Cappuccino Thoughts 45: On Flavor Maximalism, Focaccia, and Creative Outlets
An interview with Lorenzo Sampson and his sourdough starter Gloria
“When my apartment burned down, and I was allowed back in for my essentials, I grabbed my passport and my sourdough starter Gloria.”
I absolutely love meeting people with creative side hustles—or even just a creative side. I think it’s so wonderful to create and not just consume—writing, visual arts, fashion, whatever it is. One of my goals for this newsletter is to share this space with a few of the coolest creative people in my life, and I’m very excited for you to meet Lorenzo. I had long heard about Lorenzo’s fondness for focaccia baking, but when I got to experience the magic of his carby goodness myself, I knew I needed to get the full scoop.
First, some feedback on my espresso thoughts:
-Are we sure Eric Adams is in fact our mayor? A question I posed last week that we may have a new answer to. This week, the FBI seized his electronic devices and he is now the subject of a federal criminal inquiry into his involvement with the hasty opening of the Turkish Consulate in New York. Is it a massive coincidence that I said this and then a few days later it turns out he had involvement with the foreign government of the country my partner is from? Yes. Was I right that there was something off about him? Also yes. Let this be a warning to all: Japanese grocery stores, I’m onto you too.
-"I love espresso thoughts, please have more thoughts soon.” Thank you, kind reader, more thoughts to come.
-"These were so high voltage, I could barely sleep at night.” I can imagine the jitters! I appreciate your close read.
Now onto the bread!
Meet Lorenzo Sampson (and his sourdough starter Gloria)
Cappuccino Thoughts: Let’s start with the bread and butter. How did you get into focaccia?
Lorenzo Sampson: Actually, focaccia is relatively new for me. I just started in 2022. But I’ve been doing sourdough since 2016. But I stopped in college. And then suddenly the pandemic hit, and everyone is into sourdough again! I’ve had my sourdough starter for about three years. She actually survived in the fridge [through my apartment’s fire]. Starters take a minute to develop and ripen, so I was super glad. The ancient Egyptians were actually the ones to figure this out. All bread basically used to be sourdough. They used a grain-based porridge and mixed it with water and it got a little hot. And then you add yeast. It loves a slurry mixture of flour and water. You keep feeding it, discard most of it, and give it more flour and water, until finally it starts smelling super ripe and sour and beautiful. So for that reason, it’s a whole process, and I felt super emotionally attached to my starter. It gave me so much, and so much to do during Covid.
CT: I was the happy recipient of one of your “focaccia drops.” It made my whole day. Tell me how that came about.
LS: It was winter 2022, right before the fire happened, and I remember thinking that I love being outside, but in the winter in New York, you really need a reason to go out. So I thought, let me bake bread and give it to a few friends. And then it became this thing, where I would meet people and decide to give them sourdough, or people would request it. I would just show up and hand them bread. I’ve met people at their homes, at their offices, when they’re out to dinner. And it became a really good reason to stay in touch with people. I would scroll through my phone and think, “oh I haven’t caught up with this person in three months, let me bake them some bread.” I ended up having some really amazing conversations that totally rekindled friendships.
CT: Literally breaking bread with them…
LS: But then came a watershed moment. I made focaccia. I literally just saw it in a TikTok. And people lost their minds. That was great for me, because focaccia is way easier to make! With sourdough, you have to fold it and stretch it over the course of three hours, and then you have to let it do the bulk rise and shape it. It’s 100% an art. If you pull it too much, you have to move it the other way. I’ve had loaves that I’ve lost because I’ve touched them too much.
For focaccia, you fold it twice in the course of an hour, then throw it in a pan, and that does the shaping. What’s also nice about focaccia is it can really stand up to some flavor because it is so, so sour. I’m a flavor maximalist. There’s this movement now in food where people just want to taste a tomato and they say it can’t get any better. But I want a flavor explosion in my mouth. So I always do onion, rosemary, salt and pepper of course. And then you know what people really like? Everything but the Bagel seasoning.
CT: I love the creativity you bring to bread-baking, and the way that it’s become a conduit for you to connect and reconnect with people. What else is surprising about focaccia?
LS: Something that’s really amazing about fermentation, which is part of the process of bread-making, is that the bread is literally alive until you bake it. Something happens in fermentation and you’ve gone beyond just life. It uses the bacteria and yeast we associate with death. It’s on the verge of rotting, and I think your brain sends crazy signals, whoa, this is crazy dodgy! And it’s exciting.
CT: How did your focaccia project grow?
