Wild thing... You make my loaf spring!

These days it seems like there’s a promotion week for pretty much everything…. And working in a newsroom we get all the crazy press releases for them. It ranges from the very very worthy breast cancer awareness month to the slightly crazier things like mushroom fortnight… national sausage week, and so on….

So imagine my (admittedly slightly dubious) excitement when I came across the news that this month is officially Britain’s first Sourdough September.

Sniggering aside, this is actually quite worthy of a plug. In the UK we really are totally crap with bread, favouring those horrible, tasteless white sliced loaves and huge round stodgy bread cakes over properly baked bread, which tastes better and is so much healthier.

The Real Bread Campaign is attempting to address this, and it is the organisation behind Sourdough September.

New campaign ambassador Duncan Glendinning, of the Thoughtful Bread Company, in Bath, said: “For me, the best Real Bread combines great crust, depth of flavour and fantastic crumb. Sourdough is the only bread capable of delivering all of these and the only type that actually improves with age.”

And campaign coordinator Chris Young added: “Happily Britain is rediscovering the delicious delights of Real Bread made with just flour, water, salt, time and care. Plain sourdough has the simplest recipe of any loaf and yet, like alchemists, the most skilled bakers can transform these three basic ingredients into a whole world of gold medal Real Breads.”

On Twitter, @RealBread is running SourDOH! inviting people to name and shame sourdough shams by posting photos using the #sourdoh hashtag, and joining the #RealBread conversation.

Genuine sourdough bread is leavened only using a live starter culture produced by mixing flour and water to nurture one or more species of yeast and lactic acid bacteria that occur naturally on the surface of cereal grains, and therefore in the flour. As well as developing a greater depth and complexity of flavour, aroma, and texture than commercial baker’s yeast, some studies have found long fermentation using a sourdough starter to have a range of dietary benefits. The Real Bread Campaign calls for more research into real bread.

For more go to www.realbread.org