Hart Street Sourdough officially opened for business in January 2024, but its inception reaches back to the mid-1990s. At each turn, its development coincided with my enthusiasm for cooking and baking, perennially limited budget, and need to make something with my hands rather than my brain as I moved through graduate school in art history and a tenured professorship. Both experiences afforded me the opportunity to live in Germany and travel throughout Europe where I discovered the superior quality of hearth style, long-fermented European breads.

After baking bread sporadically for decades, during the Covid 19 pandemic I joined thousands of home bakers who took advantage of the long days of lockdown to ignite or improve their sourdough bread baking skills and knowledge.

By 2023, what began as a therapeutic escape from the digital detachment of pandemic teaching and the increasingly “corporatized”  landscape of higher ed, became a viable employment alternative. More importantly, bread baking (and the resultant gifting of test loaves) connected me to my neighbors and community in more thorough and meaningful ways than the prior decade-and-a-half I’d spent in my small upstate village. In 2024 I applied for a home-processor license, opened Hart Street Sourdough micro bakery, and haven’t looked back.

I feel privileged to be small-scale community baker and remain grateful for every new and returning customer who appreciates naturally leavened, preservative-free fermented hearth breads as much as I do!