Sourdough For Life
Festive sourdough and Christmas cake - not just for Christmas! Do you fancy learning or refining a life skill really worth having? Come and learn the joyful and rewarding art of making sourdough and sourdough Christmas cake this festive season. Join Holly Davis and Jo Webster for a day immersed in the deliciousness of sourdough; its mysteries and magic, its nutritiousness and the gentle microbially-driven timeline it weaves into even the busiest of days.
You will get your hands in the (sour) dough, learning to make bread and a sourdough Christmas cake and you won’t leave alone. You’ll take with you the sourdough you make during the day, ready to bake at home. You will also take a little of Holly’s 37 year old sourdough starter (suitably named Joseph) and detailed notes to enable you to continue your sourdough journey beyond Christmas.
Overview
Price: £125 per person
Date: Friday 8th December
Time: 10am - 3pm
Location: The Peach, 92 St Thomas Street, Wells, Somerset BA5 2UZ
Contact number on the day: 07808 472424
For more information, click below to expand.
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This is a day that will enrich all of your senses. Holly and Jo will, with wisdom and humour, infuse you with their enthusiasm and knowledge of sourdough-making.
Making and baking sourdough, the most nutritious and digestible of breads and making sourdough Christmas cake is the order of the day. And during the season for joy and sharing of gifts, we will help you gain insight into this traditional way of harnessing microbes to leaven bread.
Learn the difference between a starter and leaven and how to make them. Learn about proving, shaping and how to fit baking sourdough into even the busiest life. You will get to smell, see, taste, feel and even hear the dough and microbial activity during the day.
You will also learn how to make a sourdough Christmas cake (and eat some!). And you will get to take home the sourdough you made, ready to bake at home, some of Holly’s 37 year old starter (named Joseph, after her father) and detailed notes to help you continue your sourdough journey.
The lunch time feast will consist of an array of delicious and hearty seasonal food, augmented with some fermented delicacies that illustrate the diversity of flavours and textures achievable with the help of microbes. We hope to also cook flatbreads on the wood fired oven.
There will be handmade fermented and herbal products for sale at the end of the day, as well as some of Holly’s dried sourdough starter cultures, an heirloom yoghurt culture and filmjölk (taste this on the day, too).
This enriching experience provides the perfect opportunity, not only to gain the skills to enable you to have sourdough in your life, but also to reconnect with nature through the work of microbes. Spend the day with us recalibrating your pace of life to the pace of microbes working in sourdough.
If you buy two tickets and share the day with someone, you save £30 on the total price. Gift this to yourself, and perhaps as an early Christmas present for someone?
This event will not suit people who are gluten free.
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Please come appropriately dressed in comfortable clothes. Please also wear non-slip shoes that fully cover your feet.
You will need to bring a 3 litre+ sized bowl in which to take your sourdough bread home for baking.
You will also need to bring 2 clean tea towels with you (not because we are making you do the washing up!).
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There is free parking on 92 St Thomas Street. You can also park in our drive if there is room, but it is much better to reverse in than to drive in forwards.
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Sourdough for Life is hosted in Jo’s ancient and capacious home, with the city of Wells, its magnificent cathedral and Vicar’s Close in easy walking distance. We will inevitably be making the most of Jo’s fermenting stash and the wood fired oven during our time together.
If you decide to make a weekend of it. there is a farmer’s market in central Wells on Saturday mornings.
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Holly Davis
Holly is an inspiring wholefood chef and educator. Born in London, Holly cut her teeth as a chef at Food For Thought in Covent Garden. She moved to Sydney in 1982 where she founded Manna, a restaurant inspired by her interest in Macrobiotic philosophy. She then co-founded Sydney’s Iku Wholefoods in 1985.In her current business Food By Holly Davis she aims to seduce people to better ways of thinking about, sourcing, preparing, and eating balanced wholefood meals, by teaching them to make or feeding them, irresistibly delicious foods, that happen to be good for them.
Holly’s been a long time champion for the attainment of great health through the use of sustainable organic wholefoods; appropriate to the season, tailored to the needs of the consumer. Her cooking style uses traditional ingredients and embraces the dietary principles practiced by societies prior to industrialised food production. {Food industrialisation}
She has also been intentionally fermenting food and drinks to deliciousness for over four decades. Holly’s vision ‘to feed people love’ is expressed in her inspiring and informative cookery classes, her talks, through her articles and when she is catering or food coaching for private or commercial clients.
Books, cultures, in person and online classes www.foodbyhollydavis.com
Jo Webster
Jo is a fermented foods specialist, nutritionist and medical herbalist. She spreads her enthusiasm and accurate information about these topics by working as a clinician and by running a broad range of hands-on and entertaining knowledge-sharing events.
Good health is a potent, but relative state to which we all deserve access and it is intimately linked with the health of our natural world. Working at the intersection of microbes, nutrition and medicinal herbs melds Jo’s lifelong love and respect for nature with her thirst for knowledge of health and how bodies work.
Jo is mother to 4 amazing children. She loves being in the woods, learning, asking questions and laughing.
Find out more at Jo-Webster.com and The-Peach.org
Booking
Terms & conditions will apply to your booking. They contain important information, including about cancellation and refunds. Please read them.
