This was a gifted experience in return for a blog post
Hands up if, like me, brunch is your favourite meal of the day and isn’t complete without a few slices of sourdough!
I’m lucky to live about 40 minutes from the baker of the year, Aidan Monks, and his bakery Lovingly Artisan. As well as being their main bakery, you can also go for courses in how to bake sourdough from the best!
It’s safe to say I was very excited to learn how to bake sourdough. Earlier in the year, I went to some cooking lessons. There, I learnt how to bake bread and I’ve had varying success.
However, sourdough is another kettle of fish and whenever I tried to read recipes, I just couldn’t get my head around it! So to learn from the British baker of the year, who specialises in sourdough, it was an absolute dream!
Sourdough vs Commercial bread
I love bread however bread does not always like me.
Before I was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis, there was a brief time we thought I might be coeliac and I cut out all bread. It was HARD but it did slightly help my symptoms.
When I’ve eaten a lot of supermarket bought bread I can feel sluggish. I find that my joint pain is worth and I generally feel a bit shit.
However, I never get this when I eat sourdough. I’m left feeling full and like my normal self.
At the beginning of our sourdough making course with Lovingly Artisan, we had a discussion about the health and wellbeing effects of sourdough.
Did you know that to make supermarket bread last longer, they use preservatives like anti-mould spray? This, in turn, can potentially kill of the bacteria in your stomach which can lead you to have a reduced immune system. CRAZY RIGHT!
Lactic acid bacteria and it’s benefits
A big part of sourdough is lactic acid bacteria (which your gut loves and needs). This is one of the reasons why sourdough is good for you!
Lactic acid “produces beneficial compounds: antioxidants, the cancer-preventive peptide lunasin, and anti-allergenic substances, some of which may help in the treatment of auto-immune diseases. Interestingly, these by-products seem able to survive heating, suggesting that baked sourdough bread may have ‘probiotic’ potential by stimulating immune responses in the gut.”
Bread Matters
There is a lot of research going on at the moment about the link between gut health and food. Apparently 50% of the research on food and gut health which is out now has been done in the past 2 years.
It’s a growing area as we learn more about our guts. Now, you know I’m not one to say you can ‘cure’ things with food. But it’s really important that we look at what we’re eating.
Going back to basics, eating good quality fresh food and looking at how our food is produced is a good place to start.
Learning to bake with Lovingly Artisan
Tucked away in the Lake District countryside, just outside of Kendal, you can find Lovingly Artisan’s bakery. Surrounded by some other Cumbrian food producer’s, it is a hub for quality, artisan products.
With a warm welcome from Aidan and his wife, and business partner Catherine, we had a bakers breakfast of freshly made croissants, flapjacks and a coffee.
I don’t think I’ve ever had a croissant as fresh as that one and it definitely got me in the mood to bake.
We then ventured into the kitchen to learn all about sourdough. From the differences between starters and lervain to how to make the foolproof starter. We were taught tricks of the trade which you can’t find in a cookbook and it was fascinating!
Then it was time to get our hands doughy. Aiden had set it up so we could go through each stage of the sourdough process and go home with some dough to bake AND a fresh loaf as well.
Sourdough takes quite a bit of time so to be able to get hands-on experience of each stage was invaluable.
We first made two starters; a white and a rye starter. Then we moved onto creating the lervain which is almost like a second starter.
After that, we moved onto adding that to the flour to make a dough before learning the importance of stretching your dough to create air and elasticity.
We then moved onto the moulding stage. At this point you had to be really gentle with the sourdough and it’s safe to say this was the bit I wasn’t great with!
After this, we learnt about scoring the bread and how to actually cook it. From ideal moisture of the oven to cooking times the biggest thing I learnt was how to tell if the bread is properly baked. Turns out I’ve actually been underbaking all of my bread!
Overall thoughts on Discover Sourdough with Lovingly Artisan
It was such a brilliant day and I’ve come away with the knowledge to hopefully make my own sourdough! If you have an interest in baking, you should check this out – or if you know someone who loves sourdough, this would be the perfect Christmas present.
You can head on over to Lovingly Artisan’s website to find out more about Aiden and Catherine and their business and the courses they have coming up!
Oh and Manchester pals, Lovingly Artisan also have a store in Altrincham and at Alty Market ?
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