The Sourdough School

Baking eating and sharing bread to improve physical and mental health

A Social Enterprise: Providing Training & Support for Bakers & Healthcare Practitioners to Teach and Socially Prescribe Baking as Lifestyle Medicine.
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Baking as Lifestyle Medicine for Bakers and Clinicians

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teaching sourdough

Teaching Baking as Lifestyle Medicine 5 Day Workshop

£1,999.00

Teaching Baking as Lifestyle Medicine is suitable for anyone with an interest in baking the most nourishing bread and bakes possible, and teaching others to do so too. It will also suit people who work in the mental health sector, such as psychiatrists, psychologists, occupational health practitioners, mental health nurses and social workers, as well as cookery teachers, chefs, food industry professionals and community support workers.

On this workshop you will learn about the inner workings of The Sourdough School, as well as how to bake the most nutritious bakes possible. You will gain an understanding of the mechanism of sourdough, and both the theory and the practice of baking for health. You will learn how to prepare and teach a sourdough baking course, and discover what it takes to deliver a five-star experience.

You will learn to use our BALM Protocol, which is based on Vanessa’s research for her doctorate.

Dates for 2023: Monday 24th to Friday 28th July

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SKU: N/A Categories: All Practitioner Training, Teacher Training
  • Additional information
  • Who can apply for teacher training?
  • What will I learn?
  • Before the workshop begins...
  • Once I am certified, am I allowed to call myself a qualified Sourdough School Teacher?
  • Do I have to have a licence to teach?
  • Am I allowed to call my own business a ‘Sourdough School’?
  • Will I be able to open my own Sourdough School?
  • So, how do I teach if I am not a franchise?

Additional information

Workshop dates

24th-28th July 2023

Who can apply for teacher training?

The Teacher Training Workshop can only be completed as part of the full Diploma in Teaching Baking as Lifestyle Medicine. If you have completed the Standard Prescribing Baking as Lifestyle Medicine Diploma within the last two years, you can apply to ‘top it up’ with the Advanced BALM Workshop and this Teacher Training Workshop.

What will I learn?

After studying the BALM Practical and BALM Theory syllabuses, as well as attending the BALM Workshop, you will have built an incredible base of knowledge. This workshop is about bringing that knowledge together with who you are and learning how to share it with others. Your life experience and your story are just as relevant to your teaching as the bread making techniques you will share.

• This workshop shows you how to teach people to make the most nutritious bakes possible using The Sourdough School’s BALM Protocol and teaching style. You can only really learn this in person from Vanessa.

• By the end of the workshop, you will be able to not just teach, but really communicate the mechanisms of sourdough and why it is both more digestible and more nutritious.

• You will be confident in teaching people to bake delicious sourdough and showing them how doing so can optimise their health.

• You will be able to teach all bakes, from simple sourdough bakes including sourdough pasta, basic sourdough cakes and focaccia, to baguettes and open-crumb boules.

• You will know how to teach people to accompany their bakes with probiotics, by making fresh fruit compote, cultured butter and more. You will be able to chat about health topics, such as Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), Non-Coeliac Gluten Sensitivity (NCGS) and certain allergies, and you will also be able to explain why the gut microbiome is at the centre of the way we teach.

• Upon completion of the workshop, including written test and the completion of the course recipes, you will be a certified Sourdough School teacher.

• You are the magic ingredient.

Before the workshop begins...

By the time you attend the Teacher Training Workshop, you will already be most of the way through the BALM Practical and BALM Theory courses (unless you have already completed them and are doing the Teacher Training Workshop as a top-up module). In April, about three months before the Workshop, we will set you a series of mandatory practical tests and an online test. This will show us where to focus our attention before you attend the School in person, and will highlight any areas that you need to work on.

Once I am certified, am I allowed to call myself a qualified Sourdough School Teacher?

Yes, upon successful completion of your teaching certificate, you are now a certified Sourdough School teacher, and you may apply for your Sourdough School teaching licence if you want to be supported by the School and the team with your teaching.

Do I have to have a licence to teach?

