Month: March 2022

Gluten (and lectin) free sourdough made with three ingredients: millet, sorghum and linseed.
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I like things simple and fresh, so home-milling the flours for this and not using the myriad of ingredients a lot of gluten free breads do is important to me.
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Once I’ve got the flour milled, it’s easy – blob in some of my millet sourdough starter, add a pinch of salt and the stir. Leave overnight and, in the morning, spoon in to a greased tin ready to bake.
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I’m really hoping I’ll be able to get to the UK this summer and show this bread, along with some of my other gluten free ferments with @iamcultured_

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Heather is a traditional addition to mead and beer in the UK. When I saw that my local herbalist stocked the dried flowers (called Erica in Italian), I knew I wanted to add some to my wild fermented ancestral beer.
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I’ve used local spelt grain for this batch of beer, as it’s milder than my usual rye and I want to see what the flowers bring to it. As usual, I malted half the grain and made the other half into small par-baked loaves. Both of these go in the ferment, along with water and some home-created yeast from a previous beer batch.
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I don’t have any special equipment – this ferments in the ceramic part of a slow cooker, inside my turned-off oven which has a home-made proofing set up in it (that allows me to keep it at 22C). I just guessed the amount of heather flowers.
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I (and my hubby and son) are used to eating and drinking whatever comes of my experiments. Thankfully, they are usually good 🙂
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Do you want to experiment with traditional wild fermented beers in your kitchen? Several people have asked me about a potential ancestral beer course. I am still experimenting, but hope that in the future, I would be able to pass on what I’m playing with in a way that would see more beer made this way in more kitchens!! For now, back to the stirring…

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I’ve got a small cup of chicken stock (the remains of a big batch) in the fridge, three jars of beef heart stock cooling on the counter (the heart was in the slow cooker overnight) and some pig bones waiting in the freezer.
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Stock is a joy, boon and essential routine in my kitchen. I believe in its magic; what it brings to body and mind, its versatility and its flavour.
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The latest @ancestralkitchenpodcast is all about this wonder food – its history, the health-giving qualities, how to make it and how you can use it.
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Find the podcast by searching in your app, or if you prefer, you can stream/download using the link in my linktr.ee.

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