Sourdough proven to reverse baldness*

The Real Bread Campaign has never been only about sourdough, but in the ninth month we do give it extra love.

#SourdoughSeptember is the Campaign’s annual, international celebration of genuine sourdough bread, and people who make it. Now in its 11^th year, the initiative encourages people to:

• BAKE genuine sourdough bread for themselves and others
• BUY genuine sourdough bread, preferably from indie bakeries
• BOOST the Real Bread Campaign by supporting the charity’s work     

(*Sadly it doesn’t, though research suggests there might be a range of health and nutritional benefits of lactic acid bacterial (sourdough) fermentation)

How do people tuck in?

In whatever ways work for them under the bake, buy, boost umbrella. If someone has a sourdough starter bubbling away at the back of the fridge, they can dig it out and make bread together.

More options include:

• Nurturing a new starter from just flour and water. The one-page Dough Monster guide is geared to doing so with children.
• Checking out the Real Bread Map and looking for The Sourdough Loaf Mark as delicious ways of helping to keep your high street alive.
• Supporting the charity by joining the Real Bread Campaign, making a doughnation, and buying Real Bread books and gifts – including the limited edition FLOUR+WATER+SALT+TIME t-shirt, apron and mug

Sow your own sourdough

Bake Your Lawn is the Campaign’s grow-a-loaf guidebook, written for people to help children find out that Real Bread starts in a field, not a factory. The next few months are the ideal time to begin this seed-to-sandwich journey of discovery by sowing a handful of winter wheat in a square metre of soil.

Carpe desem!

Every September sees bakeries, baking schools, traditional mills, eateries and other organisations around the world to help people enjoy the month by running sourdough activities, such as:

• starter giveaways 
• baking classes
• tastings
• offering limited-edition sourdough specials
• pizza nights

Organisers are invited to add details to the Real Bread events calendar. Many simply post them on social media, tagged #SourdoughSeptember and we usally see people in 50-60 countries joining the fun.

Real Bread For All

This month the Campaign renews its ongoing call to all bakeries to trial ways of bridging the gap between what it costs them to produce Real Bread, and what people in their local communities on the tightest budgets can realistically afford.

Say no to sourfaux!

Rather than a look, trend or ingredient, sourdough is a process. Genuine sourdough bread is made without additives and leavened only by a live sourdough starter culture. A product named or marketed using the word sourdough but manufactured by a process, involving baker’s yeast or other raising agents, and/or additives, is what the Campaign calls sourfaux. 

Imitation is the sincerest form of cashing in on popularity. The Campaign frequently exposes brands mis-using the word sourdough to encourage people to buy – and often pay a premium for – these substantively different products, some of which fall into the ultra-processed food (UPF) category. The Campaign continues to lobby for a legal definition of sourdough.

The Campaign calls for more research into the potential benefits of sourdough fermentation. What can be said with a degree of certainty is that the changes necessary for those suggested by research so far cannot occur to the same extent – or perhaps at all – if lactic acid bacterial fermentation is curtailed or eliminated.

Full details of all this and more can be found at www.realbreadcampaign.org