The Sourdough Club

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Learn to bake nourishing bread that enhances mental and physical and mental health. Your membership includes engaging with both medical and baking experts in our live sessions, encouraging you to use baking as therapy to support health and well-being in a warm, supportive, friendly community.
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Nancy Silverton

Issue 30: The Sourdough Club Magazine ‘Sourdough Inspiration’ – Nancy Silverton

It is Sourdough September across the world this month, and to celebrate this we have an exclusive interview for you by Xanthe Clay of the Telegraph newspaper with the baking legend that is Nancy Silverton.

September also means the start of our 2022–2023 Nutrition & Digestibility of Bread Online Diploma and Bake for Health Certificate, which starts on the 22nd of the month. We always have a last-minute flurry of bookings, so if you are considering joining, please do look at both courses and make sure that, if eligible, you apply for a bursary or scholarship – this is the last chance this year.

Nancy Silverton
You can’t miss Nancy Silverton. Her red lipstick and owl-like spectacle frames are signature in themselves, a food lover’s Iris Apfel. But we see another side of Silverton every time we slice a loaf of airy sourdough or crack open a perfect baguette. With her groundbreaking bakery Brea, she’s credited with bringing artisan bread to the mainstream.

Silverton was brought up in Southern California, and enrolled in Sonoma State University to read Political Science, but dropped out in her senior year, opting instead to study at Cordon Bleu in London. A stint at restaurants including Wolfgang Puck’s Spago followed, before she headed back over the pond, this time to France to study bread-making at Ecole Lenôtre Culinary Institute in Plasir.

She opened Brea in 1989, using a homemade sourdough starter to make baguettes, rosemary olive oil loaf, olive bread, country white, whole wheat and dark Normandy rye. She sold it in 2001 for $6 million, only to lose the money in a Madoff investment.

Her restaurant Campanile, founded with her then-husband Mark Peel, had opened in 1990, but it was Pizzeria Mozza, Osteria Mozza and Pizzette that cemented her reputation. The idea was inspired by a conversation with legendary chef Jeremiah Tower over lunch at her house in Umbria, when he told her about Obika, an Italian restaurant that focused on one ingredient: mozzarella. The obsession with fine ingredients, detail and layering flavour on to an apparently bland base struck a chord with Nancy, and Pizzeria Mozza opened in LA in 2007, with a branch launching in London last year.

Vanessa Kimbell is among Silverton’s fans. ‘It’s inspiring to see a woman pushing the boundaries. When I was training in the 1980s and 1990s, it was rare to meet other women bakers,’ she told me. ‘Bakers owe much to people like Nancy, who built the foundations of how we bake bread. Her work underpins it.”

I asked Silverton some questions about her life in bread: she answered in typically acerbic style.

What’s so special about bread?

‘Is this a trick question? That’s like asking Rembrandt “What’s so special about a canvas?” or Lewis Hamilton “What’s so special about asphalt?” Bread is the foundation of food for me.  And, for the record,  I am not comparing myself to Rembrandt, although I am a far better baker than him.’

Did you eat good bread as a child? 

‘No,’ she says. For Nancy, growing up in the fifties and sixties, bread came from the supermarket, not a fancy baker, and certainly wasn’t made at home. Eating happened round the table, with her mother, a writer who wrote for the TV show General Hospital, and her lawyer father, and the focus was on the conversations about politics or writing. ‘The food that we were eating was completely secondary,’ she told the LA Times.

When did you bake your first bread? 

‘Spago in 1986.’ The first sourdough was the same year, a dinner loaf.  Successful? ‘It went well.’ So, were there any baking hurdles you had to get over? ‘Of course. Too many too list. Countless loaves lost and never to be recovered.’ She told the New York Times in 2011, ‘I didn’t know about adapting recipes. They were all failures. I had to start from the beginning, a tablespoon of this and a teaspoon of that. It took hundreds of tries.’

Any advice for new bakers?

‘Love baking. Do not bake if you do not love to bake. There will be many failures. Countless. But that is part of the beauty of baking. When it gets better. And better and better, and then, then, you get it! It’s wonderful.’

What is your favourite flour to use?

