Latest news with #sourdough
The Guardian
14-06-2025
- Lifestyle
- The Guardian
‘Great flavour, delicate tang': the best supermarket sourdough, tasted and rated by Thomasina Miers
I make sourdough every week at home, so I feel that I'm a good judge of the flavour and texture of this style of baking. Overall, I was pleasantly surprised with the quality of a handful of these loaves, which had good texture, good flavour and a nice crumb. It was, however, interesting to discover that none had to declare the salt content in their loaves, because this has a surprisingly large impact on overall flavour. The Guardian's journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. None of the packaging for any of these breads, save for Wildfarmed, talked about pesticides and herbicide sprays, which is one of the things I ask about whenever I do buy bread these days – surely part of the point of spending more money is to know that the loaves are made from flour without that toxic load to it? It was great to see the supermarkets becoming more engaged in making better bread, too, and that Jason's and Wildfarmed have made it on to so many high-street shelves. £2 for 450g at Ocado (44p/100g)£2 for 450g at Tesco (44p/100g)★★★★★ This delicious loaf looked the part and seemed to have real provenance behind it. It had a great taste that translated into a wonderful crumb for our fish fingers the following week. £4 for 600g at Waitrose (67p/100g)★★★★★ By far the best-looking of the bunch. A great flavour, a delicate tang and a crumb that stayed fresh for several days, and made great breadcrumbs and bruschetta after that. Very good quality for the price. £2.35 for 400g at Waitrose (59p/100g)★★★★☆ This bloomer had a nice, tangy sourdough flavour and a great shape, but with quite a dense crumb. A pretty good flavour overall, and it lasted well over three or four days. £2 for 360g in store at Co-op (56p/100g)★★★★☆ A lovely looking loaf, which is apparently made from a 12-year-old starter. The flavour was OK and the texture good, with nice holes and air in the crumb. £2.65 for 400g in store at M&S (66p/100g)★★★☆☆ This San Fran-style loaf had a nice open crumb and not a bad flavour compared with most of the supermarket ones. The light tang was present but faint (apparently it's made with a 30-year-old starter). Sign up to The Filter Get the best shopping advice from the Filter team straight to your inbox. The Guardian's journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. after newsletter promotion £2.10 for 400g at Sainsbury's (53p/100g)★★★☆☆ Interestingly, this has some rye flour in it, to give it a hint of extra flavour, but it's quite a flat, square-looking loaf that's unappealing compared with some of the competition, and with quite a dense crumb, too. Not masses of flavour, either. £1.89 for 400g in store at Aldi (47p/100g)★★★☆☆ This loaf had an impressive open texture and crumb, and was very nice looking. There were no ingredients listed on the back, but it definitely tasted like it wasn't a straight white loaf. Could have done with a little more salt, though. £1.99 for 600g in store at Lidl (33p/100g)★★☆☆☆ A very uniform-looking loaf with a pretty solid texture. I really didn't love the flavour, though. £2.10 for 400g at Tesco (53p/100g)★★☆☆☆ This loaf is described as 'tangy' and 'golden', but in practice, it was pretty solid with a dense crumb, had very little flavour and some kind of glossy egg wash that felt very unlike a typical sourdough. £2.10 for 400g at Morrisons (53p/100g)★☆☆☆☆ I didn't love the look of this loaf and its shape, nor was I hugely impressed by its flavour. Overall, I didn't love it.
