The Art of Rising

Chef Bryan Ford challenges all we know about modern day breadmaking

by

Amidst scenes of kneading dough and tossing it high up in the air, baker Bryan Ford lays down the gauntlet of his baking credo: “Let go of all your preconceived notions, I got Black skin but I make it better than the Romans. Yeah I make sourdough but don’t be foolish, you already know that I could pull up with the poolish. You already know that I could throw dough down from the ground up, make it levitate and look ghoulish.”

Filmed in his hometown of New Orleans this summer, Ford and his partner (in life and business) Bridget Kenna released “Homeslice,” a music video in collaboration with New Orleans artist Kr3wcial, as the inaugural work of their newly formed production company Flaky Biscuit Media.

Playful, humorous, and celebratory, the video is a remix of Kr3wcial’s original song “Eat’n Pizza” and encapsulates the pure joy of breaking bread together—or, more specifically, of throwing a backyard pizza party with your best friends, sharing slices handcrafted by a master artisan.

 These are the inclusive types of spaces the award-winning baker Ford inhabits: where improvisation is celebrated, boundaries are dissolved, heritage is embraced, and passion is a guiding force. “Your environment dictates the bread you can create—and I’m not talking about climate and temperature,” he wrote in his debut cookbook New World Sourdough (2020). “I’m talking about how you feel and the emotional connection you have to your roots, upbringing, and city.” 

Ford’s presence as a young American with Afro-Honduran roots, born in the Bronx and raised in Louisiana, is one not frequently seen in professional baking circles. The former accountant soared to nationwide prominence after the publication of his cookbook in the summer of 2020. In it, he pairs explanations of various baking techniques with generous doses of gentle guidance. This approach, also reflected on his Instagram @artisanbryan, serves as the foundational tool for home bakers to recreate the breads he champions from North, Central, and South America, as well as other parts of the globe. 

Sourdough bread, in particular, is what Ford has become most closely associated with—a result of his efforts to redefine the breadth and scope of the naturally leavened bread in the public space. In contrast to the visually iconic, crusty, boule-shaped loaves of San Francisco, he spotlights the sourdoughs of San Pedro Sula, Honduras, where his mother is from, and beyond—focusing more on the term as a means to “make different kinds of bread rise in a healthier and more natural way,” as he writes in the introduction of his book. He goes on, “A dense loaf of pan de coco is no less ‘sourdough’ than a crunchy batard with an open, light crumb.”

What Ford has brought to the forefront is a question many of us had yet to ask: Why is bread, which has served as the bedrock of global cuisines for thousands of years, represented world-wide almost exclusively through a Euro-centric lens? 

“Bread is a representation of life,” he said in a recent interview. “I think of bread almost like a movement, as opposed to just being a food item. It is something we have in every culture, and it is present across every background.” 

In his book, Ford imparts gems learned from baking in his mother’s kitchen (“the Honduran secret weapon to a good tortilla is coconut milk”); shares recipes that evoke poignant episodes  from his life—including semitas, an after-school treat his father would bring home from the nearby Honduran bodega; his grandfather’s Jamaican hard dough; and pão de queijo, a Portuguese cheese bread he came upon while living in Miami. He also weaves in recipes inspired by Louisiana classics, like New Orleans-style French bread, bananas foster sourdough, and his “next-level” whole-grain pineapple cream beignets.

Discarding the modern day focus on aesthetics, crumb structure, and hydration levels, Ford emphasizes breadmaking as something much more intuitive. He roots his own practice in memories of learning how to make cinnamon-raisin bread for his father and watching his mother’s hands knead tortilla masa. 

[Read this: Flour, Salt, Water, and Time—The small but enlightened club of fanatics lovingly nurturing pots of fermenting sourdough starter in the back of their fridges.]

For him, baking is rooted in the primal joy of nourishment, in feeding those one cherishes most: a labor of love. 

Louisiana, where his parents moved after immigrating to New York in the 1980s from Honduras, was home to Ford for twenty-six years. He had the best of both worlds, he said, as far as food was concerned; lunch at school would be red beans and rice with cornbread, and his mother would serve arroz con pollo for dinner. From helping his mother in the kitchen, he learned to cook meals for his younger sister after school, eventually preparing meals for the entire family while his parents and brother worked. While in college, he worked as a line cook (among other restaurant roles) in New Orleans, which led to a deeper recognition of his love for cooking, and especially, baking. 

Ford spent a few years in Miami, eventually officially trading in his accounting books for a baker’s apron. While waiting to hear about a potential job at a bakery and mulling over the idea of opening his own, he started the blog, Artisan Bryan, which quickly gained significant readership from all over the world. In 2020, he was approached by Quarry Books to write his first cookbook. “None of the writing was premeditated, but once it started, I realized how much people needed a new voice,” he said. 

The platform has expanded, like a loaf in Ford’s oven, in ways he never could have predicted. Splitting his time between two of our country’s greatest food havens, Queens and the Crescent City, he and Kenna launched Flaky Biscuit Media in the spring of 2021 to herald diverse voices through storytelling and content creation including television productions, podcasts, and recipes, as well as community involvement out of New York and New Orleans. 

And the journey continues: At the end of 2020, Ford joined Chef David Chang’s podcast Recipe Club as a regular guest, and in July 2021, he began hosting his first television show, The Artisan’s Kitchen on Magnolia Network, which he described as “an unbelievable experience.” He is also working on his next cookbook, centered around his interpretations of Latin American baking, from desserts to pastries and more. In September, he revealed his latest endeavor in that vein: PanaderX, a pop up experience in New York City that draws on the baking culture of Latin America. 

For Ford, the principles he endorses in the art of breadmaking—creativity, inclusivity, exploration—are directly linked to his missions of advocacy and representation. He has built a diverse, dynamic community around the simple act of baking bread, of all kinds, while connecting us through something we all possess: our palate. 

Learn more about Ford at artisanbryan.com, follow his Instagram @artisanbryan, and get his recipes for Challah, here and Choco Pan de Coco, here.