Learning super simple sourdough baking

My partner and I had the privilege of attending a sourdough baking course at Andy’s Bread in Llanidloes (which is deep in mid Wales) last month.  It was an absolutely superb day, we made pizza, French sticks, pain de Campagne and Russian rye bread, coming home laden with ten loaves, four sourdough starters and eight pizza’s worth of dough to freeze.  We had so much that to freeze and use up that we didn’t get to try our new found skill again until last week when we made a very good Russian rye sourdough which we repeated again yesterday.  Very tasty indeed!

This was the haul after giving a loaf to the neighbours!

Neither my partner nor I had never tried sourdough baking before – it has always sounded a bit intimidating with so many stages to go through.  However, Andy has made it really simple and with very tasty results.  We had a wonderful day and I would absolutely recommend both Andy’s courses to anyone who is interested. If you don’t live in travelling distance it is a beautiful area to have a holiday!

Andy uses some Welsh milled wheat from a working water mill – Felin Ganol – at Llanrhystud (near Aberystwyth).  I was so delighted to hear about this particular mill as, by amazing coincidence, I lived in Llanrhystud in the 1980s, on the river bank just half a mile down stream from the mill site.  I hope to be able to pay a visit there sometime soon.

This to me is particularly tangible evidence of the ever increasing growth in local sourcing and production.  Reading more about the grains they mill at Felin Ganol (which is pronounced Velin Ganol) I was amazed to find out that they are able to use two Welsh grown wheats.