Top 8 sourdough tested

SOURDOUGH is the new quinoa, the pesto, the sun-dried tomato, the hand-cooked crisps, the pomegranate molasses of recent years.

Fashionable because it’s delicious. It commands a slightly higher price than regular yeast bread as it takes more time to first mature the natural yeasts and bacteria for the ‘mother culture’ which is then divided and used for each batch of bread.

A piece of the mother culture continues to be used for future batches, but has to be treated carefully and used often to keep it ‘fed’. This is what is off- putting for home-bakers who may not bake often enough to be worth the trouble. The mother culture mixed with flour, salt and water is then allowed to ‘mature’ and ‘prove’ for longer than regular yeast breads and this is when the rich flavour develops. From starting the mother culture to cutting your first slice could take 10 days. After that, it’s not as long.