Richard Bourdon: The Sourdough Sage

RICHARD BOURDON’S IMPASSIONED PLEA FOR FERMENTATION

April 1, 2021 // By Ellen Spear / / Photographs by Anastasia Stanmeyer

IN THE TV SERIES The Good Lord Bird, Ethan Hawke plays abolitionist John Brown with missionary zeal and uncompromising passion for his cause that is at times bordering on madness. It looks as though Hawke as Brown might burst into flames at any moment, determined to sweep us up in the conflagration.

Talking to Richard Bourdon, founder, and owner of Berkshire Mountain Bakery, there is no mistaking the similarity to Hawke’s portrayal of Brown—in Bourdon’s blazing eyes, wild white beard, and fervent preaching. This master baker’s passion is for grain and healthy digestion. Imparting his encyclopedic knowledge of the history of bread and its chemistry is a bit more temperate, though—more like the teacher Bourdon thought he was going to be rather than the fire-and brimstone approach of Hawke’s John Brown.

Bourdon lives in the woods of Austerlitz, New York, in a structure with no electricity. The 64-year-old has grown his sage-like beard because he is interested in learning why and how beards grow. That approach is consistent with his approach to just about everything in life.

“I have always wanted to know how things work,” he says. Going all-in to learn about grain fermentation and making perfect bread brought him from his first experiments with natural yeast, yielding loaves that “came out like bricks,” to the perfection and consistency of Berkshire Mountain Bakery’s products. At the age of 21, he decided his purpose was to bring better food to the world. That desire, partly influenced by a girlfriend at the time who was into natural foods, has led him to a life of constant experimentation and discovery about how we nourish ourselves.

Bourdon has recast the adage, “You are what you eat,” to his personal mantra: “You are what you digest. What you digest becomes you.” That distinction, between eating unfermented grain that stresses the digestive system and is difficult for the body to break down, and consuming grain from which its precious nutrients have been coaxed, is at the center of his philosophy. Bourdon generously shares knowledge about how to make grain digestible in a way that is part lecture, part homily, and part cooking class.

In a makeshift attic-like office space at his bakery in Housatonic, a dusting of flour coats the floor and chairs. Bourdon sits behind a bare wooden table—at times reclining in his chair as he recites chemical processes from memory, at times leaning far over the table as he makes a point about nutrition emphatically— his muscular baker’s hands flat on the surface, seeming to support the weight of his thoughts. He says that working with yeast other than that which is naturally available all around us, is a notion that is only 200 years old.

“If you work with [that kind of] yeast,” he says, “you miss the point.”

Bourdon laments that in some articles about him and the bakery, the story is about “other stuff,” and the things that he thinks are most important are left out. Here is what Bourdon wants you to know: The natural yeast and its chemical action is essential to render wheat (which has been milled into flour) digestible.

“No life wants to be eaten,” he explains.“Wheat only had in mind to be a mommy or daddy.”

To guard the essential elements inside a wheat kernel that aids in its propagation, the grain sports a coat of phytic acid as protection. When ingested in unfermented grain, the phytic acid layer combines with other elements in the body, taxing the digestive system, blocking absorption of nutrients in the grain. Fermenting grain, soaking it or sprouting it, allows the “good” enzymes and bacilli to break down the phytic acid armor, rendering the result digestible and nutritious.

Bourdon also is eager for us to know that bread is just cooked grain, and that the starch component in bread must be “gelled” properly. Heat, time, and moisture are the Holy Trinity here. If any of the elements are out of balance, the bread will not taste as good, and it will be harder to digest. Bourdon gives the example of taking a piece of popped popcorn and putting it on your tongue. “Don’t chew it,” he says. Just let it sit. In a minute, it will melt and taste sweet—the result of properly cooked grain beginning to turn to sugars that the body readily absorbs.

In the bakery walk-in refrigerators are plastic tubs of light brown sticky starter, happily bubbling. The goop is the result of mixing flour and water, then inviting the wild yeast that is all around us in for a picnic. There is always ample starter on hand; it is the heart of the process for the 30 people who make over 25 types of breads the bakery produces.

Pressure is a variable added to heat, time, and moisture for successful baking. Bourdon says achieving mastery in baking is the understanding of how to tweak the amount of each according to the local conditions on any particular day to achieve consistency. The taste of bread is also influenced by the quality of ingredients. Bourdon uses town water that is charcoal filtered at the bakery to remove chlorine. He does not ascribe to the notion that some regional differences make for widely different tastes, particularly what he regards as the myth that New York water makes New York bagels superior. Bagels, he says, are “the epitome of bad bread.” Ask people what they like best about a bagel, says Bourdon, “and they tell me the lox and the cream cheese.”

Bourdon began his enterprise in the Berkshires after a circuitous route—studying music in the Hague, switching to baking, and then perfecting the art at establishments throughout Europe. He ran a bakery in Amsterdam and from there made his way to the Berkshires in the 1980s.

He counts himself lucky that grain was then at the bottom of the food pyramid. Now, grain is no longer promoted as the base of a healthy diet. He is happy to observe that since he began selling bread from the back of his car—at outdoor fairs and at a few markets before moving into the warehouse that remains home base—there is much more quality bread available in the Berkshires. His business has spiked since the start of the pandemic, with more people at home and paying more attention to their food. He counts those who live here as fortunate to have the elements at hand for a very healthy diet—a good combination of land, water, and many small farms to supply meat, cheese, and produce directly to consumers.

Bourdon semi-retired a year ago and describes his role at the bakery as coming to fix things and help when needed. Beyond the bakery, he continues to keep busy. His inquisitive mind continues to seek new things to learn about from the inside out. He is teaching his daughter how to make a “crump-pot,” a pot of batter that can be dipped into every day to make fresh crumpets, a style of fermented sour batter cooked on a griddle that Bourdon considers very close to the original types of breads humans first made. He is building a new house (round, he says) and is still quick to espouse to anyone who will listen the connection between good health, what we eat, and how we prepare our food.

Bourdon has already been a pig farmer and now is thinking a lot about bugs in our diet and possibly starting a bug farm. “Or maybe fish,” he says. He plans to die at age 120, which he believes is the current limit of human potential. He declares this intention with conviction and confidence. Whether or not his next venture raising bugs or fish takes off, in the future we will most certainly be able to count on Bourdon to explain, with great specificity, how and why beards grow. In the meantime, we can delight in a Berkshire Mountain Bakery baguette or olive and rosemary ciabatta on our plate, warm from the oven, that is the result of a lifetime of studying the chemistry of grain.

Berkshire Mountain Bakery has two retail locations,
at 367 Park St. in Housatonic
and the Pizza Cafe at 180 Elm St. in Pittsfield.
Online ordering for pickup and delivery are available.
berkshiremountainbakery.com