No. It is not compulsory to have a licence. As a teacher, you may display your certificate and share that you are a qualified Sourdough School Teacher, and you are totally free to set up your own business or work for another cookery school and teach under your own name. Some students prefer this freedom as we have a very specific approach, so they may prefer to just teach in their own way.

Am I allowed to call my own business a ‘Sourdough School’?

No. We are The Sourdough School. It would be like graduating from Oxford University with a teaching qualification and wanting to call your cookery school Oxford University. It is not appropriate and goes against our terms and conditions. However, you can join The Sourdough School and apply for a licence to become a franchisee.

Will I be able to open my own Sourdough School?

While successfully completing the Diploma in Teaching Baking as Lifestyle Medicine qualifies you as a teacher, this certificate alone does not entitle you to open your own Sourdough School. However, this qualification is the prerequisite for applying to open your own franchised

Sourdough School (see pages 54–55).

So, how do I teach if I am not a franchise?

You may teach under your own trading name, as a sole trader or as a limited company with any name suitable for your business, or you may choose to contract yourself to another school as an independent teacher (as many of our former students have done very successfully). However, unless you are an official Sourdough School licensee, you cannot use our brand name within your business name.

Related products

  • vanessa at the sourdough school

    Teaching Diploma in Baking As Lifestyle Medicine

    £4,999.00
    Select options
  • One To One Student Support Pack

    £2,000.00
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A NEW APPROACH

👉🏻 For the past 3 years we’ve been working on something incredible … prescription sourdough bread making courses for our @sourdoughclub members 

📈We have had amazing advances in healthcare, but there is no pill to cure poor diet. The best medicine is prevention via a healthy lifestyle, and many studies have shown that people who eat healthily and exercise regularly sleep better, have less anxiety and depression, have more energy, and lower their risk of chronic illness overall.

🙌 Vanessa’s work on Bread & the Impact on the Gut Microbiome has been turned into something extraordinary. Prescription bread-making courses as a lifestyle intervention, and the Bread Protocol we teach here is designed to address the way you live, exploring behaviour related to nutrition, physical activity, stress management, sleep, social support and environmental exposures. These courses are 12 weeks long, and designed to maintain health and prevent disease not just in individuals bit in patients and populations, so we have 2 ways to enrol on a course: 

1️⃣ SOCIAL PRESCRIPTION 
If your doctor or healthcare practitioner is one of  our Sourdough School graduates and they feel that this bread-making prescription course is something that will improve your health, then they may can prescribe the course for you as a social prescription free.

2️⃣ SELF PRESCRIPTION 
You can self-prescribe these courses by enrolling yourself on a course to improve your health and wellbeing.

📰 If you are interested in learning more about the prescription courses then please sign up to the newsletters as we will be announcing their launch over the coming weeks and months. 

@vanessakimbell
@drmiguelmateas 
@dralexdavidson 
@dksherratt 

#lifestylemedicine #preventativemedicine #systemschange #socialprescribingday #socialprescribing
🧘 LAST ORDERS TODAY 🧘 I’m prepping the st 🧘 LAST ORDERS TODAY 🧘

I’m prepping the starters to post out on Thursday.

I was thinking why sourdough all these years? I guess it’s because is alive… it’s a culture of wild yeast and lactic acid bacteria. We might like to think we can control it, but we can’t control everything. Things change when we bake. The flour changes, the ambient temperature changes, or something happens during the middle of the day and your baking routine changes.

We can be very critical of ourselves. Starting the day by looking in the mirror and criticising our physical appearance. Or looking at something we’ve done or said and overanalysing it. Often, without realising, some of us can be incredibly negative.
It’s the same with bread. I notice that many people are self-depreciating and, while they aspire to make beautiful loaves, they have a distinct lack of acceptance that creating a really aesthetically stunning loaves takes time. It’s an art. It takes many years to be able to understand the nuances of each flour and how each one behaves to create bread. There is no instant fix. And I wouldn’t want there to be.

