Location: United Kingdom
Profession: Health Care Worker
About
Bread and Cheese, Bread and butter! Bread to soak up juices of soup and lasagne.
I bake for my family, and before having my own little family, I baked for anyone that would eat my bakes- when I was having a baking phase!
I’ve baked bread on and off since Secondary school, experimented with Essene Bread (sprouted wheat berries, nuts and fruits) from an amazing little book that I’ve lost and never to have recreated, and then sourdough firmly became my go to bread only last year, when I saw Vanessa’s 10 minute tin loaf! I don’t always bake every week for many reasons, but what brings me back to baking is my inability to IGNORE food labels any longer! If I can’t bake, we either don’t have bread or we at least choose Waitrose organic- not sourdough though!
I did a retarded loaf last night, and had an amazing starter this morning that wasn’t needed so we had sourdough discard whole meal pancakes with dark chocolate shavings and maple syrup! My daughter has had diversity for breakfast! I forgot we had blackberries in the fridge forged and gifted by one of my baby boys night carers.
I have other passions- I learnt clinical acupuncture in 2019 just before covid and falling pregnant with my Daughter. I love to learn- so ancestral medicines/tradition medicines, ways of life and ways of living are flickering away in my mind a lot! I decided during Covid I no longer wish to be so removed from the knowledge of where I food comes from. And that has lead me on a knowledge mission and back to Vanessa (whom I found back in 2017 but then Sourdough seemed really out of reach).
My Work
I’m in Rushden Northamptonshire .
I’m a dental nurse by profession. Employed by the local community NHS trust Northamptonshire Healthcare Foundation. I’m unsure whether I’ll be able to return work, after having a premature baby last year, who is now home but requires 24/7 care of his airway. But so much can change in a day, with a very unpredictable little person around.
I’ve baked bread on and off since secondary school. Read about sourdough and first stumbled across Vanessa and Nourishing Traditions (Weston price) back in 2016/2017 but the seeds didn’t fertilise until 2020 and the COVID sourdough uptake around the world! Even then, I never managed to ‘keep’ my starter! So soon gave up! I started listening to lots of informative podcasts just before my premature labour, and that listening continued during my long drives back and forth to the hospitals Arthur stayed in. It was podcasts that introduced me to Hodmedods, a deeper dive in to regenerative agriculture (I’d already stumbled across that and where possible, shopped with Kirsty at Waterloo Cottage Farm). And then one night, Vanessa popped back up on my Instagram and I was enlightened in to the work she was doing with BALM and the sourdough school! I had this mission to try and get someone from our trust- either Perinatal Team, or CAMS team or Pysc doctors to get on the teaching course and get social prescribing of sourdough, in to Northamptonshire! It’s a mental health trust/community trust I work for. That failed, as the social prescribing come under the Council/NHFT in combination and the seeds that I put out through the channels of power didn’t fertilise, or have yet to. And that’s when Vanessa offered me a place on the course!
I wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep it up once Arthur came home, and I haven’t done any on the course since November but I have still baked! Not every week, sometimes 2-3 times a week! But I have the ability to make a half decent 10 minute tin loaf that NOURISHES! I am so thankful to Vanessa for that, but also for the never ending life work to bring bread that nourishes - to all walks of life! Vanessa’s passions fuels a flame within me, that when time and opportunity allows I will join in more fiercely with introducing people to the benefits of nourishing bread and the ease of which it can be made, when you know how.
My Community
My community is small, but I see the trust I work for as my community and maybe a way of bringing BALM to a wider audience!
I know of a dentist at work, who is also a youth group leader! And when I’ve gained enough knowledge, I hope to see whether I can go along and bake with the children for a few consecutive weeks and set some seeds in young fertile minds.
How I use BALM Protocol
A podcast I listened to of Vanessa, where she spoke about doing a bread challenge. Make a 10% rye with 90 white and gradually increase the nourishing flour and diversity of your bakes. I’d like to do this first with my family, but then find a few people who’d happily take on the challenge of one meal a day that contains the bread I bake and then monitor the increase in diversity and outcome in how they feel and their tummy’s. And I’m thinking again, I’d like to do this within the NHS trust I work for! But likely staff first, so that I can ignite there beliefs and together find a way to bring it to inpatients and community patients!