The Guardian
14-06-2025
- General
- The Guardian
Meera Sodha's vegan recipe for grated tomato and butter beans with olive pangrattato
My favourite breakfast is sliced tomatoes on rye bread sprinkled with sea salt. The best bit is neither the tomato flesh nor the bread, it's the salted tomato water that runs down the back of my hands and threatens to meet my elbows. It's liquid electricity and one of my favourite earthly flavours. It could make a great stock, or a delicious martini, perhaps even a marinade for ceviche, but here it's thrown in at the end to refresh a dish of gently cooked tomatoes, beans and dill. Perfect for dunking anything but elbows into. Ideally, you'll need a food processor or blender for the pangrattato; if you don't have one, tear the bread into small chunks, then toss with the olives, spread out on a chopping board and chop through a few times until you have a fine-ish crumb. Prep 10 minCook 30 minServes 4 6-8 large ripe tomatoes (750g)Fine sea salt 85g sourdough (ie 1 big slice), chopped, plus extra to serve30g pitted kalamata olives (about 8)Extra-virgin olive oil 2 garlic cloves, peeled and crushed1 tsp ancho or aleppo chilli flakes 2 400g tins butter beans, drained and rinsed – I like Cirio25g dill, leaves picked to get 18g, roughly chopped Grate the tomatoes into a bowl and discard the skins. Add half a teaspoon of salt, mix, then tip into a sieve and set over the empty bowl to catch the juice – don't discard the juice. Put the sourdough and pitted olives in a food processor and pulse to fine breadcrumbs. Put two tablespoons of extra-virgin olive oil in a pan on a medium heat and, when hot, add the bread and olive crumbs and cook, stirring often, for about 10 minutes, until dry and crumbly. Put three tablespoons of olive oil in a large frying pan on a medium heat and, when hot, add the crushed garlic and the chilli flakes, and cook, stirring, for two minutes, until fragrant and light brown. Tip in the drained beans, the tomato pulp from the sieve and a half-teaspoon of salt, turn up the heat to high and cook, stirring every now and then, for 10 minutes. Tip in the reserved tomato juice from the bowl and half the dill, and stir to combine. Tip everything out on to a lipped platter, scatter the breadcrumb mix on top and finish with the remaining dill. Drizzle liberally with more extra-virgin olive oil and serve with toasted sourdough to ladle the beans on top of.
Yahoo
08-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
This Forest Hill pizzeria keeps winning Deliveroo awards - I went to find out why
When a small neighbourhood pizzeria wins Best Pizza in Greater London not just once, but two years in a row, it makes you wonder what all the fuss is about. That's exactly what I set out to discover when I visited Bona Sourdough Pizzeria in Forest Hill, the unassuming local spot that's built a loyal following and earned a national spotlight thanks to the 2025 Deliveroo Restaurant Awards. After more than 160,000 votes were cast across the UK and Ireland, Bona emerged as a clear favourite, again. I went to see if the pizza lived up to the hype, meet the people behind the dough, and find out what makes this place so special to the community it serves. What I found was more than just great food - it was a story of passion, consistency, and genuine neighbourhood charm. READ MORE: Bona Pizzeria Forest Hill wins at Deliveroo Awards 2024 The pizzeria, located in the heart of Forest Hill's Dartmouth Road, has become a cornerstone of the community since opening under current ownership six years ago. The kitchen area at Bona (Image: Newsquest) Its Neapolitan-style sourdough pizzas are known for their distinct flavour, soft texture, and quality ingredients. But what truly sets Bona apart is the people behind the dough. Owner Milan explained that the recognition wasn't just a reflection of great food, but of community support. 'We won the award last year and have retained the title and it feels amazing,' he said, adding that their win was only possible because of the people who come in regularly, the loyal takeaway customers, and those who voted in large numbers. The takeaway pizza boxes (Image: Newsquest) Milan elaborated on the process that led to the award, noting that Deliveroo selects a shortlist of restaurants in various regions and categories before the public is invited to vote. He explained: 'Well, Deliveroo put forward five or six pizzerias across different areas and they pick from that and then people vote." The Deliveroo awards cover a wide range of categories, including Best Chinese and Best Indian, which demonstrates the breadth of competition. Reflecting on Bona's journey, Milan said that the restaurant has always focused on Neapolitan-style pizza, but the menu and