2023-08-13 08:50:00
By Juan Manuel Larrieu, special for «Yo Como»
juanmalarrieu@gmail.com
“Nomadic” It is the sourdough that traveled the world and today grows in Viedma. Fermin Suarez (28) is its creator. Intense and passionate, he ventured into the world of hobby baking and today he is a specialist in sourdough breads.
For a handful of subjects he did not receive a lawyer. While living in Buenos Aires and studying law, he began to dabble in fermentations. “I started with the sourdough to make Neapolitan-style pizzas, I became obsessed with that, but I had already been experimenting in gastronomy, always with flour, pasta, pastry”, says this Viedmense when evoking his first steps in gastronomy.
Little by little getting into the world of making from sourdough.
How Fermín Suárez’s obsession with sourdough began
“In 2014 I bought a refractory stone for the oven and I started making pizzas and researching and reading much on the subject. In the Italian recipes that I read, I saw that they made reference to the mother pasta, it caught my attention and I began to investigate. It was the sourdough we know today. The sourdough boom did not yet exist, in Buenos Aires there was only one pizzeria of that style. Then I became obsessed with making bread.”
Such was Fermín’s obsession with fully developing his knowledge of sourdough that he left his law degree and began to study gastronomy at the IAG. “Obviously I had a traditional bakery there, but I didn’t like that way of baking, putting fifty grams of yeast in a kilo of flour and the dough fermenting in an hour. There I went deep with this ”.
In 2015 he put together his sourdough that lasts to this day. “At the beginning I made sourdough breads as a hobby, while I continued to perfect myself, knowing my dough, how to feed it, how to hydrate it, to gradually achieve the product I wanted”, shares Fermín, with great passion.
In 2018, the opportunity arose to go to work in Uruguay at the renowned Casa Yagüe restaurant where he would dedicate himself mainly to making pastries. “I had brought my sourdough in a jar, it is like my pet. I started making breads and they began to be sold in the restaurant”.
The following year he returned to Argentina and also brought his sourdough. “This time I brought her dry. Put it on a plate with plastic wrap, stretch it out and let it dry. Then, once in Buenos Aires, I hydrated her and she reactivated ”, she recounts.
Your sourdough journey doesn’t end there. “Then I went to Italy, I took it in a jar. There the quarantine grabbed me, I was locked up in an apartment in Italy. I did nothing but make sourdough breads. I was like that for a year.”
How is the mother dough created by Fermín Suárez
He returned to Buenos Aires, he also brought sourdough in a jar. “I kept making bread, always as a hobby, but the process was already professionalized, I had come to balance my dough to the point that I wanted, in terms of flavor, moisture and acidity.”
Finally, Viedma with her sourdough in her luggage. “I did the month of quarantine and began to make sourdough bread to sell, but very few two or three loaves were sold, that’s where Nómade was born.”
“My sourdough is already 8 years old, I started it with whole wheat flour and water, which is the most conventional way. Actually sourdough is a culture. In the shell of the grain and in the air there are wild yeasts and bacteria that act, yeast is never added, it is a natural fermentation. Then it is fed every day with flour and water.
“Currently my sourdough is around three kilos, which is what I need to make the amount of bread we sell today,” he completes.
What difference is there with the other type of bread?
This form of baking has much more flavor, it is much more digestible, the body assimilates it differently. It has to do with the handling of flour, regardless of whether it is integral or white. When you eat traditional, conventional bread, you eat almost raw gluten, the flour is with very little decomposition, it does not have bacteria that affect the fermentation process.
There are also myths regarding the sourdough, that the breads are acidic or hard, in reality it is not so. They are highly controllable factors, if it is hard, it has to do with hydration. Acidity has to do with the development of more lactic acid bacteria, instead of more yeasts, and this can be balanced when feeding the dough.
Today Nómade (IG nomade.pan) is highly established in Viedma and Patagones, a benchmark for sourdough bread, sold in gourmet stores. The production capacity per day is full, Fermín is in the process of increasing the capacity to meet the demand. This implies staying in Viedma for a long time. Could it be that he will stop being a Nomad?
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