The annual international celebration of genuine sourdough and the people who make it.
Events Classes Bakeries Recipes Information
Since 2013, the ninth month of the year is when the Real Bread Campaign goes on a
mission to help everyone discover that: life’s sweeter with sourdough!
The aims of #SourdoughSeptember are to:
In 2020, a special focus is helping more people to discover that a sourdough starter is the gateway to every type of bread on the planet.
Are you in? Great!
See also
Sourdough isn’t a look, taste or style. Any bread that can be made with baker’s yeast can be made using a sourdough starter, and then some.
At its simplest, genuine sourdough is made using just three ingredients. Sourdough September revels in the amazing alchemy of crafting just flour, water and salt into delicious, golden Real Bread.
Using this holey trinity, novice home bakers and true artisans alike can nurture the yeasts and bacteria naturally present in flour to foster a thriving sourdough starter culture, whose microbial magic makes the dough rise.
September is also a time for everyone to say no to sourfaux by baking or buying at least one loaf of genuine sourdough and sharing it on social.
2020 has seen #LockdownLoafers around the world taking to baking sourdough bread. Meanwhile, many Real Bread bakeries have reported experiencing increased demand for their sourdough bread.
Sourdough September builds on this passion, challenging some people’s (mis)perceptions of what sourdough bread is and isn’t. We’re encouraging people who’ve only tried one type of sourdough bread to buy or bake others. Even more so if all they’ve tried is sourfaux.
From 1-30 September, Real Bread bakers and other fermentalists worldwide help to share sourdough secrets and demystify the delicious delights of the oldest way of raising a loaf.
The simplest way to join in is to bake a loaf of genuine sourdough yourself, or buy one from a local, independent, Real Bread bakery.
Bakeries, baking schools, mills and other organisations/enterprises organise events/activities (online or, where permitted and appropriate, in real life) such as:
Find details of events (and add yours) on the Real Bread Campaign events calendar
Support our work: Adding an optional donation (eg 50p-£1) to Sustain, the charity that runs the Real Bread Campaign, onto customers’ bills would be amazing, please! (Perhaps you limit this to your monthly special, another nominated sourdough loaf or pizza, pots of starter you dish out, selected sourdough baking classes)
Whenever you refer to Real Bread Week (in print, online or social media, verbally, smoke signals etc) please remember to link back to this website or at least refer to the Real Bread Campaign! This especially goes for any businesses using our charity's #SourdoughSeptember as a marketing opportunity.
On social media, #SourdoughSeptember is celebrated by thousands of people around the planet posting photos of loaves they’ve baked or bought.
Please keep your #WeAreRealBread #sourdoughselfie pix coming to help us show the world the many and varied FACES behind the rise of Real Bread.
If you'd be happy for us to publish and share your happy baker photos (either of yourself or of classes you've run, with the permission of people in the pix) please email them to realbread@sustainweb.org
Twitter: @RealBread
Facebook: @RealBreadCampaign
Instagram: @RealBreadCampaign
Whatever you get up to, please share what you do!
Real Bread Campaign supporters can login to download:
Whenever you refer to Real Bread Week (in print, online or social media, verbally, smoke signals etc) please remember to link back to this website or at least refer to the Real Bread Campaign! This especially goes for any businesses using our charity's #SourdoughSeptember as a marketing opportunity.
As part of our charity's monitoring and evaluation, we need to keep a track of how well our initiatives are working. Please email realbread@sustainweb.org
Hobby bakers
Did you bake a loaf of sourdough for the first time? Did you start your own starter culture? Did you go to a baking class?
Business owners
We'd like to know:
If you raised some dough for us, you can send it to us via our donations page.
If you have any suggestions for next year's Sourdough September or Real Bread Week (particularly something you feel we could ask all bakeries and baking schools in our network to do) please let us know.
We Are Real Bread
If you'd be happy for us to publish your photo (online or in print) to help us show the world the diversity of FACES behind the rise of Real Bread please email it to realbread@sustainweb.org
This can be just you, people in a class you've attended/run (with the permission of people in the pix) or memebers of your bakery's team.
Ideally, we want to see photos of people doing stuff, but your #sourdoughselfie is good, too.
The best shots for us are high resolution, horizontal (rather than vertiical) and at least 1200 x 800 pixels - see articles in our news and features pages to see the miimum size we're talking about. Square photos are good, too.
Across thirty days of sharing food, facts and fun, Real Bread bakeries, baking schools, mills, food festivals and other fermentalists around the globe will be running sourdough classes, tastings, feasts and more to help everyone experience and enjoy the power of sour.
