Sourdough is a bread made from the natural occurring yeast and bacteria in flour. It is also called ‘Naturally Leavened’ bread. In traditional sourdough recipes, you’ll find three ingredients: sourdough starter (which consists of flour and water), salt and flour. There is no yeast, no milk, no oils and no sweeteners. It’s about as natural as you get when it comes to bread.

Unless you have an allergy or intolerance to baker’s yeast, there is nothing wrong with it. You can make great bread with baker’s yeast.

A growing number of studies, however, collectively suggest that making bread using a genuine sourdough method have greater nutritional, and other health benefits, than making loaves without a live starter culture, and/or by a shorter process, such as one accelerated by baker’s yeast.

The level of sourness varies with the style and preference of the bakery. It can be extremely sour (in the style of San Francisco style baking) or a mild tang, which is European style sourdoughs. We follow the European style of baking, so our breads will be less sour but the process is the same.

Our artisanal loaves are made without any oil, fat or additive which lend a soft crust to most breads available commercially. The lean style of baking lends itself to crusty breads. Caramelization and darkening of foods produces a release of flavour compounds not found in pale foods (due to Maillard reaction), which is exactly what we aim for.

We use locally grown wheat to mill our flour whole. Which means we don’t get the western level of strength in our flours and consciously stay away from processed wheat flour (maida) to achieve the airy structure. In order to achieve this, a strong flour is required. Strong gluten strands from a tough flour will be able to expand as they capture steam from the water in the dough better than weak ones. Something, we feel, is a desirable sacrifice in favour healthy bread made from organic and local ingredients.

Use a large chef’s knife or any serrated edge knife for easy slicing. Remember to slice back and forth, and not push down on the loaf. Let the knife do most of the work. Slice your loaf in half and cut from the middle of each half. After cutting the number of slices you want, stick the two halves back together. The crust will seal in the crumb and keep your bread fresher longer.

Unless it’s filled with preservatives (and our bread definitely isn’t), putting your bread in the fridge will only make it stale faster. Our breads should be stored at room temperature in a plastic bag, bread bag, or well-ventilated bread bin to prevent the bread from drying out. They should be consumed within 2-3 days of purchase to avoid spoilage. If you intend to keep it longer, freeze it.

All of our breads freeze well. You can pre-slice our bread (very convenient if using for toast, as there is no need to defrost before using), cut the loaf into wedges, or freeze whole. Simply wrap your bread in plastic or foil and then store in a freezer safe plastic bag for up to four months.

To thaw, simply leave the bread to defrost naturally in the packaging for a few hours. To revive the crust on bread, pre-heat an oven to 200^o Place the bread on a rack in the oven covered with a lightly damp cloth. Heat the bread for 6 to 8 minutes. Pre-sliced bread can be put straight into the toaster/oven for toasting.

Sourcing ingredients for bread locally has three major advantages:

• • • Reduction of energy consumption
    • Benefit to the local economy
    • Sustainability of supply

The shorter the distance that grain has to travel to be milled, flour travels to be baked and loaves travel to the consumer, the less the energy consumed in transport.  As much of the transportation at each of these stages is currently done using fossil fuels, any reduction will bring down carbon emissions.

Local supply chains help to generate local employment. Local supplies and stores of grain are much more resilient to interruption by factors such as adverse weather conditions, industrial action and fuel shortages, which have more opportunities to have impact on transport systems in extended chains.

Modern roller milling is ruthlessly efficient at stripping away the nutrient rich outer layers of wheat grains, leaving behind not much more than starch and gluten. Additionally, the heat generated by the process actually destroys some of the compounds. Compared to whole wheat, refined white flour is highly depleted. Example losses are:

Vitamin E 93% lost
Vitamin B6 87%
Vitamin B2 81%
Vitamin B3  80%
Iron   70%
Calcium  56%

White flour is much lower in fibre than wholemeal and has a higher glycemic index than wholemeal, with implications for diabetes

We believe in an honest price for an honest loaf. There are many reasons why a loaf by a local, independent bakery might differ in price from an industrial loaf or supermarket in-store ‘bakery’. These include:

• Our bakery does not cut corners by using artificial additives
• Economy of scale – larger enterprises buying in greater bulk have more power to force down the price of ingredients from suppliers.
• Labour costs – an industrial loaf factory or supermarket bake-off operation provides fewer jobs per loaf for people from your community than a small local independent bakery.
• Ingredients – we go out of our way to support local independent farmers and millers or other small-scale producers by buying their top-quality ingredients, rather than cheaper, generic flours etc.

Our bakery has is focused on producing high quality bread, giving us far less opportunities to supplement income from sales on any other products, and certainly no choice of selling loaves below the cost of production as a ‘loss leader’.