Dr. James Stokman’s

Stokman explains that his love for sourdough began with his wife’s New Year’s resolution to bake bread for their family. “It’s easy to buy bread, but with a large family, it’s expensive, and the idea of using real ingredients appeals to her,” he says. Stephanie ordered a cookbook and began her research. A few days in, she says, she felt a bit intimidated by the process. Not to mention, her early mornings are often hectic getting kids ready for the day. Stokman, a spine surgeon, and scientist at heart, loves the chemistry and physics involved in the sourdough process. He began working with Stephanie on developing their recipe and never looked back.

​

During my tutorial, Stokman explains that when making sourdough, you replace the baker’s yeast, used in most breads, with a starter—a self-sustaining mix of flour and water left at room temperature to ferment over the course of a few weeks. While you can get starter from a local baker or order some online, Stokman encourages making your own, like he did, or asking a friend to gift some of theirs. Once established, the starter needs to be kept at room temperature and fed with more flour and water each night. 

When crafting his sourdough bread, Dr. James Stokman brings a love for both science and art into the kitchen.

This morning, Stokman pours the starter into a bowl and empties the excess into two other containers: In one, he puts 20 grams for the next loaf. The extra is set aside for other purposes, he says. “A few times a week, I’ll make a batch of pancakes, or a skillet using ground beef, peppers, and mushrooms with the discarded batter poured on top, then baked. Both are family favorites.”

As I sip my coffee, I watch him move about the kitchen with a precision that makes it easy to imagine him in his operating room. He measures his ingredients in grams using a scale, rather than cups and ounces. According to Stokman, it’s more accurate and makes less mess. The scale, bowl, spatula, thermometer, and water bottle are his only tools. Stokman explains that he bakes the bread on the days he is in the operating room and makes dough on days he meets patients in clinic, since his start time on clinic days is a bit later. 

​

He puts the ingredients into a bowl, then mixes. Next, he pushes salt into the dough, using 25 grams, a bit more than most recipes call for. The dough appears stringy at first, but after about five minutes, it begins to unify, and I see it take shape. He sets the dough on a piece of parchment in a cast iron Dutch oven and covers it with a waffle-weaved towel for the unique texture left behind. Using the oven light as the only source of heat, the dough rests inside for several hours and is pulled and stretched every thirty minutes or so by Stephanie. It’s then moved into a standard mixing bowl and folded once again into the towel to be refrigerated overnight. When ready for baking the next morning, Stokman sprinkles the dough with flour and uses a safety razor to score the dough in a pattern uniquely his own.