At 2pm on Sunday the 19th of August, Studio Local’s very first Bread Studies welcomes culinary creative Boris Portnoy of All Are Welcome Bakery (Northcote) and local beekeeper Nic Dowse of Honey Fingers to the studio to cast light on a new and exciting concept – Bee Bread.
Honeybees are known primarily for their honey, however throughout this class guests will spend an afternoon learning the fascinating uses for fermented pollen and the microbial energy of bees in baking. You will come away from the class with your own bee bread culture and an understanding of how to nurture it from home as well as some very special gifts including your own AAW proving bowl, dough scraper, bread bag and small pot of local honey from Honey Fingers.
You will learn to mix, knead, shape, ferment and score dough in preparation for baking. Accompanied by a lavish grazing table in collaboration with All Are Welcome – think a variety of pastries, fruits, home made preserves, honeycomb, cheeses and of course, as always, there will be wine.
‘Bee Bread’ is a celebration and investigation of the intersection between honeybee and human food technologies. Learn to how to mix and weigh a sourdough loaf and why baker’s percentages, and shaping, are so important when baking bread. Learn about various sourdough cultures and how to feed and maintain these living things. And learn about how we have created a human bread sourdough culture from honeybee ‘bee bread’.When humans have a surplus of fruits we make jam. We do this by increasing the sugar content and reducing the water content of stewed fruit. We then store this jam in an airtight container and put a lid on it. Honeybees use a similar technology when making honey: they reduce the water content to about 18%. The bees then place a wax lid on the airtight honeycomb cell the honey is stored in.
So honey is kind of like nectar jam. And humans and honeybees use the same tricks. Most people know about honey – but may not know that bees also ferment food. Honeybees and humans both use fermentation to control the rate of decay of foods they want to preserve. Bees use fermentation to control and slow down the rate of decay of pollen. Beekeepers call this bee product ‘Bee Bread’. Bee Bread is pollen that honeybees collect in the field and activate with saliva, gut enzymes, honey and wild yeast in the hive.
We have created a sourdough starter made from the yeasts and microbes in fermented pollen or ‘bee bread’ – we have made human bread using bee bread. This ‘bee bread’ starter will be used to make your own sourdough bread, and is yours to keep, for as long as you keep this ‘mother’ alive.
What: ‘Bee Bread’ Workshop
Where: Studio Local, 25 Albert Street, Northcote
When: Sunday August 19, 2018, from 2pm -5pm
