About The Sourdough Club
The Sourdough Club is a pioneering social enterprise dedicated to teaching the art of healthy bread-making as a form of lifestyle medicine. Founded by Dr. Vanessa Kimbell and run by The Sourdough School Alumni, the Club fosters a community of bakers who are passionate about improving health and well-being through the power of sourdough. Learn to bake seriously amazing bread while supporting your gut health, mental wellness, and overall well-being. Our evidence-based approach combines lifestyle medicine and nutritional psychiatry, using baking as social prescribing to enhance community health. It is an easy, affordable way to improve your digestion, manage your mood, and bake for better health. Join us for inspiring recipes, great conversation, expert tips, and a community filled with laughter, friendship, and incredible bread.
Our Approach is Evidence based.
Our approach integrates the principles of Baking as Lifestyle Medicine (BALM), enabling both self-prescription and social prescription by qualified BALM Practitioners.
What We Offer
- Expert Instruction: Learn from Vanessa Kimbell, a renowned sourdough specialist with four decades of experience. Our comprehensive courses are designed to help you master the art of sourdough baking.
- Holistic Education: Our curriculum goes beyond baking. We cover health, nutrition, and the science behind bread and gut health. This holistic approach empowers you to make informed decisions about your diet and lifestyle.
- Health Benefits: Experience the profound impact of baking on physical and mental health. Our baking-as-lifestyle-medicine approach has documented improvements in well-being, supported by scientific research.
- Community Engagement: Join a vibrant community of like-minded individuals. Share your experiences, get feedback, and grow together in our interactive forums and live sessions.
- Support from Professionals: Benefit from the expertise of healthcare professionals, including GPs and nutritionists, who provide guidance during our weekly live sessions.
- Unique Resources: Access over 600 posts, videos, and 150 recipes, all designed to cater to different learning levels. Our lessons adhere to the BALM Protocol, focusing on gut health and sustainable practices.
- Social Impact: Your membership fee supports our mission to address inequalities in the food system. By being a member, you contribute to a movement that promotes food justice and sustainable living.
Join Us
Whether you are a healthcare professional looking to prescribe BALM or an individual seeking to improve your health through baking, The Sourdough Club welcomes you. Together, we can make a significant impact on personal and community health, one loaf at a time.
Explore our memberships, join our courses, and become part of a community dedicated to making a difference through the simple act of baking bread.
It’s about inspiring recipes, great conversation, baking tips, learning about bread and gut health, mental wellness, and baking seriously amazing bread. We use baking as social prescribing to support community well-being through lifestyle medicine. We welcome new members who feel they need help with digesting bread, managing mood and mental health, dealing with digestive issues, or who want to learn to bake to support health. You will find laughter, friendship, and appreciation of life through baking.
How The Sourdough Club came about
The Sourdough Club isn’t your typical baking hub. It sprouted from a yearning for authentic, interdisciplinary learning, and The Club opened at my kitchen table back in 2010 as I opened The Sourdough School. The club was born out of remembering the frustrations of trying to navigate such a lot of nonsense: sifting through mixed information, longing for conversations with experts on bread and health, and seeking genuine community. I dreamt of a haven where one could discuss health challenges with doctors, dissect the latest nutrition news with professionals, and see bread not just as food but as therapy.
For me, the ideal would’ve been pursuing a nutrition degree while working in an artisan bakery, but reality painted a different picture. Juggling life with three young children far from any bakery, I founded The Sourdough Club as a way to pool knowledge and gather a community of people who believed in decent bread being the foundation of a healthy diet.
Today, our club encapsulates all that I envisioned. We do extraordinary things together and share knowledge, making a quiet but significant impact through something beautiful. I think it is important for you to know that I do not, and neither do my partners, take a salary from The Sourdough Club. We run this club voluntarily as a social enterprise. Your membership fee supports changing the dynamics of inequalities in the food system, and by being a member, you are actively engaged in supporting food justice.
Our club has a purpose. We are activists, and in our members, I recognise the equal dedication to systems change and fostering a healthy, sustainable lifestyle. I have been baking for over 40 years. I have worked alongside some of the world’s greatest bakers, trained award-winning bakers, and taught hundreds of people to bake healthy bread. It is sometimes challenging, but never boring and my dedication remains unwavering.
Good bread has never been more relevant. We are now facing a tidal wave of illness and environmental damage from ultra-processed foods which deprive our gut of essential fiber, affect mental health, and exacerbate climate change, BALM offers a bread-making framework designed for all bakers to use to bolster gut, mental, and community health, grounded in regenerative farming practices. Our work means that you learn as part of a global community of bakers reshaping the world, one loaf at a time.
Warmly,
Dr Vanessa Kimbell