recipes have gone through a careful process of refinement over time. He explained: 'We took the business on six years ago now and it's always been Neapolitan-style pizza. "We've refined the menu over the years, refined the recipe, and pay a lot of attention to getting the dough right, so we've got a lot of pride with that.' Milan's regular trips to Italy have played a significant role in shaping his approach to pizza-making. Inside the restaurant (Image: Newsquest) He added: 'After going to Naples over the past few years I've really refined the pizzas I like and keeping the products consistent. "I love Italy, I've been to so many great pizzerias in Naples - it's food people never get bored of.' Milan believes pizza's universal appeal is central to its popularity, and part of the reason why Bona continues to draw in a diverse mix of customers. 'I don't think there's much food out there that fits everyone and anyone and it's something people can never get bored of. "You can have pizza once a month and it's a great comfort food,' he said. The team at Bona has remained small and close-knit with a team of about 13 staff, with Fridays being the busiest day of the week. He emphasised how much he values his team, saying that the award is most meaningful because it reflects the hard work and spirit of those behind the scenes. He explained: 'The award has given us more recognition. Milan has run the restaurant for six years (Image: Newsquest) "The best thing about it is the recognition from the team that we're offering a great service – the nicest thing about working here is the atmosphere from the team.' Manager Kinga, who has worked at Bona for two years and lives nearby, echoed that sentiment. She told the News Shopper: "I live locally and I love it here. "We meet our customers in supermarkets, gyms and outside – I always recognise their faces and usually know people's orders. "There's lots of people coming here who go to the Horniman museums, so there's a lot of people who come here for the first time too." One such customer, she recalled proudly, travels regularly to Naples and still described Bona's pizza as among the best he's had – a compliment she considers one of the greatest. On my own visit, I tried the Brindisa Chorizo pizza, which came topped with tomato, mozzarella, chorizo, goat's cheese rolled in chilli flakes, and a healthy drizzle of sriracha mayo. It was everything a pizza should be – slightly spicy, balanced, and full of flavour. My delicious chosen pizza (Image: Newsquest) The sourdough base was soft, light, and just chewy enough to hold it all together. Paired with a homemade garlic dip, it was comfort food elevated to something genuinely memorable. Beyond the food, it's clear that Bona's success is also about place and people. Milan spoke warmly about the local businesses that make up Forest Hill's independent stretch, singling out favourites like Pantry café and praising the area's character. He said: 'Dartmouth Road is great for businesses and there's no chains down here. "If you're into a neighbourhood thing, you'll like it – there's a pub for everyone here. 'You'll never come here and leave hungry.'
WIRED
07-06-2025
- General
- WIRED
Tech Up Your Sourdough With These Upper-Crust Baking Gadgets
Sourdough bread is one of the most wonderful things you can make with your hands, but it can be fussy and hard to get consistently right. These three new devices eliminate most of the guesswork. Courtesy of Sourdough Sidekick All products featured on WIRED are independently selected by our editors. However, we may receive compensation from retailers and/or from purchases of products through these links. I love making sauerkraut. I've almost always got a batch actively fermenting and another in the fridge, ready to eat. It's a project that can take a week or two, almost entirely hands-off once the veggies are cut and salted. To keep the active batch happy—it likes hanging around between 65 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit—I typically I keep it near the slider by my desk on the shady side of the room, closer to the glass if it needs to be cooler, a little farther away if it's cold out. Making sourdough bread, however, is a much more complicated process that involves different stages of fermentation that tend to like it hot. When you're starting a new batch of starter—the yeasty mixture that gives the loaf the bubbles to rise and the tang to light up your taste buds—it likes temperatures in the mid to high 70s to low 80s, what's affectionately known as the Goldilocks zone, not too hot and not too cool. Temperature control is key for the sourdough making process, and a group of new, recent, and forthcoming products that help coddle your starter and dough might just be enough