My kitchen smells fabulous. I saw an Instagram post on Hodmedod’s feed about an interesting new grain blend from Venessa Kimbell, founder of The Sourdough School. As she rightly points out, even whole ancient grains and heritage wheats to grind at home are sold cleaned and graded, unlike the inclusions our ancestors would have inevitably ended up with in their bread. So, she has developed … Continue reading Botanical Bread
It’s a very different Sourdough September this year. To me, flour and bread baking have been emblematic of Lockdown, and perhaps an appreciation of the fact that flour needs to be sown, grown, harvested, and milled before it can be brought to the shelves of our supermarkets and farm shops has filtered in to the public consciousness. I have been doing my best to buy … Continue reading Sourdough September 2020
When I buy flour for my sourdough, I endeavour to use it as an opportunity to support British farmers who are using environmentally sound practises on their farm, and have full traceability for the product. I have written previous posts about this but Hodmedod’s and Bakery Bits are two of my go-to websites. They are both under pressure due to the massive increase in demand … Continue reading New toy…
One of the repercussions I certainly didn’t envisage about the pandemic was a shortage of bread flour. Not just the supermarket stuff, but that from artisan producers and micro-mills. I suppose the wonder of modern technology where you can type “bread flour” in to a search engine and be presented with a selection of suppliers means it’s easy to be indiscriminate. Even rye flour is … Continue reading Flour power
I am starting the sourdough courses this weekend, and have ordered some important and interesting flours to both try myself, and demonstrate to the bakers. Flour? Important? Interesting?? Seriously? Well, yes. I listened to a brilliant series of podcasts by Farmarama, where they discussed the grain used for baking bread, from growing, to harvesting, to milling, to baking. Here is the link to the first … Continue reading Flour and friends
The Sourdough Tales workshop with Vicky and me at the wonderful Starnash Farmhouse all about learning about how to make a decent loaf, but also gaining an understanding of the process so you can actually fit it in to your everyday existence, rather than it being a rarified experience to only be tackled when the planets favourably align. Both of us make sourdough regularly: Vicky … Continue reading Sourdough Tales Workshop