LS: Well, my friend Nico does this really awesome thing called Home for Dinner. It started out as something for friends, and it grew into a showcase for people making awesome food. People donate different things and it’s staffed by volunteers. Recently they had an event at Stone Street Cafe on Broome St. and they asked me if I would make focaccia for the event. It was the first time I’ve made focaccia not just because I felt like it, but on a deadline. So I said yes, not knowing how much focaccia I would need to make to feed 80 people. It turns out I needed nine loaves! I had no idea what I was getting myself into, and honestly, if I had known how much work it would be, I don’t think I would have done it. But ignorance is a beautiful thing. I have literally three square feet of counter space and I churned out all nine loaves.
CT: That is a lot of focaccia per square foot. What was the next step?
LS: I thought that was fun, but it would be even better if I could make all this bread for all the people I love. So I decided to host a focaccia party on my roof and just see who came. And you know what, people always show up for food.
CT: That’s so true.
LS: You know what’s amazing, I looked at pictures later of the party, and every single person was talking to someone they didn’t know. I knew all these people from all the different facets of my life and here they were meeting. To me, that’s the most beautiful thing I could have asked for.
CT: I love that. That’s also what I was trying to do with the Cappuccino Thoughts walk. What’s next then?
LS: Here’s the thing. There was always a part of me that wondered if I could do this for a living. Like the people at L’appartament 4F, they turned their Instagram page into a whole bakery. But business, capitalism, is very structured and rigid. And bread? It’s very unpredictable and complicated and it’s also alive. You can’t control it. It can turn out totally different from one day to the next. The night before my focaccia party, I was up until 3am because my apartment was so cold and the bread wasn’t working. It was truly miserable. I want focaccia to be fun. The second you try to manufacture that consistently, it adds so much pressure and stress. So for that reason, I totally want to keep it as a hobby.
CT: I think it’s so important to be able to make that decision. It feels like today every hobby we have, people say we need to turn it into a business. Even Cap Thoughts, I’m honestly not sure where I want to go with it next. So far, it’s been a really interesting platform for creativity, but it’s certainly never going to be my full-time job. It’s important to push back against the urge to monetize everything.
LS: I am so glad I had this experience because I always would have had it in the back of my mind. Now I know what place I want it to have in my life. I want to do the deliveries still and keep it free, because I would never want to charge for that. But I want to be able to go out to dinner and not worry about my bread. I feel like during Covid, we all needed that structure to break up the time, but now I don’t want that.
CT: But it’s amazing to have had that experience and be able to share it with your community.
LS: Something I love about New York is this attitude of “f*ck it, let’s try.” This is a place where you can make a living doing some weird stuff. And no one judges you because ten feet away, there’s someone doing something even weirder.
CT: Or a hundred feet away, there’s someone doing the same thing who totally gets you.
LS: Exactly. This place belongs to all of us. I am so, so grateful for the chances I’ve had and to live here and have had so many people support me. There’s no better place to try something like this.
As told to Cappuccino Thoughts outside Porto Rico Coffee. This interview has been edited and extremely condensed for clarity. Lorenzo could, quite literally, talk for hours about bread and creativity. We love it.
Updates on the bag project
I am honestly not trying to do too much more in 2023 other than put out the drop of black bags. In 2024, my priority is to find an additional retailer who fits my key demographic (corporate women in their late ‘30s/early ‘40s. My people!). If you know of a boutique that I should look into, let me know!
Look of the week
I fully stood in moving traffic to capture this fellow (don’t tell my parents). He is giving such sprezzatura! The brown suede jacket and tasteful collar, burgundy velvet pants with coordinating scarf, jaunty cap…even the cane! All clearly carefully selected, but without looking so done like some of these menswear hypebeasty guys do. This man looks like he belongs at a pasticceria in Milan, but he is certainly embracing the autumn in New York color palette. A+ signore.
What’s on the bedside table
I am 300 pages into the 550-page tome The Secret History. This book has been on my bedside table forever and is constantly being recommended to me. Confoundingly, it is also one of McNally Jackson’s bestselling books this year according to its website. What is this 31-year old book’s hold on society? And why has it never been turned into a movie?
The book stars a group of six students studying classics at a New England college, when their friend group is upended by murder. I have really enjoyed the exaggerated portrayal of liberal arts campus life: preppy guys, the fish out of water who moves from California, incredibly idiosyncratic characters on campus with very niche interests, and people who are way too into the Greeks and bacchanalia, all of which hit very close to home. (Don’t ask me about my freshman year classics program 😂). This book apparently set off the trend of “dark academia,” which has found a second life on TikTok. I would definitely recommend if you’re looking for a cozy read in the last dregs of autumn. And if you’ve already read it, reply to this email and tell me why you think it has such staying power.
Thanks for reading Cappuccino Thoughts. If you want more where this came from, subscribe here.
This week I will be making a pilgrimage to New Haven for the Harvard-Yale Game. Boola Boola!
P.S., It has come to my attention that some of your replies to this newsletter went out into the void and never made it to my inbox! You should be able to reply directly here, and you can always reach me with thoughts and feedback at claire.akkan@gmail.com.