For Brooke Newsome, it’s strictly sourdough in the kitchen

How one local woman turned a breadmaking hobby — and recent online trend — into a cottage business

Photos by Tami Mullins

Rows of sourdough rounds with meticulously detailed designs line the stone countertop, each in a crisp bakery bag sporting a trendy logo. It’s a regular scene in any bakery, only it’s not — it’s Brooke Newsome’s kitchen.

By her own account, she is just about the least likely person to own a breadmaking business. Even she is surprised how Sweet & Sourdough has taken off. The kitchen was never her area of expertise; she has a full-time job at Salve Regina University, and she’s a mother of four. “My husband is a chef, so I don’t cook at all,” she adds. “In 25 years before COVID, I think I had cooked 10times.” However, when their youngest daughter shipped off to college in the fall of 2023, the empty nester knew she needed a hobby.

With numerous food allergies, including gluten ,Newsome decided to experiment with making sourdough bread. She could control every ingredient closely, she thought, and sourdough’s ingredient list is about as elementary as it comes: flour, water, and salt. Perfecting it is a whole other experience, of course, but from the start, Newsome’s sourdough showed promise.

“I’m allergic to everything. So I made this bread, and it didn’t give me a reaction. I didn’t have hives. I didn’t have a stomachache. Nothing,” she recalls. Her creation, though, was still a work in progress, and wildly imperfect. “It was really ugly,” she says, laughing. “It looked more like a Frisbee than a loaf of bread, but I ate it, and it was fine.”

Sourdough baking experienced a meteoric rise during the 2020 pandemic lockdown, spurred by boredom and fueled by social media sharing. Amateur kitchen chemists shared their journeys coddling sourdough starters, watching them bubble and thrive, then rolling up their sleeves to knead the dough, shape it, and set it aside to proof, allowing the yeast to ferment before baking beautiful batches of sourdough loaves.

Early 2024 saw a resurgence of sourdough’s popularity as the “tradwife” lifestyle began to trend on social media, across the Internet, and in legacy media, from major news networks to outlets including Vogue, The New Yorker, and The New York Times. A fusion of the words “traditional” and “wife,” the tradwife phenomenon touts homemaking, including baking and thoughtful, made-from-scratch meals. Growing awareness of the benefits of maintaining a healthy gut and limiting the consumption of processed foods has propelled sourdough to the role of lead actor in the baking world.

In Rhode Island, there’s another factor at play. In November 2022, the state’s “Cottage Food” law went into effect, allowing residents to legally sell homemade baked goods. Cottage food manufacturing is set in a residential kitchen, where baked goods are produced and sold directly to a consumer. Permitted goods include biscuits, breads made with yeast, brownies, cookies, muffins, double-crust pies and single-crust fruit pies. Cakes may be baked and sold, as long as they require no refrigeration or temperature controls to maintain food safety, the law states.

Kitchens must be registered with the Rhode Island Department of Health, and those preparing baked goods to sell must complete food handler training. In addition, the law requires a notarized affidavit attesting the residential kitchen meets all state requirements.

“Starter” is the cornerstone of it all — the origin of every sourdough bread. A mixture of just flour and water transforms into a live fermented culture over a week or two, feeding on naturally occurring yeast. Many bakers source their starter from another baker, like Newsome, whose starter came from a friend. Similar to a vines at a vineyard, maturity makes for resiliency. “The older they are, the stronger they are. The stronger they are, the better rise they have; the harder they are to kill, which is great, because I might kill it,” she explains, laughing.

Quality, whole grain flour (Newsome prefers organic)mixed with 68 to 70-degree water will create healthy yeast colonies and good bacteria for the starter to thrive. After a starter is “fed” with equal parts flour and water, there are multiple indicators that it’s mature enough to be used, including doubling (or tripling!) in size, and the appearance of tiny bubbles that release carbon monoxide.

Newsome’s journey was a learning process, but she insists that following the widely published steps led her to success. “I am not a scientist. I’m just a Navy brat that can follow rules really well,” says the self-described computer geek.

Bakers like Newsome also must consider variables that can affect that baking process, like altitude and a kitchen’s temperature. These factors, and because a starter collects wild yeast from the environment, paired with Newsome’s own techniques, like her preference for doing a 18-to-36-hour cold fermentation, means her sourdoughs are uniquely Newport.

Proud of her made-from-scratch efforts, Newsome started sharing photos of her sourdough creations on social media. Soon, she was fielding inquiries from friends and others in the Newport community asking how they could buy her homemade loaves.

She had no intention of selling her bread — that was illegal, she thought. But a friend, Tami Mullins, a co-founder of Newport Sea Salt Co., updated her on the recently passed Cottage Law. Sweet & Sourdough became official soon after, with Newsome paying the $65 annual fee to register her home kitchen with the health department in May of 2024.

She quickly discovered not only a desire for wholesome, locally made, preservative-free, sourdough bread, but a demand.

Newport County is home to some exceptional bakeries, but some sell out quickly and others operate on schedules that don’t work for every local bread lover. Newsome said some of her customers live with severe food allergies and are reassured knowing that she shares their same dietary restrictions.

“This is obviously a need, and there’s so many people that are like, ‘I can’t eat bread, but your bread is the only bread I can eat.’ For years, I went without that stuff, and I just wanted people to be able to have a sandwich for heaven sakes!”

Newsome typically bakes before sunrise, on lunch breaks or during weekends. She collects orders via messaging on Instagram (@sweetandsourdough.npt) and customers pick up their bread at her Newport home.

Sweet & Sourdough markets sourdough rounds and sourdough loaves, but Newsome has used her starter to make sourdough hamburger buns, tortillas, cinnamon rolls, and other baked goods. Like anyone, perfecting her goods has come with refining her craft, one loaf at a time.

“I think I got good at it because I was making bread in volume,” she says, so I could do trial and error and learn, you know, in a week what most people would learn in a year.