Truckee Sourdough has been baking bread day and night since 1995, providing an entire region with exceptional sourdough breads. Owners Keith and Diane Nikkel first broke bread in the early 80s while running a wine shop in Napa to offer customers an artesian bread selection. Although the wine business was booming, the Nikkels had a longing for the mountains and decided that they spent enough time up in Tahoe that they should just move here. So they did just that and the rest is history… well, sort of.
They opened the Ponderosa Deli in Truckee (where Piper’s Patisserie is now) in 1986. The deli did have an oven in the back but the dreams of breadmaking were on the back burner, so to speak. If you’ve ever tried to bake bread, you probably found out that it is not as simple as one may think. Even still, you may be thinking that baking bread is not rocket science but then again you probably didn’t realize that Keith once worked for Lockheed Martin. You guessed it, rocket scientist. Perhaps that’s why Truckee Sourdough is so good.
In 1995 the bread dreams kept Keith awake and he started to get up at 3 a.m. and bake 150 to 200 loaves a day. Baking in the oven in the back of his deli, Keith would sell out of his sourdough by noon everyday.
‘The lightbulb went off in my head,’ Keith said, ‘I started going to the local farmers market and that’s when it really took off. The bread sold as fast as I could hand it out.’ Once they were able to get their product out to a bigger market, the demand was instant. Realizing they needed more space Keith and Diane moved into their West River Street location in 1997. They have been operating at full throttle 363 days a year for nearly a decade producing on average 10,000 loaves a day. The only days they don’t deliver are Thanksgiving and Christmas. Truckee Sourdough has 15 varieties for commercial consumption and offers restaurants the choice of more than 50 products. They deliver to Nevada City, Reno, South Lake, Carson City, Auburn, Truckee and all spots in between. Keith and Diane have created more than a business, they have created a staple of the community with a simple and invaluable resource – bread. And this bread is good, really good. If you’ve ever toasted up a piece of Truckee Sourdough – be it a rosemary baguette, ciabatta roll, or the roasted garlic loaf – and enjoyed it with a steaming bowl of soup, I know you found nirvana, as I have.
‘We really owe it to our employees for continuing to create a quality product and being endlessly dedicated, we couldn’t do it with out them,’ Keith said. The company also donates bread to Truckee’s Senior Center and many local events. A community is only as strong as its people. The Nikkels are a wonderful family providing an indispensable product and serving their community. Thanks again and keep the homefires burning.
Sourdough, an historical bread
Historically, bread has been very common in just about any culture due in part to its simple ingredients: water, flour, and yeast. From these simple ingredients we can create thousands of different breads. Sourdoughs were some of the earliest breads that were naturally fermented, Keith said, meaning that the yeast is an ‘active’ culture and not ‘dormant’ yeast waiting to be activated. This active culture is called a starter. The baker can either capture the wild yeast out of the air to create a starter from scratch or acquire one from another baker and expand it himself. When I asked Keith what made Truckee Sourdough bread so good, he winked and said, ‘Trade secrets.’
Yeast is a single-cell fungus that breaks down the starches in wheat flour through a fermentation process, forming sugar and causing the bread to ‘rise.’ When the yeast works on the starch and sugar molecules, it gives off carbon dioxide gas and alcohol. Time and fermentation is the key with sourdough bread. A two- to three-day fermentation time allows the starter to develop bacteria called lactobacilli. The bacteria create lactic acid, which adds a slightly acidic flavor to the bread. This lactic acid, when combined with the alcohol the yeast creates, is what creates the ‘sour’ in sourdough.
Find Truckee Sourdough breads at pretty much every local grocery store.
