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Sweet sourdough book

ISSUE 16: The New Sweet Sourdough School Book is Out

 

Doughnuts & Brioche & Danish Pastries & Biscuits & Cakes & Sweet Pasta & Pies & Everything Sweet & Everything Sourdough.

The new book is out.

The Sourdough School Sweet Baking is the follow on from The Sourdough School bread book. I don't think I'd be exaggerating by saying that it is a groundbreaking approach to sourdough. The book is about baking sweet sourdough, with traditional recipes such as doughnuts and Danish pastries, as well as more unusual recipes such as Yemarina yewotet dabo (an Ethiopian honey bread) and jalebi, a sweet treat I learned to bake many years ago with a Gujarati chef. But the book is about far more than just sweet sourdough recipes or baking tips and techniques.

Nigella's reaction?  "It is impossible to read this book without wanting to scuttle off into the kitchen." & Tim Spector... the worlds leading expert in the gut microbiome? “Vanessa’s work on sourdough and the gut microbiome is changing the way we think of food, health and baking.” – Tim Spector, author of The Diet Myth & Spoon-Fed

Most people understand sourdough as bread, but fermenting transforms flour, and this book extends our knowledge on how to use sourdough to makes cakes and sweet bakes combining baking techniques taught here at The Sourdough School for over a decade. We share in detail the core principles of our approach to developing recipes and botanical flour blends, using cutting-edge research papers that have established the links between food, the gut microbiome and mental health.

All the research for the book is available on our study database. I am absolutely delighted that Professor Tim Spector wrote the foreword. Tim is the head of Genetic Epidemiology at King's College London, and the most cited scientist in the world. I often describe Tim as the Mick Jagger of the gut microbiome world; his work on understanding the gut microbiome has changed the world.

*Photos taken from The Sourdough School Sweet Baking Book by Vanessa Kimbell. Photo by Nassima Rothacker, published by Kyle Books. Foreword by Professor Tim Spector.  

 

The Book

Nigella on 'deliciousness':

So often, books that are heavy on science are perceived as complicated, but it has never been more important than right now to understand how what we eat affects the way we feel. I have purposefully included very easy recipes, that slot in perfectly to the routine of sourdough bread making that will build confidence. Nigella summed up the easy, utter deliciousness of the recipes, with her reaction saying, "It is impossible to read this book without wanting to scuttle off into the kitchen."

Over the coming weeks, we will be sharing more about this approach with members of The Sourdough Club, with exclusive recipes, tips, techniques, and extending tutorials on how to create and mill your own botanical blends, all of which will accompany the book.

Shopping List

As this month sees the launch of The Sourdough School Sweet Baking, it's worth purchasing eggs, sugar and fats such as butter and sunflower oil. With the introduction of our botanical blends, diversity is key, so it's a great idea to begin increasing the range of grains, legumes, seeds, nuts, and dried herbs and flowers in your cupboards. Several of the new recipes feature berries, as they are high in polyphenols, and now is the perfect time to get out foraging for some blackberries!

Vacancy for a sourdough baker in Glastonbury

Would you like to run a bakery in Glastonbury? This is a new and amazing opportunity.

Lucy Wyatt owner of Benedict St Kitchen has purchased a building in the town which now has two kitchens, one of which she would like to run as a bakery. The other kitchen is for a cafe business which she is developing - there is a big room in the building with space for 50 covers.

Lucy would like to be able to include fresh bread as part of the cafe offer, as well as sell directly to the public. She is also very interested in heritage grains and would like eventually to supply her own from land she has elsewhere in Somerset.

In the meantime there is a fantastic opportunity for making and selling sourdough in Glastonbury. It is possible, depending on start date, that she might be able to offer accommodation on-site too.

Other details - like hours and pay - can be decided to suit. Ideally she would like to come to an arrangement which rewarded whoever by encouraging them to build the business with a share of sales.

If you are interested in this position please contact Lucy Wyatt directly on lucywyatt57@gmail.com

This Month's Competition to win a signed copy of the Sweet Sourdough Book

Deadline: 30 Sep 2020

This month, we are delighted to be giving away two signed copies of Vanessa's new book, The Sourdough School Sweet Baking - one for you and one for a friend. All details of how to enter can be found on our competition page. Good luck!

