10 Things About Single Origin Sourdough Bread

Our new Single Origin range is a celebration of baking bread with wheat grain that’s traceable to the source. But what exactly does it mean when we say single origin sourdough bread? Here are ten things that will hopefully clear things up a bit.

1. It’s made with single origin wheat

Single origin wheat flour is milled from unblended wheat grains from a particular region and have the characters of that region. It’s only one variety of grain. This is what gives us traceability. Many flour millers will blend together grains from different regions and of different quality in order to produce consistent wheat flour for commercial use.

2. The wheat we use is from the Southern Flinders Ranges in South Australia

Flinders Ranges Premium Grains provide us with unblended single origin grain and wheat flour from the Southern Flinders Ranges. The prevailing wind from the south brings in almost pure air with no measurable air pollution. The region is known for plenty of rainfall and long, hot and dry summers that help the quality of the grain. The soil in the region is a rich, red soil, full of natural nutrients and this is maintained by clean and green farming practices. The wheat is grown using sustainable farming techniques and when the flour is milled it isn’t mixed with other grains, resulting in a high quality, high protein wheat flour. When you’re eating a loaf of Single Origin sourdough, you can trace it back to the field and the farmers.

3. Finding single origin wheat isn’t easy

Commercial flour is blended for consistency. From the blending process we never really know where the wheat has come from, and the quality is always averaged out. So finding farmers who oversee the milling process to ensure that no blending happens was a cause for celebration for us.

4. We follow a unique recipe

Great single origin wheat, water, and salt are the only three ingredients in the sourdough loaf. As close to purity as we can get with bread – and it comes with exceptional flavour! We specially created the recipe for this wheat from the Southern Flinders Ranges to bring out the remarkable flavour characteristics. It took many months to perfect the recipe.

5. There’s a special process to bake a loaf of single origin sourdough

We had to learn new ways of using old, traditional baking techniques to make the single origin sourdough. Some of the vital steps include a very gentle and slow pre-mixing with long autolyse, long fermentation, gentle hand shaping, long cold secondary fermentation and very hot baking on stone for us to succeed in making superb bread with the Flinders Ranges single origin wheat.

6. Single origin sourdough has remarkable flavour and structure

This sourdough loaf has characteristics that are unique to the wheat from the Southern Flinders Ranges. The open crumb structure, waxy texture, and crunchy golden crust are qualities that we feel are a reflection of the sun-drenched wheat fields of the Flinders Ranges.

7. It can be made with variants

We chose to feature sprouted wheat in another loaf to provide a new level of the wheat grain. The sprouted wheat is made by soaking single origin wheat om water, and then germinating it overnight. Then the sprouted grain is used in making the dough. The sprouted wheat adds sweet and nutty flavours as well as nutritional benefits.

8. Keep it simple

The best way to taste our Single Origin bread is simply with butter to appreciate the characters of the bread. You can of course use it as you would any other sourdough loaf as a sandwich, alongside soup, salad, toast or simply on the dinner table as a tasty, healthy part of the meal.

9. Each loaf celebrates the source

It’s taken us many years to get to this stage where you can trace back to the source as you’re eating a loaf of our single origin sourdough.

10. This is the future

This is part of the food revolution. We want to change how people perceive bread, nutrition and the environment.We need to have a strong relationship with farmers. And the farmers must look at the nutrition in the soil. We can’t separate the soil, the grain, or the farming from the final bread.