Message from Vanessa
This Magazine was produced and edited By Lisa Finnimore.
I've just spent a week with some of my graduate students on a baking retreat in Tuscany at the wonderful Castello Di Potentino. Alongside their bread workshops with me, these students took part in other enriching activities, including a cheese-making evening, a pasta-making workshop and wine-tasting from the castle vineyard. Visiting the old mill was a highlight of our stay and we felt very lucky to be able to see it running at close-quarters. I am already planning next year's return to the Castello, adding in new activites and resources for my students to enjoy. I love to meet my students in person, and this week of hard work and inspiration was a fantastic end to the summer. I think we all feel rejuvenated for the Autumn we have returned to!
If you'd love to sample some of their incredible olive oil, a limited number of bottles are available to order here.
I had the pleasure of welcoming Dan Saladino from BBC Radio 4's The Food Programme to The School last month. He was recording for an exciting episode that was aired on 13th September at 11am called The Sourdough Library. In this programme, Dan visits a unique collection of sourdough bread starters from around the world @sourdough_librarian, exploring the hidden realm of yeasts and bacteria and their influence on our health. I have the privilege of my sourdough starter being part of this library. It is the starter I began baking with, as a child in France, in 1983! I hope you enjoy listening to Dan, who for decades has worked to advance the cause of protecting diversity in food and farming, and is a long-time friend of The Sourdough School. This programme is available to listen to here on BBC sounds.
In this issue of the Sourdough magazine, we're delighted to bring you a preview of Michael and Pippa James's new baking book, Sweet Seasons (Hardie Grant, £26).
This beautiful book is published on the 26th September in the UK and we have a preview copy to give away to one lucky reader. Read on for details of this competition, plus two fabulous recipes from the book that deserve to be added to your autumnal baking plans.
Michael gifted us with a visit a while back, bringing with him a recipe for a delicious white and wholemeal focaccia. In addition to our recent seed loaf recipe kit, we’re excited to say that the focaccia kit has now been compiled, complete with pre-measured ingredients, and is available to buy here. You can choose between ingredients for 1 or 2 loaves. Stoneground flour, hand-harvested unrinsed sea salt from Anglesey, and the finest olive oil are all included – you’ll just need to add your own olives and rosemary for that finishing touch.
Here at the School, we're thinking about the new season that is upon us and changing up our baking as we move into Autumn in the UK. Yes, there is still a lot of summer's bounty to enjoy and preserve and this keeps us busy, but the call of the shortening days and the chillier evenings is undeniable.
For September we encourage you to bake the gorgeous Sourdough Caramelised Apple Cake. Look around at your local farmer's markets or orchards and seek out some more unusual varieties that you might not have eaten before. We're coming into the new season for apples in the UK, so this is the perfect time to taste the full array of fruit on offer. You could ask the grower for an apple that suits being baked, but actually this recipe is very forgiving and will work well with most varieties.
Behold this rather amazing Chocolate Rye Sourdough Boule, our recipe for October. Not only is this a new way to use up your old starter discard, but it bakes up into a deep dark colour - perfect perhaps for a Hallowe'en feast.
Returning to apples for November, we highly recommend making your own Apple Cider Vinegar. There are also instructions to turn this vinegar into Fire Vinegar, a pungent concoction used traditionally as an immune boosting remedy to fight off colds throughout the Autumn and Winter.
This month sees the launch of some brilliant products from The Soudough School, specially created to deliver a concentrated boost of polyphenols to your baking. Polyphenols are shown to be effective antioxidants and to have anti-inflammatory properties. There is an 8 Seed Blend, a Spice Blend, a Seeded Loaf Kit and the big hitter XXX Diversity Blend, all of which enhance your diet with varied flavoursome fibre. For a chance to win a bag of the new XXX Botanical Blend, scroll down to find the details of the giveaway and how to enter.
Claire's Corner
Join Claire Watson, the Sourdough Club's teaching assistant, in her column Claire's Corner. Claire will be giving us all her top tips for successful baking and keeping us up to speed with the latest trends in the sourdough world. In this edition of Claire's Corner you will find a guide to making a DIY dough proofer, especially helpful for Autumn/Winter bread baking. Also, Claire looks into the discussion of whether developing gluten in your starter makes for a stronger starter, a topic that has recently been doing the rounds on the sourdough socials.
Student Focus: Libby Moon
Libby Moon is an experienced sourdough baker and teacher from New Zealand, living in the beautiful Waikato countryside of the North Island. A baker for her whole life, Libby found The Sourdough School in 2021 and graduated with a Certificate of Baking as Lifestyle Medicine in 2022.
