The Sourdough School

BALM – Proven as one of the healthiest approaches to bread in the world.

Based in the walled gardens of Dr. Vanessa Kimbell's beautiful Victorian home in rural Northamptonshire, UK, we tutor individuals and train bakers and healthcare professionals in Baking as Lifestyle Medicine (BALM). Personalising bread to your lifestyle, gut microbiome, and unique genetics for optimal health—tailoring fermentation, fibre, and diversity so that your daily bread becomes the foundation of your health.

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The Sourdough School Newsletter – Proven Bread™ Launch & An invitation to a Webinar to learn more

The Proven Bread™ Launch

Your IPM Conference Exclusive Access

If you’re reading this, you probably already know that I am a bit obsessed with bread. This has taken me years to put together and so here is an invitation to find out more about how extraordinary this bread subscription. I hope that you will understand why, for now, it is also a limited subscription for now there is only 120 subscriptions available and when they are gone they are gone.

I calculated that we gave out 3,000 samples last week, I’ve been so overwhelmed by the response from functional medicine practitioners who just  get it. You get the MTHFR, the importance of the bioavailability of the minerals in the methylation and why gluten has to be degraded through. So you understand straight off that this isn’t just bread – and why this is clinical nutrition in loaf form.

EXCLUSIVE IPM OFFER – 2 WEEKS ONLY

This is an offer just for those of you who have tasted the signature loaf bread, or registered an early interest and I have added a special pricing that ends 8th July 2025 as the very first cohort of people to subscribe.

Two Decades in the Making. Your Recipe is Here

This bread has taken me years to develop – from milling rose petals and rosemary with my toddlers in the garden to creating the Big Poops Bread that’s about to change the way you understand bread and help support your patients and your practice.

The clinical specifications:

  • 6g of fibre per slice – that’s almost half the fibre daily requirement in just 2 slices
  • Diversity score of 30 – that is in line with the recommendation of 30 ingredients per week to support gut health – this its a monoculture-busting, microbiome-supporting range
  • Bristol Stool Chart No. 4 – optimal stool formation support

This is the approach to bread from my doctoral research where we saw significant changes in gut microbiome and improvements in mental health.

1.9kg in 24 slices.
There is only 120 subscriptions available – this the mixing bowl.
Before baking
The amazing purples flecks before we bake each loaf by hand.

Why the Industry Failed Us (And Why We have to do this Ourselves)

For seven years, I’ve tried working with commercial bakeries in the belief that we must change bread for public health. Every time – right to the contract edge – they pulled back. The truth? The bread industry doesn’t understand bread. The power of the supermarkets to influence public health is absolute and they maintain the majority of bread as a cheap commodity. bread should not harm health and when created according to the BALM protocol bread is nourishing. Good bread can be used as a clinical intervention.

So I’m doing this myself, with Hodmedods milling our flour and Peter Cooks bread as our first systems change baker.

What makes Proven Bread™ authentically revolutionary:

  • 30 diverse ingredients
  • High levels of polyphenols with dark high anthocyanin grains
  • 6g fibre per slice
  • Regeneratively farmed grains – from farmers whose names and farms we know
  • Long slow fermentation
  • Real butter (not industrial spray!)
  • The Subscription comes with a 12 week Educational programme.
  • Read the case studies here

What makes this Subscription so special? – it is way more than bread it is empowerment

The result: Transform bread from problem food to healing medicine. Patients get an education, clinical monitoring that they can use with their healthcare provider and artisan bread delivery for less than a daily coffee.

Perfect for social prescribing – bread instead of pills, and an empowerment model where your patient understand soil, farmers and their own gut health and become part of a systems change with objective tracking practitioners can use in patient records.

This is The First-ever program that makes eating bread into structured, measurable lifestyle medicine intervention.

12-WEEK LEARNING SCHEDULE

Baking as Lifestyle Medicine in Action
This is a commitment — to yourself, to your microbiome, to the soil, and to the future.