‘This is a question that needs an answer with a prefix. If I had one restaurant in one city, likely I would mention some small flour that is produced near this mythical restaurant. But, since I have restaurants just about all around the world – from California, to London, to soon, hopefully, Singapore and the Middle East, with more to come – I need to have a flour I can get to these places. I need to have some serious consistency in dough. Therefore, I will say King Arthur.’

Any particular mill or grower you’d like to give a shoutout to?

‘Like I said above, I need consistency from one of my restaurants to the other, so no particular mill or grower. Other than the widely available King Arthur.’

Describe the spot where your first bakery shop was, and the look/atmosphere.

‘624 S. La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles. It was in the building that would house my husband at the time and my restaurant Campanile. It was in a bell tower-ish building, hence the name, that was built in 1929 for Charlie Chaplin. I was there so much we lived there. I mean it. We lived there. For a few years.’

nancy silvertonHow about Pizzeria Mozza and Pizzette?

‘Pizzeria Mozza is on the busy Los Angeles corner of Highland and Melrose,  about two miles south of the heart of Hollywood.  It’s a corner where there is nearly always traffic and honking horns. It’s a lively place. It will turn 16 years old this year. Pizzette is in a former newspaper building and it has a good feel, too – sleek.’

What would you say to yourself if you could go back in time?

‘Depends how far back in time you’re talking about. If you said I could go back to July 1994, I would say to myself, “Make Jeff Bezos an offer for Amazon he couldn’t refuse.” If you said I could go back only to tomorrow, I would say to myself, “Don’t take the 405, take La Cienega.”’

Do you ever regret not finishing your degree in political science? (I dropped out of university, and ask myself this question.)

‘Not lately.’

What’s on your playlist as you bake?

‘There are too many songs and recording artists on it to list. But just a smattering: Frank Sinatra, Willie Nelson, Drake, Cat Stevens, John Coltrane, Neil Young, Johnny Cash, Bob Dylan.’

OR do you prefer podcasts?

‘NO, I prefer music.’

What is the secret to a great grilled cheese sandwich?

‘Quality ingredients and paying attention.’

Interview by Xanthe Clay

You can find and follow Nancy here:

Restaurants:

Nancy is the co-owner of Pizzeria Mozza in Los Angeles, Newport Beach and now London, as well as Osteria Mozza, Mozza2Go and chi SPACCA in Los Angeles.

Books: View all of Nancy Silverton’s books here

Instagram: @nancysilverton

View all previous editions of our Sourdough Club Magazine

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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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🍕 Sourdough Club members can learn to make sour 🍕 Sourdough Club members can learn to make sourdough pizza with our exclusive video tutorials and recipes. Plus all our top tips for making show-stopping pizza, like...

💡 The dough for your sourdough pizza should be slightly drier than a classic dough. It makes it easier to handle, especially when you are stretching the pizza base.

We look forward to sourdough pizza nights here at the Sourdough School. They are a chance to bring friends and family together, enjoy good food and get creative (and sometimes just a little competitive!) with pizza toppings. Over the years we’ve learned a few tricks and techniques for getting the best from our home-made sourdough pizzas. Many of these are really simple, but they can make a huge difference.

Follow the link in the bio to learn more about becoming a Sourdough Club member 👆

#sourdoughclub #sourdough #sourdoughbread #naturallyleavened #realbread #sourdoughbaking #bakingbread #breadmaking #homebakedbread #sourdoughlove #sourdoughpizza #realpizza #sourdoughpizzarecipe #roccbox #gozneyroccbox #pizzaoven #pizza #pizzalove #pizzarecipe #sourdoughpizzadough #homemadepizzadough
THE SOURDOUGH SCHOOL – HAND-CARVED WOODEN SPATUL THE SOURDOUGH SCHOOL – HAND-CARVED WOODEN SPATULA

One of the biggest issues around using a wooden spoon to mix sourdough is that you often mix a lower hydration initially, on the first mix. The problem with this is that you need some real strength... many a good wooden spoon has been snapped mixing dough. 

Our hand-carved wooden spatula has beauty. It has strength. The flat edge is designed to allow you to get right up against the edge of the bowl, to mix all the water and flour together. 

Baking is always a joy but it is even more joyful when you are using tools that are ergonomically designed and fit for purpose but also handmade lovingly by someone who has that same creative streak in them, using sustainable and ethical wood. 