There are a whole host of Instagram Lives this month...but don't miss Tim Spector

Date & Time: 7 Sep 2020 @ 8:00 pm
Guest: Professor Tim Spector
Watch it here: https://www.instagram.com/sourdoughschool/

The Sourdough School Sweet Baking – a conversation between one of the world’s leading scientists of food and nutrition, microbiome expert Professor Tim Spector & Vanessa Kimbell

Monday 7th September 8pm

Join Vanessa Kimbell as she will (virtually) welcome Professor Tim Spector back to The Sourdough School again. Tim will return as a special guest invited to discuss Vanessa’s newest book The Sourdough School Sweet Baking: Nourishing the Gut & the Mind, which includes a forward written by Tim. Last month Tim published his own new book Spoon Fed: Why almost everything we’ve been told about food is wrong – so Vanessa will be asking more about its themes of why so much we understand about nutrition is wrong.

Please check out our events page and Instagram accounts for information on all other Instagram Lives this month, including one with lifestyle coach and weight-loss expert Louise Parker on Wednesday 9th September.

Buy the Book!

Order your signed copy of The Sourdough School Sweet Baking: Nourishing the Gut & the Mind via the link below.

Find out more about The Sourdough School Sweet Baking: Nourishing the Gut & the Mind

Enjoy baking from the new Sweet Sourdough book, and don't forget to share your bakes with us using #sourdoughclub and #iamamember. Remember to keep an eye out on the events pages and on Instagram for the exciting Lives this month.

Happy baking! x

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All reasonable care is taken when writing about health aspects of bread, but the information it contains is not intended to take the place of treatment by a qualified medical practitioner. You must seek professional advice if you are in any doubt about any medical condition. Any application of the ideas and information contained on this website is at the reader's sole discretion and risk.

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A NEW APPROACH

👉🏻 For the past 3 years we’ve been working on something incredible … prescription sourdough bread making courses for our @sourdoughclub members 

📈We have had amazing advances in healthcare, but there is no pill to cure poor diet. The best medicine is prevention via a healthy lifestyle, and many studies have shown that people who eat healthily and exercise regularly sleep better, have less anxiety and depression, have more energy, and lower their risk of chronic illness overall.

🙌 Vanessa’s work on Bread & the Impact on the Gut Microbiome has been turned into something extraordinary. Prescription bread-making courses as a lifestyle intervention, and the Bread Protocol we teach here is designed to address the way you live, exploring behaviour related to nutrition, physical activity, stress management, sleep, social support and environmental exposures. These courses are 12 weeks long, and designed to maintain health and prevent disease not just in individuals bit in patients and populations, so we have 2 ways to enrol on a course: 

1️⃣ SOCIAL PRESCRIPTION 
If your doctor or healthcare practitioner is one of  our Sourdough School graduates and they feel that this bread-making prescription course is something that will improve your health, then they may can prescribe the course for you as a social prescription free.

2️⃣ SELF PRESCRIPTION 
You can self-prescribe these courses by enrolling yourself on a course to improve your health and wellbeing.

📰 If you are interested in learning more about the prescription courses then please sign up to the newsletters as we will be announcing their launch over the coming weeks and months. 

@vanessakimbell
@drmiguelmateas 
@dralexdavidson 
@dksherratt 

#lifestylemedicine #preventativemedicine #systemschange #socialprescribingday #socialprescribing
🧘 LAST ORDERS TODAY 🧘 I’m prepping the st 🧘 LAST ORDERS TODAY 🧘

I’m prepping the starters to post out on Thursday.

I was thinking why sourdough all these years? I guess it’s because is alive… it’s a culture of wild yeast and lactic acid bacteria. We might like to think we can control it, but we can’t control everything. Things change when we bake. The flour changes, the ambient temperature changes, or something happens during the middle of the day and your baking routine changes.

We can be very critical of ourselves. Starting the day by looking in the mirror and criticising our physical appearance. Or looking at something we’ve done or said and overanalysing it. Often, without realising, some of us can be incredibly negative.
It’s the same with bread. I notice that many people are self-depreciating and, while they aspire to make beautiful loaves, they have a distinct lack of acceptance that creating a really aesthetically stunning loaves takes time. It’s an art. It takes many years to be able to understand the nuances of each flour and how each one behaves to create bread. There is no instant fix. And I wouldn’t want there to be.

