Did you see the purple loaves of sourdough that were all over social media a few years ago? I missed them. In fact, I’m five years late to trying Karlo Evaristo’s heirloom blue corn masa sourdough bread, and I only discovered it by accident. Now, I can think of little else.
During a recent dinner at Le Hut Dinette, a new restaurant located in a Quonset hut in Santa Ana, my dinner companions ordered the sourdough bread. We wanted something to help sop up the peach vinegar and jalapeño oil in executive chef Ryan Garlitos’ excellent tomato salad.
What arrived at the table were slices of bread in a deep shade of violet. It was toasted on both sides, with umber splotches interrupting the purple, the entire surface shiny and shellacked with clarified butter.
I sniffed the bread in amazement, getting butter on my nose. It had the distinct aroma of blue corn tortillas cooking on a comal.
The crust cracked at the slightest provocation, and the middle was as fluffy and tender as a milk bread bun.
It was unlike any bread I’d tried, with the deep earthy flavor of blue corn balanced with a wonderfully sour tang.
Garlitos serves the bread with a side of compound butter made with beef tallow from sister restaurant Heritage Barbecue’s briskets, confit garlic and lemon. It’s the sort of thing that could hold its own on a cheese board. It’s stellar on the bread, but we found ourselves eating it plain, marveling at the blue corn flavor.
