24 March 20th-March 26th, 2025 phoenixnewtimes.com PHOENIX NEW TIMES | NEWS | FEATURE | FOOD & DRINK | ARTS & CULTURE | MUSIC | CONCERTS | CANNABIS | A Bread Above This Phoenix home baker has become a sourdough superstar. BY ZACH ODEN A ndres Cano bakes your favorite chef’s favorite sourdough. His secret is in the simplicity. Sourdough requires very few ingredients: salt, water, flour and sour- dough starter, which is itself just water, flour and a yeast. When Cano posts videos on social media of finding off-the-shelf sourdough bagged with a Doritos-esque list of ingredients — palm oil, ascorbic acid, calcium sulfate, on and on — you can feel the sadness radiate out of your phone. The bread looks pasty and morose compared with Cano’s absurdly gorgeous loaves. Simple ingredients and the single oven in his home kitchen are all the young baker needs to kick out savory, symmet- rical golden brown loaves. “My dream loaf,” Cano says, “is when it has that perfect sourdough shark fin, that crunchy crust with a tender interior, and it opens up to this airy, warm, lovely open crumb. That is my favorite loaf.” Cano has gathered a devoted following in the Valley for his dreamy breads. He sells his artisanal batches under the banner Andres Candough Doughvine Bread, baking every loaf at his home in Laveen and delivering them in his car or handing them to customers on his porch. If you’re not ready to hit him up on Hotplate or on Instagram, you can find him at Scottsdale Farmers Market on March 8 and 15, as well as the Laveen Farmers Market on April 5. He has tentative plans to expand: a food truck to help him serve farmer’s markets, different sorts of loaves. For now, though, Cano is purely a cottage baker who, in less than a year, has gone from total unknown to low-key Phoenix bread celeb. Born in Colombia and raised in New Jersey, Cano came to Phoenix more than 20 years ago as a member of the Air Force. When his service ended, he took civilian jobs in technology and business develop- ment. Baking was an occasional hobby for him, hardly a calling. It was last July 4 weekend that he, his partner and some friends rented a vacation place in Heber, Arizona. A friend brought along some sourdough starter that tempted Cano to experiment in the kitchen. Over the course of a week of baking, he became obsessed. All summer, Cano threw himself into baking, researching and testing recipes, and experimenting with water ratio, starter fermentation, room temperature and rising times. At first, he shared the loaves only with his partner. Then he posted a sourdough selfie that soon caught the attention of a family member who tried the bread and insisted: This is totally good enough to sell. By September, Cano’s bread was on point, and he worked up the courage to put it in front of an even more discerning audi- ence. He was a regular at Chilte, the highly decorated Mexican restaurant by James Beard-recognized chef Lawrence “LT” Smith and his partner, Aseret Arroyo. On a whim, Cano brought the chef a loaf. Smith soon texted him. “Thank you so much for the bread!” he wrote. “Flavor is nice and picks up Andres Cano preparing sourdough loaves in his home kitchen in Laveen, AZ. (Andres Cano) Andres Candough’s signature “OG” Plain Sourdough loaf. (Andres Cano) >> p 25 ▼ Food & Drink
