The Splendid Table: Conversations & Recipes For Curious Cooks & Eaters · American Public Media

812: Bread with Richard Hart and Our South, Black Food Through My Lens with Ashleigh Shanti

·50 min·4 clips

Richard Hart shares his secret for keeping sourdough starter dormant without daily feeding.

The show returns to a conversation with Richard Hart and Ashley Shanti, recorded before both guests later won James Beard Awards a few months after the original episode. Francis Lam starts with Hart's bread philosophy and gives him room to explain a style built on long overnight fermentation in a cool room, with deep flavor and a strong crust. From there, the conversation turns to Denmark. Hart says the move made him rethink what bread even was, since the loaves and expectations there felt different from the ones he had known. He was between bakeries at the time. While waiting to find his own place in Copenhagen, he worked with Lars, a Danish baker on the outskirts of the city, and picked up a different rye tradition from him. The rye discussion gets technical. Hart explains that Danish-style rye bread depends on very old, highly acidic sourdough so the loaf does not develop odd holes. He walks through the process step by step: mix the dough the next day, proof it within a couple of hours, and bake it right away. The method stands in sharp contrast to other bread-making rhythms. It shows how a formula shifts when flour, acidity, and regional expectation all change together. The conversation keeps coming back to surprise. Hart talks about realizing there are many kinds of bread to explore, and that the world opens up once one style stops being treated as the default. Shanti then brings in a different kind of food memory. Her section centers on Our South, Black Food Through My Lens and on the way regional food can be understood through a personal point of view. Francis Lam keeps the conversation open and steady, letting it move between technique and meaning without hurrying past either one. The episode closes by pointing listeners to Shanti's recipe for leather britches at splendidtable.org.

As heard by us

Bread craft and Black food perspective, given room to breathe.

Francis Lam returns to a conversation with baker Richard Hart and chef Ashley Shanti, both later James Beard Award winners, and the strongest pull is Hart's matter-of-fact attention to craft.

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Why you'd press play

For a calm listen that moves from rye bread and fermentation into memory, place, and a Southern perspective.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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