Bread Matters Fundamental

This is where you start to understand how to make good bread. No mystifying instructions (like ‘make a well in the flour’). Nor the small deceits of ‘one I made earlier’. On this course, you make bread with your own hands from flour to loaf. Complete beginners are given a sound introduction, while those with some experience improve their range and understand, often for the first time, why things work the way they do (or sometimes don't). We cover the five crucial stages of proper breadmaking – mixing, fermenting, shaping, proving and baking – by way of basic yeasted and sourdough breads. Then we move on to other recipes, each demonstrating a different and delicious way of using the fermentation process.

After two days you take home everything you have baked, perhaps a little sourdough to leaven future breads and, almost certainly, a whole new understanding of what good bread is and how to make it at home.

For beginner or old hand, domestic cook or aspiring professional, Bread Matters is the place to come to learn new skills and get to grips with good bread. It’s led by Andrew Whitley who started one of the UK’s best known organic bakeries in the 1970s. After many years as a full-time artisan baker, he knows what he’s talking about.

You learn by doing, so everyone makes a variety of breads, feeling the changes as a dough comes together, observing the crucial part time plays in developing good flavour, satisfying texture and nutritional integrity. You will go home with several loaves of your own bread, more confidence and a greater understanding of the processes at the heart of breadmaking.

Bread Matters is now based South of Edinburgh, not far from West Linton and the Pentland Hills. Macbiehill Farmhouse is powered by renewable energy and, on five acres under organic conversion, is developing an agro-forestry project for food, fuel and a more diverse landscape. A warm welcome, good companionship and lovely surroundings await you.