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There have been two major waves of sourdough baking in my London lifetime: the Noughties Hipster Evangelical, which, at its peak, saw earnest flannel-shirted synth-players tasered daily for attempting to smuggle their sourdough starters through City Airport security - and more recently the Great Smugness which many of us remember, bitterly, from social feeds in lockdown. But can you even bake good sourdough at home? And, with mad electricity costs, is there any point in trying?
To answer these and other vital questions, I’m learning the yeasty biz at London’s high temple of sourdough: E5 Bakehouse. Under a railway arch full of houseplants and buzzy coffee-drinkers, I line up along a high table with a stripy aproned crew of students, a pleasant selection of bake nerds, “freelancers” and recent retirees. Head Baker Sol passes around little pots of sourdough ‘starter’. It looks like slurry and smells like flu breath, but this wild yeast is the base for all sourdough baking - when mixed with flour and water, it gobbles the starch in the wheat and excretes it as sugar, farting out air bubbles which make the bread rise and gives you, in Bake Off speak, “a lovely open crumb”.
We measure (precision is essential if you desire a loaf not amateur wallpaper paste). We mix, and then tuck our dough babies up for a nap in bowls with clean warm towels around them. After an hour they’ve doubled in size and feel - weirdly - alive. The dough is silky soft and podgy and plump, like the thighs of sumo toddler or cheeky Italian Renaissance putto. And kneading the stuff is hella therapeutic. Slapping a bit of flour and water around on a block of wood gets you into The Zone faster than anything. This is why the real E5 bakers are so zen.
In a couple of hours before and after lunch (vegan, delightful) Sol walks us through a cottage loaf, bagels, buns and a rye loaf - useful to have in the locker as it keeps for longer. Theory is: you can fill your oven, rather than splurging power and money on a one-shelf bake, with a mix of breads, for today, tomorrow and beyond. It's a fantastic tip-filled day class, and would make a great gift for the food-lover in your life.
Apparently most home bakers fail because their ovens aren’t steamy enough - Sol recommends chucking a few ice cubes in the back when your loaf goes in. I take my loaf dough home in a cute little wicker basket, slash a cross in the top and, sure enough, when I bake it at home I am stunned and gratified. It’s brown. It’s riz. It’s crusty and chewy and pulls apart to reveal - Bake Off Here I Come - a gorgeous open crumb. Boing! I am ecstatic and vow to bake daily bread like the Pilgrim Mothers.
Instead, I neglect my needy starter baby. The little pot of slurry only needs to be fed once a week with flour and tepid water but - somehow - I can’t get it right. I kill it. Beg some more from the real bakers at E5. Kill it again. Try and make it from scratch. Fail. I have raised real babies and I swear it was easier than this. At least they let me know when they were hungry.
With bread, planning is everything. You have to feed your starter 8-12 hours before starting to mix a dough, and catch it at its vivacious, bubbly peak. Kneading and proving takes place over a few hours. Things can go wrong at every step. Sourdough baking is clearly for diligent, precise, methodical, reliable people with time on their hands - retired civil servants or airfix enthusiasts maybe. I’m too slapdash to shine.
Eventually I mix a loaf. It is a reluctant riser. The temperature in my unheated flat is not exactly dough-friendly. Wrapping the pudgy, sullen lump in a woolly jumper in the boiler cupboard helps it swell, but even my best effort isn’t as delicious as the real E5 deal. I fancy myself as a bit of a cook but this is so bloody hard I become convinced those Insta-Sourdough folks were deep-faking. No normal human can bake great sourdough at home, that’s why we have hipster bakeries.
At least the excellent E5 class has given me confidence to experiment with lesser breads and I find I can do cute sticky cinnamon buns and dinner rolls cheaply and with aplomb. Nan bread is brilliant - all you need is flour, water, yoghurt and a frying pan and you can knock it up in minutes. But when it comes to the king of loaves, I’ll be investing in a real sourdough made by the pros.