Tom’s Sourdough Story

What’s bread when it’s eaten alone? We know we’re really alive when our handmade bread is broken and shared with *people we love. – Tom Herbert

*Companion: with bread (action), Latin

Grandpa Herbert was given the sourdough culture by a German baker who said it was at least 30 years old (perhaps even older), and that was back in the spring of 1985. Since then we’ve nurtured it like a mother, always replacing whatever we take out of the sourdough culture vat to rise our breads, by replenishing it with fresh organic dark rye flour and water.

This way it’s never run out (or died*), grown in volume as we’ve needed, whilst maintaining its multi-award-winning, and irresistible tangy flavour. As the years have rolled by and a million or more sourdough loaves have been shared and a few thousand jars of this precious sourdough culture have been won, bought and shared, we have seen the baking family grow massively.

With such an influential character in our midst, we’ve been impressed to give her a birthday.

With no birth certificate we’ve taken the liberty of twinning her with Trevor, Hobbs House Bakery MD, and this June on the auspicious sixtieth birthday, we invite you to join us in celebrating not just our sourdough, but the glorious fervour for sourdough and home baking enthusiasm our Hobbs House Bakery sourdough culture has risen up and mothered.

*or denatured for the bio-chemists among you.