The Sourdough School: Sweet Baking: Nourishing the gut & the mind: Foreword by Tim Spector

This book is a complete gamechanger for sweet baking, and works as an ideal sister book to Vanessa's exceptional bread book 'The Sourdough School', which I highly recommend using alongside this to give huge scope to your baking. I started with her bread book and developed my skills in the sourdough process as a member of Vanessa's online Sourdough Club, which covers everything from the basics of creating and maintaining a starter right through to complex bakes, and contains videos of every process you need to be a competent and confident baker.This sweet baking book is not for beginners, but for those who have some sourdough baking experience and want to broaden their horizons to create epic bakes which also support health. Vanessa spends time explaining how the sourdough fermentation can improve gut health, and how diversity in our diet is key for a happy gut microbiome- something we now know is central to good health and longevity. As a GP I am increasingly advising patients about nutrition-with a focus on gut health- alongside my medical advice and treatment plans, and to find a book which covers the importance of this and then provides recipes showcasing ways to do this is truly enlightening. During lockdown I have found the flow and mindful process of baking sourdough to be incredibly healing and has helped to manage my anxiety, and this has been enhanced by the fact that my IBS symptoms and gut health have improved dramatically since I started my sourdough baking journey when lockdown hit proper.This is a beautiful, educational and inspirational book and well worth taking the time to digest (pun very much intended..!) the theory behind the health benefits of baking with sourdough and increasing diversity alongside this. So far the lemon and poppy seed bake has triumphed, but I am working my way towards the miso danish as my confidence builds. Enjoy!

I have been waiting eagerly for this book. I knew from Vanessa’s previous book, The Sourdough School, that there would be great depth and knowledge all backed by research with a practical approach to health and wellbeing and I am not disappointed. This is not just a recipe book for sweet sourdough, it is a journey to understand how what you eat affects your gut and how nourishing your gut can affect your overall health and wellbeing. There is a lot to take in – the book goes deeply into how probiotics, prebiotics and increasing the diversity of what you eat are beneficial. It is not just about making cakes and biscuits as a way to use up your sourdough starter discard either, although that is a great idea. The book introduces you to nourishing your gut using fermented yogurt, cultured cream and cultured butter, making fresh fruit compote to add polyphenols to your diet, making fruit syrups and wild vinegar – along with using heritage grains and increasing your fibre intake. It shows you how to blend flours, spices, and seeds etc. to increase the diversity of your food along with guidance on how to do this if you do not have a mill. The basics are all there for how to make a starter from scratch, how to maintain your starter and build a leaven and there are advanced recipes for those who love a challenge.My sweet starter is now building and the schedules are carefully planned to fit into a working day. I have my eye on making the poppy seed and lemon cake with unpasteurised raw honey (my prebiotic). I can’t wait to have that with live yoghurt (my probiotic) and a spoonful of blueberry compote (my polyphenol), see I’m learning already! So glad I will continue to learn as I delve deeper into this fabulous book.

Baked the lemon and poppy seed cake, took less than 10min to mix, 8ish hours to ferment on the kitchen counter, tastes tart and light and the sourdough does all the work.Love this book about sweet sourdough baking. I do want to address one thing first, this is probably not the best for a beginner just starting to discover the world of sourdough. This is a book of information, of inspiration, and not necessarily a "follow this recipe and you'll have perfect bakes every time". If you're a beginner and at this stage then yes, buy the book! Also, you don't need to blend your own flour, I don't but I was able to use the information in the book to mix up my flour blend from what I already had in my cupboard and start to truly experiment with flour blends from organic & heritage grains. The taste is incredible and so good for you!I've been baking with sourdough for a few years now and recently started investigating sweet bakes using only natural leaven. I found this book fantastic to expand my mind on flour and using the principles of sourdough to any sweet bakes that usually use baking powder or yeast. So if you're at that part of your journey, then this is the book for you! Understanding what happens in your bake but also in your body (!) when eating it is so essential when exploring the way you want to bake.I now have a long list of traditional sweet bakes and cakes that I want to turn into sourdough masterpieces with the knowledge from this book to guide me!