Sourdough for Beginners – Intensive One Day Class

At Delightful Tea we believe in making all our bread by hand, taking time and using quality ingredients to get the best results. Sourdough for Beginners takes this to new levels, relying only on naturally occurring leavening (in short, what makes bread rise) rather than commercial bakers yeast to create sourdough breads which have great flavour and texture that benefit from time and care.

Sourdough bread has grown increasingly popular over the years due to its increased digestibility and deep flavour – we aim to demystify the processes during this introductory class, perfect for beginners and improvers. Our goal is to help students understand the processes enough to enable them to successfully make sourdough during the class and then again at home – what we won’t do is blind them with too much jargon so that the class is fun, informative and totally hands on and not like a school science lesson! We feel it’s more important to understand the processes and use practical methods to get tasty results.

The way the class will be taught will enable students to grasp the principles behind what sourdough is and why it works for the purpose of making consistently good bread. We will also demystify the common terms used so that students can understand the terminology they will come across when they try other recipes.

Each student will individually make all their own doughs using our starter as the basis for each variety. We will provide each student with a pre-fermented pizza dough to shape, top and bake on the day as we favour a very long cold bulk fermentation – which will be explained in class. The pizza dough made by students on the day will be packed to take away, meaning more chances enjoy handmade sourdough pizza at home too!

This class is capped at FIVE students maximum so that your tutor and support staff member can give you a really personal experience, rather than a large impersonal group session.

Each student will leave with the following:

• a white boule loaf
• two sourdough pizzas, with a selection of toppings, baked during class to reheat at home
• herb and poppyseed grissini
• sourdough crackers
• a little pot of our active starter to maintain and use at home
• a detailed factsheet including lots of information about sourdough, starter maintenance, understanding timescales and ideas for discard use
• a recipe pack

Some basic baking experience and kitchen skills are an advantage but not essential. If you’re unsure, we are happy to answer questions before you book so please do get in touch.

All course bookings are subject to our Terms and Conditions, including our cancellation policy. Please click here to access a downloadable PDF of this document.

On the rare occasion that we must cancel / reschedule a course students will be offered an alternative date or a full refund.

Due to the nature of our courses and the ingredients we regularly use allergens are present in our baking studio – visit our Downloads page for advice about main allergens course by course.