Find and ADD details of local events on the Real Bread Campaign events calendar
NB Events are often added to the calendar much closer to (and during) September, and many organisers don't add the details at all. Keep an eye on social media, local press and the the mailing list of you favourite local Real Bread bakery, baking school etc.
Highlights of past years
Include:
To be kept up to date with the latest details, and to support us being able to run more events like this in the future, please join the Real Bread Campaign and we'll send you Breadcrumbs, our monthly enewsletter.
Sourdough September was created, and is run, by the Real Bread Campaign, part of the food and farming charity Sustain.
We currently receive no grants, advertising or sponsorship for Sourdough September or any of the rest of our campaigning and project work.
In order for us to keep doughing good, we need YOUR HELP to continue.
Can we count on your support? Great!
First off - please link back to this website whenever you refer to Sourdough September in print, online, in social media and elsewhere.This goes especially for businesses using our charity's #RealBreadWeek as a marketing opportunity!
The best way to support our charity's work is to join the Real Bread Campaign!
You don't have to be a baker to join us - in fact, the majority of our supporters aren't.
Support starts from £22.50 a year, that's LESS THAN £2 A MONTH.
As a thank you, we'll send you an exclusive magazine each quarter and have arranged more than 100 special offers on ingredients, equipment, bread making classes and more.
Read more about why and how to join, including the benefits your receive, here.
If you'd rather make a one-off donation than joining us, you can do so here.
If you run a fundraising event or activity during Sourdough September, thank you! Please send it to us by making a card payment via our doughnation page.
Alternatively, please send a cheque, made payable to Sustain (rather than the Real Bread Campaign),to the Real Bread Campaign, c/o Sustain, The Green House, 244-254 Cambridge Heath Road, London E2 9DA
We may publish a roll of honour of selected Sourdough September donors. If you'd prefer your name not to appear on the list, please let us know.
Slow Dough: Real Bread is the Real Bread Campaign’s first recipe book. It contains around 90 recipes for genuine sourdough and other long ferment Real Breads.
They range from a basic white loaf, to Laotian kalpao and Friesian fryske sûkerbôle. It is brought to life by around 70 full colour photographs by Victoria Harley.
The book is published in the UK and USA by Nourish Books. Read more and buy now
Using a sourdough starter is the original (and some would say still the best) form of rasing a loaf of Real Bread.
Now, we're not talking the par-baked things that get rebaked in some supermarket loaf tanning salons, or other suspicious substitutes made using dried sourdough powder and commercial bakers' yeast....quite possibly with a lacing of artificial additives, and even hidden processing aids, to boot.
We mean genuine sourdough made with as little as just flour, water and salt, plus time and care. Real Bread bakers nuture the yeasts and bacteria naturally present in all flour to create a starter culture they then use to leaven luscious loaves.
In the hands of skilled bakers, what is the oldest and simplest recipe for Real Bread can also become the most delicious.
There is also growing evidence that genuine sourdough Real Bread made using long-fermentation with a live starter culture might have health benefits, too...
It is both flattering and frustrating that some supermarkets and industrial loaf fabricators have spotted the increasing appetite for sourdough made by Real Bread bakers, and decided they want a slice of the action.
Sadly, what they are producing is not always genuine sourdough.
The 'ingredients' industry is busy concocting 'easy' and 'quick' packet mixes that try to replace time, skill and quality ingredients with a litany of flavourings, acidifiers, additives, commercial yeast and allsorts.
Read labels, ask questions
Whenever you buy a sourdough loaf, it's worth asking how it was made and with what - genuine sourdough is made using a live sourdough culture (aka a starter or leaven) but NOT any of the following:
Baked products made using such things are what we call sourfaux and Real Bread Campaign cofounder Andrew Whitley calls pseudough.
Protection from misleading use of the word sourdough is included in our call for An Honest Crust Act.
If you have seen something sold under the name 'sourdough' that you just know isn't, take a photo of the ingredients list and the marketing claims and post them on social media using the #sourfaux hashtag.
Our recipe section includes our basic guide to creating a sourdough starter and a simple sourdough loaf.
You can find more than 100 places to learn to bake Real Bread on the Reap Bread Map, many of which share the secrets of sourdough.
Many also offer discounts to Real Bread Campaign supporters.
To seek out places to buy genuine sourdough Real Bread near you:
...then ask staff which of their loaves are genuine sourdough.
Real Bread Campaign supporters can login to download artwork to promote their events/activities.
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Real Bread Campaign
C/o Sustain
The Green House
244-254 Cambridge Heath Road
London E2 9DA
0203 5596 777
realbread@sustainweb.org
The Real Bread Campaign is a project of Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming.
© Sustain 2020
Registered charity (no. 1018643)
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