, a savory galette, cookies, and a seasonal scone. Each participant will bake these recipes, featuring local whole grain flours, from scratch: from hand-mixing, folding, proofing, and shaping; to baking and, finally, tasting. 

While the dough is resting, we will focus on using sourdough starter as both an agent of fermentation and as an ingredient in other baked goods. Sarah will also demonstrate variations on these themes, with opportunities for making decorative breads. There will also be time to chat about local food systems and how to support them by incorporating stone ground regional whole grains into our bakes. 

Lunch will be provided on day 1, tastings provided on day 2.

You’ll leave the BAKE! weekend workshop with a solid foundation for hearty whole grain baked goods; handouts with Sarah’s recipes; and guidance to continue the baking adventure at home.

***Please note: Ann Arbor hotels book up quickly in the Fall. If you are joining us from out of town, please make your lodging reservations soon after signing up for the weekend workshop.

Meet the Instructor:

Sarah Owens (she/her/they) is a writer, recipe developer, and professional horticulturist who specializes in fermentation and sourdough baking. She leads hands-on and online culinary classes and is the James Beard award-winning cookbook author of Sourdough (Roost Books, 2015), Toast and Jam (Roost Books, 2017), and Heirloom (Roost Books, 2019). In her writing, Sarah seeks the intersection between the natural world and the most celebrated aspects of living. She believes that food is a powerful medium for storytelling that can anchor a community in shared experiences and traditions. After working as the Curator of Roses at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden and baking professionally for over a decade in Brooklyn and Queens in NYC, Sarah now lives in Sonoma County, California, where she writes, bakes, and defends her small backyard garden from marauding deer. Sarah's most recent recipes and whole grain baking workshops can be found on her Patreon membership platform and website, www.ritualfinefoods.com.