About Us
The recipe that changed me said this: mix flour, water, salt, and let rest. Let rest. In naturally-leavened, slow-fermented breads, dough strength is formed just as much through time as it is through kneading. Rest becomes an active process: building gluten structure, releasing grain’s nutrition, giving life to dough. Amidst a hectic world, this seemed poignant advice.
Gentle Rhythms centers itself around this question: what are we capable of when allowed the time and space for active rest? Formerly a one-room baking school in the Blue Ridge Mountains, we’ve transitioned to teaching and cooking on the road. Just as before, we seek to provide an opportunity to work with our hands and senses, to create with one another, and to approach food with new and curious eyes. From simple sourdough lessons to regional cooking classes to studies on food history, this modern schoolhouse offers a space to bring intention into our lives, whether for a professional baker looking to expand their practice or an everyday home cook eager to learn new techniques. We’re almost always on the road; reach out if you’d like to collaborate.
ABOUT ME
Photo by Hey Joe! Studios
Brennan Johnson
Brennan’s fascination with food culture and history was catalyzed by a trip to Western Europe in 2009 to study communal brick ovens. He began baking bread soon after, baking out of his father’s own brick oven and selling at local farmers markets during his high school summers. He has a degree from Whitman College in Environmental Humanities—which for him meant exploring our culture’s relationship to food—an herbalism certificate from Terra Sylva School of Botanical Medicine, and has worked in restaurants and bakeries across the US, Mexico, Japan, and Europe. Gentle Rhythms is a way to piece together those disparate experiences, combining his curiosity in food studies with his love of hands-on cooking. These days he is usually found on the road, learning about foodways wherever he is.