It's alive!

Living, burping and bubbling fermented masses of flour, yeast and water that spawn countless loaves—Emma Hughes charts the rise and rise) of sourdough starters

- Emma Hughes

GAIL'S, the chain of boutique bakeries that extends across London and the South, has become an institution: its wares are sold in quantity around the country through Waitrose and Ocado. Founded in the 1990s to supply handmade artisan loaves to chefs, the business has grown enormously. However, the backbone of it, which lives on in the bakery, is still a huge bubbling, burping, living thing.

It is, of course, a sourdough starter, a primordial-looking organism that is integral to breadmaking. Every bakery worth the name has one and the style of baking it facilitates is ancient. Traces of starters have been found in Egyptian pottery dating from about 1500BC; it's been hypothesised that someone accidentally left a portion of either flatbread dough or porridge out overnight, returned to discover it had fermented and decided to bake with it to see what would happen.

Much like fruit trees, starters can be propagated; a 'cutting' taken and passed on will continue to grow and thrive if appropriately cared for. This gives sourdough baking a familial feel; if someone gave you a starter during lockdown, perhaps you're still baking loaves that are half-siblings (sharing a starter, but made with a different flour blend) of those baked by the person who brought you the gift in the first place, with some of the same flavour hallmarks.