Photograph by Bailey Garrot
When a customer orders sourdough at Colette Bread & Bakeshop, owner Sarah Dodge can’t help but smile. “I always kind of joke, ‘Which one?’” she says. “They’re all sourdough breads.”
You may think that sourdough refers to one type of bread, but the truth is that it exists in many forms—and not only in bread. Recent years have brought a variety of sourdough treats to Atlanta. Appearing everywhere from walk-in bakeries to farmers markets and microbakeries without brick-and-mortar shops, the artisanal craft of sourdough is alive and well in the city.
Photograph by Bailey Garrot
Photograph by Bailey Garrot
Photograph by Bailey Garrot
The start of it all
While “sourdough” is a style of bread, it’s also a natural leavening method with historic roots that span the globe. Instead of using commercial yeast from a packet, which leavens bread quickly, sourdough bakers rely on a starter made of flour, water, and wild yeast containing a collection of microbes. These microbes are found in various sources, such as flour and decomposing fruit—it’s even in the air and on our hands. The microbes in the wild yeast, combined with the flour and water, together give the starter its own terroir, so to speak, and no two starters taste the same.
A sourdough starter can grow as big as a baker wants it to—some starters fill mason jars, some fill large pails—depending on how much it’s fed. A well-tended starter can “live” for decades.
The starter slowly ferments, rewarding bakers with a complex flavor profile and a chewy crumb (the bread’s interior). It’s not an easy method, and that’s part of the point: To love sourdough is to love the process. “It makes you slow down,” says Dodge. “It makes you look at all the nuance and all the different parts of bread. I mean, if you’re not interested in the process, you’re going to do horribly.”
Taking care of a starter requires diligence. It has to be “fed” flour and water, and how much and how often it needs to be fed depends on the season. “Our feedings differ throughout the year based on temperature and humidity,” says Jonathan St. Hilaire, owner of Mission Bakery in Roswell. “Now [in winter] everything is colder. It’s slower. We don’t have to do such massive feeds.”
The constant care starters require make them seem akin to living creatures, which is why so many bakers give them names, as they would a pet. Dodge’s starter, for example, is named Pete, and some form of him has existed for nearly a decade. “He’s had a good life,” she says.
While Pete appears in all of Dodge’s loaves, her signature loaf is the pain au levain. “It has a crunchy exterior, a nice, good crust,” she says. “On the inside, it’s just, like, a creamy, slightly tangy, not too acidic crumb.” The fluffy bread lends itself nicely to grilled cheese sandwiches—but simply ripping into it for soup-dunking works too.
Photograph by Bailey Garrot, food styling by Kim Dergarabedian
One starter, many varieties
One notable type of sourdough is San Francisco style, which is known for its distinct tang. At Mission Bakery, St. Hilaire’s loaves aren’t quite as tangy as a classic San Francisco sourdough, but he likes to get close. “I’ll starve Mom [his starter] so that I get that sour that I want,” he says. His country sourdough loaf offers that zingy flavor along with a crumb ideal for sandwiches and French toast. For those who prefer something a little extra, St. Hilaire also bakes sourdough with dates and fennel.
On the milder side, there’s the rustico loaf produced by Superpana Bakeshop, which sells its goods at the Sandy Springs Farmers Market and retailers around town. The microbakery is owned by Chino and Vanessa Centeno, who opened it in 2023 while Chino was working at Fellows Cafe in Roswell. The rustico is his favorite because it strikes a less sour note. “I’ve been noticing that people really like it because you still have that sourness in it, but it’s not intense,” says Chino. The sourness hits you right at the end.
Sourdough isn’t all white bread either. Emma Schacke, the baker of Evergreen Butcher + Baker in Kirkwood, plays with different combinations of flours and grains. Among her bread creations is the seeded spelt, made with a whole wheat starter (named Hubert), rye flour, and spelt and studded with flax, sesame, pumpkin, and sunflower seeds. “It looks like a brick,” says Schacke. “But when you cut into it, it’s light inside.” The bread is hearty yet tender, reminiscent of a Danish rye bread. Schacke enjoys using it for toast, adorned simply with butter and jam. “I eat it open-face. I don’t usually use it as a sandwich, but I’ll just toast it,” says Schacke. Her other preferred toppings combo is butter, cheese, and pickles.
More than just bread
Since sourdough is a leavening method, it can also be used in other treats. Betsy Gonzalez of Osono Bread, a microbakery that attracts long lines at the Grant Park Farmers Market, uses her sourdough starter (which she sometimes calls “the baby”) not just in bread, but in doughnuts. She began making them in 2021 as a way of testing her limits as a baker. Since doughnuts are made with an enriched dough, it took a little experimenting. “The challenge is not imposing too much acidity in the enriched dough using the sourdough starter,” says Gonzalez. “So, you can kind of balance that out by adding sugar to your sourdough starter. It’s called a sweet starter.” Her doughnut flavors change seasonally, with signatures like vanilla bean.
The sourdough mania of the Covid-19 pandemic is long behind us, but home bakers have retained an interest in artisanal baking. Dodge offers classes at Colette, such as “Glimpse of Sourdough 101,” which gives students the rundown on sourdough baking and even sends them home with a sample starter. At Evergreen, Schacke happily shares pieces of Hubert the starter with home bakers for free.
It’s the gift that keeps on giving. “All of Hubert’s properties change depending on his environment or whoever’s hands are mixing [the dough],” she says. “So, really, once they take Hubert home and feed it with their own flour, it’s a whole different starter.”
This article appears in our April 2025 issue.