If you want an instant fix, go out and buy a packet mix – that way the work is done for you. In sourdough there’s no instant fix. That is the whole point of it really. That’s why we celebrate when we do make those incredibly beautiful loaves. And what you are actually celebrating isn’t high levels of gluten or high levels of hydration. It’s that person’s ability to have understood and connected to the flour, to their environment, to the yeast, to the timings and rhythm and everything coming together to create something that is joyous to eat.

To learn more about what we do here at The Sourdough Club and the courses we teach, follow the link in the bio to read 

#mindfulbaking #sourdough #sourdoughsclub #bread #sourdoughlove #sourdoughlover #naturalleavened #leavening #realbread #breadmaking #bakebread #makebread #makerealbread #sourdoughstories #bakingforlove #bakingtherapy #sourdoughbaking
🧂 ARTISAN INGREDIENTS FOR ARTISAN BREAD 🧂 A 🧂 ARTISAN INGREDIENTS FOR ARTISAN BREAD 🧂

Artisan bread starts with artisan ingredients. Honest ingredients that have been grown and harvested with respect for both the people and the earth. The flour has to be organic, the water chlorine free and the yeast has to be sourdough, and so it follows that the salt has to be similarly harvested with principles that are in synergy with our own. Salt making was, up until the industrial revolution, an artisanal craft. Much like bread making salt is also an artisan product that has been industrialised, so we use a hand-harvested salt in our bread.
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In our shop, we sell unrefined salt specifically for sourdough - Natural salt contains all of its trace minerals and other elements that are naturally a part of its origin. Our salt is not exposed to chemicals and does not contain anti-caking agents.
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Follow the link in our bio to our shop, where you can find the best artisan ingredients for your bread! 
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#artisan #salt #iamamember #sourdoughclub #sourdough #sourdoughbread #naturallyleavened #realbread #sourdoughbaking #bakingbread #breadmaking #homebakedbread #sourdoughlove
DID YOU KNOW WE HAVE AN ONLINE SHOP & CAN PURCHASE DID YOU KNOW WE HAVE AN ONLINE SHOP & CAN PURCHASE MY WHITE SOURDOUGH STARTER?
(with worldwide delivery)
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I have several sourdough starters but The French white starter is one that I have been using since I was 11 years old and originates in the bakery I grew up baking within France. It takes a bit longer to reach it’s peak and is generally slower and sweeter, and much more forgiving of being neglected for a week, so the one I recommend for beginners. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We have verbal confirmation that the starter originated over 115 years ago and If you swipe right in the video you can listen to me chatting to one of the older residents of the village confirming that bakery did not shut during the war either .. & it has been maintained ever since... it’s a lovely story. Although the microbes double every 20 – 30 minutes when they are refreshed ... so it is either over a century old or 30 minutes old depending on how you want to look at it. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
You can purchase a pot of my starter, along with a grey moon kilner jar & a mini video course on looking after your starter. 
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TAP THE PICTURE TO SHOP.
 
Swipe right to see the amazing video of the French bakery where the starter originated from @vanessakimbell has been baking with this starter for over 20 years … and first baked almost 40 years ago with it …#romantic 
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#breadbosses #breadporn #flourwatersalt #breadtalk #bread #breadstagram #sourdough #sourdoughschool #bread #sourdoughlove #sourdoughlover #naturalleavened #leavening #levain #realbread #breadmaking #bakebread #makebread #makerealbread #learntobakebread #breadmakingclass #sourdoughstories #bakingforlove #bakingtherapy #sourdoughbaking #bannetons #bakery
🌾 BARLEY - DO AS THE ROMANS DO 🌾
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Oats & Barley. We love both, but this week we have been diving to barley with our students, learning about nutritional value, what role plays in supporting key butyrate producers for gut health and why gladiators were call 'barley-eaters'!
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And naturally, we will be talking about how we can incorporate barley into our baking and our botanical blends.
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To find out more, become a student of the Sourdough Club! 
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#grains #wheat #einkorn #emmer #spelt #heritagegrains #freshlymilledflour #milledflour #milling #freshlymilled #botanicalblend #fromscratch #unrefined #mockmillproud #mockmill
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