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Welcome to FoodLoversBritain.com special guide to Our Daily Bread- part of the Little Green Book series. You'll find bakery recipes, where to find FoodLovers Approved bread and flour, baking courses, mills to visit, how to start a sourdough starter, books on bread making and notes on the perfect sourdough loaf.
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STOP PRESS
Your Bread Needs You!
The Advertising Standards Agency has rejected a complaint from The Real Bread Campaign that Hovis' adverts are misleading. Hovis is not handmade by a craft baker and the company are unable to deny that Hovis bread contains palm oil, "permitted additives" and "processing aids". If, like us, you think this just isn't good enough voice your opinion here.
The Lighthouse Bakery is an independent artisan bakery in East Sussex with a wholesale bakery and on-site cookery school...
Book into The Bertinet Kitchen for classes on all kinds of baking, from French to Italian...
Andrew Whitley now runs Bread Matters, courses designed to teach you everything you need to know about fermentation and bread baking...
Betty's Cookery School in Harrogate is unique in drawing from the rich resource of talent and experience at Bettys Craft Bakery...
The Old Farmhouse Bakery's aim is to produce bread as baked at home using a 1930's brick oven in an outbuilding converted from a cart-shed...
Judge's Bakery own-made, organic, 'slow-dough' breads include, white, sourdough and rye...
The new Hambleton Bakery makes every slow-fermented loaf with local flour, baked in a wood-fired oven...
Flourpowercity’s success is down to simple, good ingredients. Stone-ground flour from Shipton Mill, Belgian chocolate, and French butter
Allium's new deli bakes the sourdough served in their restaurant to accompany the locally-sourced menu...
The Duke of Cambridge bakes all its own organic bread to nibble on in the restaurant...
Bed & Breakfast at Lower Farm in Somerset includes their own-milled and baked spelt bread...
Fergus Henderson's St John Bread & Wine with its on-site bakery is the place for own-baked bread for their bacon sandwich...
Family run since 1824, Marriage’s produce bread, cake and pastry flours including stoneground wholemeal, light brown and organic varieties…
Run by perfectionist Matt Scott, Bacheldre Watermill produces a range of organic pastry and bread flours...
Glebe Farm's stoneground flour is made from their own organic wheat...
Shipton Mill grind a wide range of organic white and wholemeal flours for every kind of bread...
Ben - our resident Food Obsessive - is making his own sourdough starter. You can keep up-to-date on his - and its - progress on our blog every day. Why not make your own starter along with Ben, then follow his instructions on how to bake his sourdough bread recipe when it's ready.
Tell us how your starter's getting on on the blog - and don't forget to post your pictures.
Burcott Mill is one of the few water-powered mills - and you can stay in the adjoining B&B...
Mapledurham Watermill is the last working cornmill on the Thames...
Aberfeldy Watermill has everything you could possibly want - great coffee, a bookshop and own-made bread and cakes...
Denver Windmill has been lovingly restored and opened for visitors - buy the flour from their bakery...
Y Felin mills traditional stoneground flour - and feed the birds on the millpond while you're there...
GRIND YOUR OWN FLOUR
If you want to have a go at grinding your own flour, buy a GrainMaster Wondermill...
January's Recipe of the Month - Panary's Spelt Loaf
Y Polyn's Sourdough Loaf from Diana Henry's Gastropub Cookbook
Lardy Cake... Meat-topped Flatbreads... Chocolate Slices...
Barley Bread Apple Bread
Richard Bertinet of The Bertinet Kitchen has written two books on the wonders of making your own bread. Crust focuses on sourdough - a step-by-step guide to making your own ferments; Dough takes you through making a real white loaf and its variations.
Elizabeth David's unrivalled classic on the history of English Bread & Yeast Cookery with recipes from every time and source you can think of, including her own well-thought-out adaptations...
Andrew Whitley, professional baker and founder of The Village Bakery, shows you how and why you should make real bread at home with his fool-proof recipes in Bread Matters...
Tom Jaine's Building a Wood-Fired Oven for Bread & Pizza is a step-by-step guide to how to build a brick oven for the garden to achieve the holy grail of perfectly baked bread...
Try baking recipes from around the world in Warm Bread and Honey Cake by Gaitri Pagrach-Chandra
By Miles Chapman, a FoodLovers Food Expert, a passionate food producer - and baker - writer and restaurant critic.
‘Good things come to those who wait’ - and if you find a baker with the endurance and savvy to make their own sourdough loaf then you’ll be rewarded with something very special indeed. I have tried making it myself, shifting the towels in the airing cupboard to prove the loaf over and over again much to the chagrin of my wife, but some things, I think, are best left to the experts.
This is a loaf with a biblical history, relying on the natural yeasts in the air around us rather than the manufactured bakers variety, in fact I can’t think of a food stuff more life affirming. There are of course almost an infinite amount of variations on breads out there, many are bastardised out of all context and the end result is often bizarre at best and repellent at worst. No, the simplicity of a sourdough is where it’s at with its pithy ingredients list of flour, water and salt, especially if handled and baked by an artisan.
Please don’t be tempted by supermarket offerings who have the chutzpah to pass off bread peppered with additives and acids as ‘authentic’? sourdough - most are hateful.
Texture
The faultless sourdough will have a gloriously dense crisp crust and a light mud brown chewy open textured dough within. It will keep for a week or so, but is best eaten on the day I think, with a thick heart-juddering spread of cold, unsalted butter.
Taste
Due to the natural and long fermentation process the bread has a slightly sour and tangy flavour which sets it apart from other loaves. In truth, it can be difficult to pinpoint the taste, indeed, there’s almost a sense of ‘unami’ about a sourdough and if it sports a slightly bitter charred crust it can be lifted into a wraithlike experience.