BEAUTIFUL PATTERNED BREADS: ANITA ŠUMER
Anita Šumer, of Sourdough Mania, cuts beautiful patterns into dough and bakes it into loaves of bread.
The patterns are cut into the raw dough either freehand or with the guidance of a stencil. They are accentuated with a powdering of flour.
Šumer, a self-taught baker, loves to bake. She finds it brings here closer to her family. She learned from books, read a lot of blogs, and websites. Mostly, she learned from trial and error, turning less than stellar attempts into crackers or crumbs.
She especially focused on sourdough because her husband had digestive issues with regular breads.
Sourdough is an traditional form of bread that was developed before the invention of commercial baking yeast arrived in the 2nd half of the 19th century. It requires a lot of patience, love and basic ingredients - flour, water and salt.
Šumer buys flour at local mills, where it is still ground with a millstone. Sometimes she buys directly from local farms.
She uses filtered water to ensure happy yeast. Chlorine, found in small quantities in a lot of tap water, kills yeasts and other microorganisms.
The only tool Šumer uses is a razor to slash through the surface of the dough. I First, she cuts a straight line, then across, then she does carves whatever moves her.
Sometimes she uses natural colors from paprika, turmeric, spirulina, applied to the surface of the loaves before baking with a template. Check out Šumer’s hand-scored hibiscus blossom design loaf.
Šumer bakes other forms of bread as well. Šumer developed her own recipe for 100% sourdough croissants. They are works of edible art. You can find the recipe here.
Check out Šumer’s international baking workshops.
Follow Šumer on her Instagram page for more patterned bread inspiration. She has almost 65 million followers.
See more food art whimsy in Beautiful Beasts as Food Art.
Read more about Beautiful Patterns all this week on BeautifulNow. And check out more beautiful things happening now in BN Wellness, Impact, Nature/Science, Food, Arts/Design, and Travel, Daily Fix posts.
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All images are courtesy of Anita Šumer, of Sourdough Mania.