01.30.17_KyleB_D8_VKimbell_PolDust_167
Butter fats

Your 4 Options

1. JOIN THE WEBINAR – An invitation to learn how to eat Proven Bread

Free Webinar – Book Your Place

Monday July 30th 2025 19:00 London

I’m diving deep into the science, the clinical applications, and exactly how to integrate this into your practice. This is where it all makes sense. I’ll cover blood sugar balance, gluten intolerance, main findings from my doctorate and explain more about BALM Training and the systems change programme.


2. PROVEN BREAD™ DELIVERED TO YOUR DOOR

Three subscription options:

Bronze is our most Basic Subscription – Details here Perfect for personal use and patient recommendations

Silver Subscription is out best value  – Full details here 

Gold Subscription is limited to just 10 with personalise 1:1 with me  – Full details here 

Limited launch – with the social media ( totalling over 500,000) and a 30,000+ subscription newsletter you will understand that I am wary to take too much on for this launch. This is a soft launch, with limited numbers. So if you are keen to join this first cohort then I suggest booking your subscription early as a waiting list likely given IPM response.

  • Final orders: Wednesday 30th July 2025
  • First dispatch: Wednesday 13th August 2025

Next cohort will be January 2026.


3. The Recipe – MAKE YOUR OWN

This is what I really want people to do. My doctoral research showed making this bread was the game changer – not just eating it.

Make your own and Get the Complete Recipe & Kit


4. PROFESSIONAL TRAINING FOR PRACTITIONERS

The Diploma: Baking as Lifestyle Medicine Two-year online protocol covering IBS, bowel cancer, fermentation science. Over 400 recipes to apply this knowledge.

  • Join the Diploma (Next intake: end September)

Hands-On Retreats:

  • 4 spaces available – Tuscany September
  • Autumn Retreat

Personalised Practice: Learn how I practice as a functional medicine practitioner – personalising bread using nutrigenetics and gut testing.


The Science That Changes Everything

When you stop seeing bread through the calorie lens and start seeing it nutrigenetically – through gut microbiome and evolutionary perspectives – the combination of fibre, diversity, and fermentation delivers exactly what our patients need.

This delivers: More bioavailable fibre
Minerals and vitamins enhanced by fermentation
Methylation cofactors
Incredible fibre diversity
A whole meadow milled into nourishment


Proven Bread being made iby hand in the Artisan Bakery

Yes, It’s the Most Expensive Bread You’ll Ever Buy

But here’s the thing we have to value bread, and your bread is less than the price of a cup of coffee to deliver  and if you look through the lens of bread as real food as a clinical intervention, it’s not expensive – it’s essential we reframe our daily staple. You or your patients spend more on supplements.

It is time to value bread.

They are HUGE

At 1.9kg delivered fresh to your door, pre-sliced, freezer-ready – this is preventative medicine disguised as comfort food.

Peter Cook is make our bread and is one of the most amazing bakers I know.

This Is About Connection, Community, and Healing

This bread represents decades of friendships with farmers, psychiatrists, doctors, nutritionists, wheat breeders. It’s transdisciplinary medicine in action.

This is bread as community. Bread as soil health. Bread as healing.

Join the Webinar – Essential for understanding the clinical applications

Jul 30, 2025 19:00 London

After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Subscribe to Proven Bread™ – Let us deliver healing to your door

Get the Recipe & Kit – The most clinically effective option

Professional Training – Transform your practice

This is your invitation to a profound systems change.

From this one lady in Northamptonshire who’s been fighting for good bread for 40 years – thank you for getting it. Thank you for seeing that bread can heal.

The shift is happening. You your family and your patients are waiting.

Welcome to the revolution. The Programme also comes with the option of using my a clinical self assessment form for you to monitor how you feel over the 12 weeks and to share with your healthcare provider

P.S. – I’ll be in New York next week. But I’m so excited about this. and I am delighted to share what I’ve been talking about and teaching for decades in a deliverable bread.

Dr Vanessa Kimbell

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All reasonable care is taken when advising about health aspects of bread, but the information that we share is not intended to take the place of treatment by a qualified medical practitioner. You must seek professional advice if you are in any doubt about any medical condition. Any application of the ideas and information contained on this website is at the reader's sole discretion and risk.

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