help for people on the edge to become full-fledged sourdough people. In your home, finding consistently warm-enough spots can be daunting, especially for those of us who are newer or more casual sourdough bakers. While sauerkraut is pretty simple and forgiving, making sourdough is not. It is variables galore as you work to coax flour and water from separate states into a delicious risen loaf. This is particularly noticeable when you're in the week-plus project of creating starter, then keeping it happy for months or years. The variables of making and maintaining starter include weights of water, one or two kinds of flour, and the starter itself. It involves the temperature of that water and the temperature you store it at. Once you're ready to make a loaf, sourdough bread making is often a two-day process with multiple steps and techniques, wherein temperature control is critical in keeping the dough happy. A perfect sourdough boule. PHOTOGRAPH: GETTY IMAGES Bread making isn't one skill or technique, it's a bunch of them, and each step depends on the success of the ones before it. Somewhere in there, insert a problem, or just a little doubt about what you're doing. Maybe your starter smells funny, or the dough doesn't look like it does in the recipe photo. Then what? Some problems could be the result of the last thing you did or a skipped starter feeding from a week ago or something else entirely. Happy troubleshooting! When you're an amateur or parachuting into it for the first time, failure or at least disappointment is part of the game. If this both heightens your desire to make sourdough and spikes your anxiety, you'll understand why pegging any variables in the process can help eliminate confusion. The first product that caught my attention is the Sourdough Sidekick, a collaboration between King Arthur Flour and FirstBuild, GE Appliances' prototyping and product development lab. The countertop device is available for preorder and is due out early in 2026. Keeping starter happy means feeding or 'refreshing' it, which requires you to combine a tiny bit of the existing batch with water and flour to keep the bacteria and yeasts in the mixture happy and well fed. Some experts even recommend doing this twice a day … forever … which is fine if you bake on most days and is way too much if you no longer work from home, are a busy person, or would just rather not be beholden to a little jar of yeasty flour and water on your countertop. The Sidekick's schtick is that you can program it to prolong the time between your interactions with it as it automates the feeding. It even has a mode where you tell it when you'll be baking and it will make sure that your starter is timed out perfectly for your dough and make a little extra to keep your starter refreshed in perpetuity. (Non-nerds, skip the following sentence: It can even turn your starter into levain for your bread and leave enough at the end to keep the starter rolling.) It also cuts down on waste and time spent cleaning by using tiny doses of flour and water during the refreshments. The Sourdough Sidekick Courtesy of Sourdough Sidekick I got a Zoom call walk-through on this from Rick Suel, engineering director at FirstBuild's Louisville, Kentucky, headquarters, and it's easy to see how the Sidekick could make bread making and starter maintaining easier. The machine looks and acts a bit like a fully automatic coffee machine with a flour hopper up top and a water tank in the back. The two ingredients are stirred together in the fermentation vessel, and the amounts are adjusted depending on ambient temperature. It's pretty slick. Brød & Taylor takes a different tack to achieve a similar effect. Its Sourdough Home ($119) looks like a shoebox-sized countertop fridge and it can hold starter anywhere between 41 and 122 degrees. For me, this meant I could hold my starter at 80 degrees, the recommended temperature in the recipe I used, and keep it there during the 10-plus days of starter creation. I wasn't finding anything warmer than 77 degrees next to my fridge, so when I was troubleshooting on day six or seven, I stuck it in the freshly arrived Home and didn't have to worry about the temperature being a factor anymore. The Sourdough Home Courtesy of Brød & Taylor The Home also has the ability to space out your sourdough refreshments, not by Sidekick-style microdoses but by cooling the temperature of your starter. Fermentation will happen at preferred speeds, but cooling the starter slows the process down, allowing you to refresh less. The first time I tried it at a lower temperature, following two weeks of daily refreshments, I set it to 50 degrees and walked away, sort of stunned to see it bubbly and happy 48 hours later, compared to how spent and flabby