The sensationally simple sourdough swap

This year, the Real Bread Campaign is keeping Sourdough September super simple for everyone. 

Our call to all is to do just one thing: swap whatever bread you normally make or buy for genuine sourdough. 

Just once. That’s it.

The simple swap might be to the sourdough version of a favourite bread, seizing the chance to try something new, or kicking supermarket sourfaux in favour of the real deal.

Get a slice of the action

Sourdough September is a marketing opportunity for individual businesses, the Campaign and the Real Bread movement more generally.

We’re encouraging bakeries, baking schools, mills etc. to join the fun with activities such as:

• a competition for customers (or staff members) to create a winning sourdough bread to be added to the menu for the month. 
• hosting a sourdough tasting workshop or breadmaking class.
• giving away small pots of sourdough starter, along with a basic bread recipe, suggesting people make a small doughnation to the Campaign.
• making wholemeal, sourdough bread from locally grown and milled grain.

Please don’t pass up promoting your sourdough shenanigans with a free listing on the Real Bread events calendar.

Or it could be as simple as signposting swap suggestions, such as: ‘if you like that, you might like this’, ‘have you tried our sourdough sandwich loaf?’

Flying the flag

At a time when small, independent businesses continue to struggle, a key aim of Sourdough September is to nudge everyone who has the ability to support a local bakery to seek one out and help keep their high street alive.

We’ll be directing sourdough switchers to the Real Bread Map on our website and suggesting shoppers look for The Sourdough Loaf Mark. 

Just one swap for a world of choice 

A single switch won’t cause everyone to suddenly start making their own kimchi, chugging kefir and ACV* every day, or even making / buying Real Bread every week. 

For many people, though, that first taste of the real deal could be the one, simple thing that triggers a chain reaction of changes for the better. It opens the door to an entire world of choice, as any type or style of bread on the planet can be made by the sourdough process.

*ACV = apple cider vinegar.

Is sourdough better than ‘normal’ yeast?

Unless someone has an allergy or intolerance to baker's yeast, there is nothing wrong with it. Great Real Bread can be made using baker's yeast.

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

More research is needed, though – and no health / nutritional claim permitted in the UK or EU is related to sourdough.

See also

Sourdough bread mythbuster