Libby has been teaching workshops on sourdough since 2016, and she is at her happiest when she is collaborating with other local food artisans in this work. Her business, This Table, has taken her all around New Zealand, curating events with like-minded food experts and enthusiasts, baking her beautiful breads in 45 different ovens and teaching bread baking workshops to hundreds of people.
When did you become interested in food? What are your early memories of baking or cooking?
As a girl I was fascinated by my mother’s English cookbooks (Libby’s parents were English), and I was particularly captivated by the idea of English people having High Tea. There were only three of us at home then, but I would spend all day baking; sponge cakes, scones, little tarts, far too much for us to eat but I wanted to make and eat all of the things I saw in that cookbook. It was there that I found my first bread recipe. It was a simple dough, made with commercial yeast, and we thought it tasted amazing – like all first home-made loaves, just delicious! This is the origin story of This Table, the beginning.
Read on to learn more about Libby and how she learned to heal through sourdough baking
New Book: Sweet Seasons wholesome treats for every occasion by Michael and Pippa James
Sweet Seasons, by Michael and Pippa James, is the highly anticipated third baking book by the husband and wife team based in Australia. Following on from their last book All Day Baking: Savoury, Not Sweet, we are turned towards the sweeter side of baking and offered recipes and stories from Michael and Pippa’s long built-up repertoire inspired by local and seasonal produce.
Sweet Seasons is a very personal book. Drawing on Michael’s Cornish childhood and Pippa’s experience of growing up eating from her family’s thriving Canberra garden, the book presents treasured family recipes from the past as well as the recipes that they have grown in their life together within their present communities.
Read on here for the full review and to find two delicious recipes from the book. There is also a chance to win a copy as part of this month's giveaways, just click on the link.
Baking with New Harvest Grain
As summer wanes and the crisp cool autumn air is in the breeze, the process of harvesting the new season’s grain crops for flour is under way. Around the world there are a multitude of traditions and festivities dedicated to celebrating autumn’s harvest and the preparations to be made for the long, dark winter ahead. In Canada, where I’m from, Thanksgiving occurs on the second Monday in October, and I have always considered this to be the harvest dinner. I wonder how many North American sourdough bakers will be up to the challenge of baking a pumpkin-shaped boule for their showstopping Thanksgiving tablescapes.
Have you ever wondered how grains, and flour they make, change with each passing year? Read on here for Claire's post on new harvest wheat crops, and things to consider when baking with fresh flour.
Win a bag of The Sourdough School's Botanical Blend Flour
In this issue of the Sourdough Club Magazine we're shining a light on varied grain crops and the many benefits of baking with the wholegrain. We're delighted to be able to join with the fabulous Hodmedods to give away ten bags of the new Diversity Blend XXX flour to the winners of our competition. This is an exciting concentrated blend that is intended to be mixed in at 5-15% into your chosen flour, to bring a hit of polyphenols and extra diversity to all your bread, pastries and cakes. With a base of black wheat and barley, XXX contains 14 different ingredients including other whole grains, a range of legumes and seeds, and aromatics such as cocoa husk, hibiscus and seaweed. This blend reflects the diversity we dearly need to see in our fields and our diets, and this flour will be the perfect boost to enrich the flavour and texture of all our bakes
HOW TO ENTER
There are two ways you can enter:
- Email your photo to [email protected]
- Share a photo of your sourdough loaf on Instagram and ensure to tag @sourdoughclub, #sourdoughclub and #sourdoughclubgiveaway – you must use all these tags so we can find your entries
Product of the Month
The Mockmills' ceramic stones make easy work of grinding grains, seeds and pulses into fresh flour for your baking. The Mockmill 100 has a throughput of approximately 100g of wheat per minute and the Mockmill 200 has throughput of approximately 200g wheat per minute. Here at the School we use the Mockmill 200, the handsome wood-encased model, which we use to mill grain, seeds, pulses, spices, herbs and flowers to make our unique flour blends. This model can operate continuously for 3-4 hours, which makes it suitable for a small artisan bakery or a home kitchen where larger quantities of flour are required. The Mockmill 100 also has a sturdy industrial motor and ceramic milling mechanism, but it is designed to grind smaller quantities of flour, making it perfect for most home bakers.
Find out more about Mockmill 100 Grain Mill
Make sure to look out for the Christmas edition of this magazine, published at the end of November. We will have glorious festive sourdough recipes, a book review and giveaway of Cherie Denham's sell-out The Irish Bakery, and seasonal takes from the sourdough world.
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