Gaye Whitwam, of Sticky Mitts in Wallington, is the local baker who supplies the lovely range of loaves you can buy as optional extras with your vegbags. We’ve been getting more and more bread orders, so we thought it was time to ask Gaye about her passion for bread – so here’s all you knead to know (sorry!).
Q. Tell us about your bread. Do you have firm principles about your ingredients and methods?
A. I only bake with organic stoneground flour. All my bread is made by hand and fermented slowly. My bread takes a minimum of four hours to make – unlike factory bread, which goes from flour to wrapped loaf in less than an hour.
Q. What is your favourite loaf and why?
A. That’s like asking me which is my favourite child! They all have individual characters and I love them all. [Farm customers have a choice of wholemeal, healthy white, seeded malthouse, rye sourdough and the ever-changing specialty loaf.]
Q. We hear a lot about sourdough bread. What’s the big deal?
A. Sourdough bread is naturally fermented over 24 hours with wild yeasts that are naturally present in flour. This slow fermentation neutralises phytic acid, which is found in the bran of all grains and in the outer coating of nuts and seeds.
Q. What’s so bad about phytic acid?
A. Phytic acid is an anti-nutrient that binds to minerals in your gut, prevents mineral absorption and leads to mineral deficiencies.
Q. Does sourdough bread actually taste sour, and what is the texture like?
A. It depends on how it is made. It can be slightly tangy or very sour. The crumb is much chewier than bread made with commercial yeast. It keeps longer though and ages gracefully – drying out rather than getting a nasty green rash! It makes fantastic toast and is great with sauteed mushrooms and kale, for example, for a quick supper.
Q. You are involved with the Real Bread Campaign. What is real bread and what is the campaign hoping to achieve?
A. In the 60’s the Chorleywood Bread Process (CBP) was invented. It was a technological triumph. By juggling chemicals, flour types and adding three times as much yeast as had been used by bakers before, and then mixing at high speed, bread was produced that was 40% softer than previous loaves and lasted twice as long before it suddenly developed green spots. This was the beginning of modern bread.
However, it might not be the triumph it first appeared to be. There is a growing belief that these modern industrial baking methods may be behind today’s huge rise in digestive illnesses.
The aim of the RBC is to draw attention to the way bread is made and to encourage people to rediscover real bread.
Q. Why do people need to be encouraged to discover real bread?
A. People have become used to a particularly soft texture. They expect bread to be pure white, cheap and to last for days. It takes a while to adjust to real bread because it has substance and requires more chewing. Sometimes the colour can put people off. Stoneground white flour is actually cream in colour because the bran and the oils from the nutritious wheat germ has conditioned the flour.
Q. You are a Bread Angel. What does that involve?
A. Bread Angels are passionate home bakers who want to supply their local community with good bread. All of us start baking from home and many move on to start community bakeries, shops and cafes. Many of us are also teachers and run bread making courses. Our aim simply is to make good bread available locally and to encourage people to bake their own.
Baking your own bread is not as daunting as it may seem. It takes time, but not your time. Largely the dough is just doing its own thing.
Q. You are a teacher as well. What courses do you teach?
A. I teach courses on Basic Bread Making, Celebration Breads, Easter Bread, Sourdough Bread, Christmas Bread. I also host Bread Parties, Team Building Events and a course on How to Set up a Micro Bakery.
Q. What attracts people to the Micro Bakery Course?
A. Some of my students are in between jobs. However most of them already have good careers but crave a creative outlet in their lives. So they combine baking and selling bread (often to colleagues) with their main job.
Q. We are so glad to have a local baker supplying our customers. What made you decide to get involved with Sutton Community Farm?
A. I have been involved with the farm since the early days. I ran a Community Kitchen for families at a local school for a while. Kevin would bring over fresh vegetables from the farm for us to cook. We found that children, in particular, were keen to eat the vegetables after they had been involved in the cooking.
When I subsequently became a Bread Angel I approached the Farm because we shared the same aims of bringing authentic food, produced locally, to our community.
Find Gaye online at www.stickymittsbread.co.uk and on Twitter @stickykitchen