Follow the link in the bio to our shop where you can find our full selection of wooden sourdough tools 👆

#sourdough #sourdoughschool #bread #sourdoughlove #sourdoughlover #naturalleavened #leavening #levain #realbread #breadmaking #bakebread #makebread #makerealbread #learntobakebread #breadmakingclass #sourdoughstories #bakingforlove #bakingtherapy #sourdoughbaking
🌾 CELEBRATE NATIONAL MILLS WEEKEND - 13th & 14t 🌾 CELEBRATE NATIONAL MILLS WEEKEND - 13th & 14th May 🌾

Join the festivities of #NationalMillsWeekend this May, as over 300 windmills and watermills open their doors to the public, showcasing the UK's rich milling heritage.

Visiting traditional mills is a beautiful way to connect with the ingredients you bake with, and delve into the heritage of bread making and milling. Head to their website to find a mill near you, like Whissendine Windmill pictured here!

Whissendine Windmill is one of the few remaining operational nineteenth-century windmills in England, towering over the village of Whissendine, Rutland for over 200 years. Restored to perfection by Nigel Moon, it produces plain, strong white, and wholemeal flours.

Don't miss out on this amazing opportunity to witness the magic of milling firsthand! 

#milling #freshlymilled #botanicalblend #fromscratch #unrefined #mockmillproud #mockmill #sourdoughclub #bread #crumbshot #opencrumb #wholegrain #bakingtips #sourdoughtips #sourdoughadvice #sourdoughhelp #sourdough #learnsourdough #sourdoughbread #wholegrainsourdough #wholemealsourdough
AGGRESSIVE COMMENTS We have noticed an increase i AGGRESSIVE COMMENTS 
We have noticed an increase in aggressive comments lately, and we believe this attitude could be due to the increase of misinformation from unregulated and unreliable data sources on bread from bakers and others who are saying anything for attention. In particular this trend is because the AI favours negative responses, which encourages nonsense in information & behaviour.😟

WHY WE WON’T PUT UP WITH IT
We would like to take a moment to clarify to help maintain a positive and respectful environment for everyone.

WE ARE EVIDENCE BASED 
Our posts are led by baker, activist and author @vanessakimbell, the founder of the @sourdoughschool, who has been passionately baking sourdough for 40 years. Her technical skills and knowledge of sourdough is phenomenal …. but she is also equally knowledgeable about the fermentation and how this can impact physical & mental health and finishing her PhD.

OUR FREE RESEARCH LIBRARY 
The knowledge and information we share is fully backed by Vanessa's expertise. You can access more than 700+ studies meticulously researched and published by her and the team of medical professionals, nutritionists, neuroscientists, doctors and psychiatrists in the database.

👆🏼www. Sourdough.co.uk/research 

We are a social enterprise and this dedication involves investing thousands of pounds to share evidence-based information about sourdough and bread. It is key to  our values and Vanessa's vision and commitment to baking nourishing bread as social justice.

We therefore ask that you take a moment to consider the incredible generosity in supporting all bakers for free for over a decade on our platform and kindly ask that you remain respectful in your communication with us and each other. 

Please reflect before making disparaging or inappropriate comments on posts

A SAFE SPACE 
👆🏼We are committed to maintaining a positive environment for our community, and anyone who engages in unprofessional communication will be removed to keep our community informed, inspired, engaged, encouraged and most of all safe in sharing their thoughts and tips, opinions and ideas on our feed.

Thank you 
The Sourdough Club Team 
#sourdoughclub
This is our Classic Sourdough Boule with 30% Botan This is our Classic Sourdough Boule with 30% Botanical Blend No.2...

The increase in diversity not only makes your gut happy, but the depth and complexity of flavour that it brings to your loaf is almost indescribable. You have to experience it to understand. 

Sourdough Club members can find this recipe on the Club, We hope it blows your mind – and your palate – as much as it does ours.

Botanical Blend No.2 is available to buy as a flour or as grits through @hodmedods follow the link in the bio to our shop to give it a go! 🌾🌼🍃 

#sourdough #sourdoughschool #bread #sourdoughlove #sourdoughlover #naturalleavened #leavening #levain #realbread #breadmaking #bakebread #makebread #makerealbread #learntobakebread #breadmakingclass #sourdoughstories #bakingforlove #bakingtherapy #sourdoughbaking
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