If you want an instant fix, go out and buy a packet mix – that way the work is done for you. In sourdough there’s no instant fix. That is the whole point of it really. That’s why we celebrate when we do make those incredibly beautiful loaves. And what you are actually celebrating isn’t high levels of gluten or high levels of hydration. It’s that person’s ability to have understood and connected to the flour, to their environment, to the yeast, to the timings and rhythm and everything coming together to create something that is joyous to eat.

To learn more about what we do here at The Sourdough Club and the courses we teach, follow the link in the bio to read 

#mindfulbaking #sourdough #sourdoughsclub #bread #sourdoughlove #sourdoughlover #naturalleavened #leavening #realbread #breadmaking #bakebread #makebread #makerealbread #sourdoughstories #bakingforlove #bakingtherapy #sourdoughbaking
🧂 ARTISAN INGREDIENTS FOR ARTISAN BREAD 🧂 A 🧂 ARTISAN INGREDIENTS FOR ARTISAN BREAD 🧂

Artisan bread starts with artisan ingredients. Honest ingredients that have been grown and harvested with respect for both the people and the earth. The flour has to be organic, the water chlorine free and the yeast has to be sourdough, and so it follows that the salt has to be similarly harvested with principles that are in synergy with our own. Salt making was, up until the industrial revolution, an artisanal craft. Much like bread making salt is also an artisan product that has been industrialised, so we use a hand-harvested salt in our bread.
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In our shop, we sell unrefined salt specifically for sourdough - Natural salt contains all of its trace minerals and other elements that are naturally a part of its origin. Our salt is not exposed to chemicals and does not contain anti-caking agents.
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Follow the link in our bio to our shop, where you can find the best artisan ingredients for your bread! 
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#artisan #salt #iamamember #sourdoughclub #sourdough #sourdoughbread #naturallyleavened #realbread #sourdoughbaking #bakingbread #breadmaking #homebakedbread #sourdoughlove
DID YOU KNOW WE HAVE AN ONLINE SHOP & CAN PURCHASE DID YOU KNOW WE HAVE AN ONLINE SHOP & CAN PURCHASE MY WHITE SOURDOUGH STARTER?
(with worldwide delivery)
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I have several sourdough starters but The French white starter is one that I have been using since I was 11 years old and originates in the bakery I grew up baking within France. It takes a bit longer to reach it’s peak and is generally slower and sweeter, and much more forgiving of being neglected for a week, so the one I recommend for beginners. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
We have verbal confirmation that the starter originated over 115 years ago and If you swipe right in the video you can listen to me chatting to one of the older residents of the village confirming that bakery did not shut during the war either .. & it has been maintained ever since... it’s a lovely story. Although the microbes double every 20 – 30 minutes when they are refreshed ... so it is either over a century old or 30 minutes old depending on how you want to look at it. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
You can purchase a pot of my starter, along with a grey moon kilner jar & a mini video course on looking after your starter. 
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TAP THE PICTURE TO SHOP.
 
Swipe right to see the amazing video of the French bakery where the starter originated from @vanessakimbell has been baking with this starter for over 20 years … and first baked almost 40 years ago with it …#romantic 
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#breadbosses #breadporn #flourwatersalt #breadtalk #bread #breadstagram #sourdough #sourdoughschool #bread #sourdoughlove #sourdoughlover #naturalleavened #leavening #levain #realbread #breadmaking #bakebread #makebread #makerealbread #learntobakebread #breadmakingclass #sourdoughstories #bakingforlove #bakingtherapy #sourdoughbaking #bannetons #bakery
🌾 BARLEY - DO AS THE ROMANS DO 🌾
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Oats & Barley. We love both, but this week we have been diving to barley with our students, learning about nutritional value, what role plays in supporting key butyrate producers for gut health and why gladiators were call 'barley-eaters'!
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And naturally, we will be talking about how we can incorporate barley into our baking and our botanical blends.
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To find out more, become a student of the Sourdough Club! 
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#grains #wheat #einkorn #emmer #spelt #heritagegrains #freshlymilledflour #milledflour #milling #freshlymilled #botanicalblend #fromscratch #unrefined #mockmillproud #mockmill
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