Getting started with sourdough

2022 sees the Real Bread Campaign's 10th annual international Sourdough September. Its aim has always been to encourage people to bake, buy and enjoy genuine sourdough bread.

What is sourdough?

Sourdough is a naturally leavened bread, made from as few a three ingredients: flour, water and salt. Naturally occurring lactic acid bacteria and yeasts on the grain can be nurtured to create a live starter culture. The sourdough starter causes the dough to ferment and rise, without the use of baker's yeast, chemical raising agents or additives.

The long, slow fermentation of sourdough bread 'predigests' the grain, increasing available levels of vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. Fermentation also reduces phytate levels, allowing our bodies to absorb nutrients more easily. (See How the sourdough may affect the functional features of leavened baked goods.)

Bake your own sourdough

To make sourdough bread at home try our a great wholemeal sourdough recipe from Kimberly Bell, founder of Nottingham's Small Food Bakery. For sweet sourdough recipes, we recommend Vanessa Kimbell's book Sweet Sourdough Baking - or try Vanessa's 10-minute Sourdough for quick baking.

Sourdough ingredients

At Hodmedod we mill small batches of flour on our stone mill every day to offer a range of varietal wholemeal flours. Our Flanders Wheat Flour is an unusual soft flour that with good bread-making properties.

Need a sourdough starter? Through Sourdough September Every week you can now order 50g jars of Wakelyns Bakery's sourdough starter.

Sourdough loaves

We also have a selection of superb sourdough bread available to order weekly, baked to order by artisan bakers from Penny Bun Bakehouse in Lowestoft and Wakelyns Bakery between Fressingfield and Metfield. 

Order by 8am on Monday for baking and dispatch of fresh loaves on the Wednesday. With nationwide next-day delivery you can enjoy some of the best sourdough bread in the country every Thursday.

Knead to read

To find out more about sourdough don't miss Farmerama Radio's Cereal podcast series and Wendell Steavenson's Guardian long read Flour Power:

• Cereal #1: Flour, Water, Salt
  In the first of this brilliant series of podcasts from Farmerama Radio, Katie Revell explores how the needs of industrial bread production have come to dictate the way that seeds are bred, grain is grown, flour is milled, and bread is baked and eaten - and meets campaigners, famers, millers and bakers showing that there's another way.
• Flour power: meet the bread heads baking a better loaf
  Wendell Steavenson's Guardian long read explored the story of Professor Martin Wolfe's YQ wheat population and its adoption by bakers, inspired by Small Food Bakery's Kimberley Bell. We've been coping with a run on YQ grain and flour ever since its publication thanks to a mention of our small role in this!

And we've several posts on flour and bread in our blog archive:

• Bread of Heaven | Casting back 10 years by Charlotte Du Cann
• Miller's Voice: Know your Flour by Keith Malcolm
• Eat Real Bread by Amy Oboussier
• and more!

Talking sourdough

We would love to hear your thoughts on sourdough and what you are doing for Sourdough September - join the conversation on Instagram!

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