it would have been if it was held that long at 80 degrees. It was easy to see how something like this is appealing to both beginner and experienced bread bakers. Controlling the temperature is also extremely helpful once you start making bread. SourHouse, which came out with the starter-coddling Goldie a few years back, just released the DoughBed ($280), a heated, happy place for dough to rise, if you can afford that hefty price. Sourdough loaves often have two separate fermentation periods. The first, 'bulk fermentation,' is where the dough rises and develops flavors. Later, after a bit of shaping, it proofs in a vessel—often a basket—that helps it rise and ferment a bit more while formed in the shape of the loaf to come. The DoughBed is a pill-shaped glass bowl that fits over a heating pad and under an insulated cork lid. It helps keep bulk fermentation on track by holding the dough between 75 and 82 degrees. The bowl's long, flat bottom allows for more dough to be as close as possible to the heat. I usually do bulk fermentation in an eight-quart Cambro container, at which point it's either at the mercy of the ambient temperature in my house or I tuck it into that warm spot next to my fridge. I call it ready when it is notably risen and is both a bit smoothed out and bubbly. If you like that readiness on more of a schedule, the DoughBed's consistent temperature helps get the dough where you want it, when you want it. If you are on a schedule, you'll appreciate this predictability. The DoughBed Courtesy of SourHouse Of course, I put this stuff to the test, following Maurizio Leo's starter-creation instructions and his beginner's sourdough recipe. It really enveloped my life, becoming an oddly emotional roller coaster for someone like me who was not on the lookout for new hobbies. Leo breaks bread making down into eight main steps, in addition to the daily care of your starter. There is a lot to learn for each part of the process. When you're busy learning or getting better at a bunch of consecutive new steps, errors can compound, potentially not even presenting themselves immediately. Controlling a few variables helps keep you on the right path and I appreciated both the Sourdough Home and the DoughBed because they clearly helped keep things moving in the right direction. In the end, it was not bakery-quality bread I made, but it was surprisingly good and something I was happy to share. I have no doubt that using both helped make for a better final product. It's definitely possible to approximate the temperatures you're looking for with these new devices by putting your starter in a warm spot in your home like on top of the fridge, next to the rice cooker, or, the herpetologist's favorite, on top of a $13 reptile heating pad. (Hat tip to Paul Adams at America's Test Kitchen who turned me on to that one!) If you can get the right temperature consistently using one of those options, go for it. But if you are new to the game, like the process, want to keep some uncertainty out of it, and are perhaps on a bit of a schedule, you might want to take a closer look at them. They will take some of the guesswork out of your baking and get you to better bread sooner.
Telegraph
05-06-2025
- Lifestyle
- Telegraph
Tomato and chilli pepper soup with oregano
This sits somewhere between a classic tomato soup and a punchy gazpacho, with a nice kick from the chillies. It's great served hot or cold. Ingredients 1 tbsp rapeseed oil 1 large red onion, roughly chopped 2 garlic cloves, chopped 1-2 medium red and/or green chillies, trimmed and roughly chopped, seeds and all 250g ripe tomatoes, or plum or cherry tomatoes, roughly chopped, plus 120g cherry tomatoes left whole ½ tbsp tomato purée 1 litre vegetable stock To garnish 2 tbsp rapeseed or olive oil, plus extra to drizzle 2 slices of sourdough or bloomer, cut into rough 1cm cubes knob of butter 12 cherry tomatoes, halved or chopped handful of oregano or marjoram leaves Method Step Add 1 tbsp rapeseed oil to a large saucepan set over a medium heat and gently cook 1 roughly chopped large red onion, 2 chopped garlic cloves and 1-2 roughly chopped medium red and/or green chillies for 3-4 minutes, stirring occasionally until soft. Step Add 250g roughly chopped ripe tomatoes (or plum or cherry tomatoes), ½ tbsp tomato purée and 1 litre vegetable stock then bring to the boil. Season and simmer gently for about 30 minutes. Step Meanwhile, heat 2 tbsp rapeseed or olive oil for the garnish in a frying pan and cook 2 slices of sourdough or bloomer, cut into rough 1cm cubes, until golden, 3-4 minutes, stirring as they cook. Step Add a knob of butter towards the end, continue frying until it has melted, then transfer the croutons to a plate lined with kitchen paper and season.
