Love, love me dough
A Valentine’s gift to your gut
Are you showing your gut bugs enough love? You should be showering them with gifts by eating as many plants as possible, according to gut-health guru Professor Tim Spector, whose new book Food for Life we are absolutely loving.
He suggests we should be nibbling on 30 different plant types every week. Why? Because there is a wide diversity of friendly gut bugs beavering away in our intestines, helping us to digest and extract goodness from our food. They all do different jobs, and they all like different types of plant – including fruits, veggies, flowers, legumes, grains, seeds, herbs and spices – so the more varied our diets, the more good work our microbial guests can do for us.
When you consider that just three plants – wheat, corn and rice – make up more than half of total calories in the human diet, 30 a week might sound a little daunting. But even just mixing up the grains and seeds in your daily bread can give your hard-working gut bugs some welcome variety.
You could try a breakfast slice of Lovingly Artisan Danish Rugbrod (containing stoneground rye flour, linseed and sunflower seeds) topped with almond butter and some chopped apple. Or a sandwich of hummus, spinach and grated carrot on our Five-Grain Rye sourdough, which adds millet into the mix as well.
In fact, you could add eight different grains and seeds to your diet just by choosing a selection of Lovingly sourdough loaves – and be well on your way to 30 plants a week once you’ve dipped them into veggie soups, spread them with homemade pestos and sprinkled them, crumbed and toasted, onto salads.
Research also suggests that the sourdough method itself could give your gut bugs an extra boost. The long, slow fermentation of the dough brought about by wild yeasts and lactic-acid bacteria may release more of the beneficial polyphenols that make wholegrain flours – particularly rye – so nourishing for our bugs and our bodies.
For more on why we’re so in love with wholegrain flours and sourdough baking, visit lovinglyartisan.com/faqs.
Say it with sourdough
A dozen red roses? We’d much rather have a gently warmed saffron bun smeared with melting butter and a spoonful of raspberry and vanilla jam. We suspect your idea of a breakfast that makes the heart sing is the same as ours – which is why we created the Breakfast in Bed box. It contains two saffron buns, a jar of our favourite Hawkshead Relish jam and a Pain de Campagne sourdough loaf – you’’ll ‘always have Paris’. Order at lovinglyartisan.com a few days in advance to be sure it arrives at your Valentine’s door on the big day.
Feeling the love
We were blown away to be named Britain’s best artisan bakery at the Artisan Collective, a new platform bringing together craft bakers, suppliers and industry experts. At the inaugural event last week we were all asked to vote for our favourite bakeries, and Lovingly Artisan topped the Baker’s Dozen of the 13 top scorers. It’s an amazing feeling to be voted for by peers, friends and even competitors – all brilliant and talented people who really know their bread. Huge thanks to all of them, and to British Baker, which organised the event. And loving thanks to all our amazing customers: you inspire us with your enthusiasm for all things sourdough and motivate us to keep learning, keep innovating and keep baking better, kinder bread.
Happy Valentine’s xx
