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Sourdough Staffordshire oatcake warm from the pan with melting home-rendered lard.
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I’m honing two traditional British oatcake recipes for a forthcoming article in the #wapf journal. And I cannot say which one I like better!! There’s the traditional Scottish one; crunchy and biscuity, but there’s also this soft, pancake-like one from Staffordshire, in the middle of England.
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Warm, for breakfast, with gooood fat and I cannot imagine anything better:-)

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Old rye bread, sugar and water – that’s all you need to make a fizzy, sweet, slightly boozy drink that is full of live goodies that’ll aid your digestion in its incredible work.
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Some recipes out there soak the bread in water, drain it and then sugar-spike that liquid before fermenting. Other recipes use yeast.
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My method relies on the power of wild yeasts as well as putting the bread right at the heart of the ferment – as you can see here! I use that same bread over again – a bit like you do kefir grains – to make bottle after bottle.
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This is my husband Rob’s favourite of all the fermented drinks I make. He particularly likes the second ferment flavoured with cloves.
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There’s a recipe (with photos and videos) on my site. I’ve made it the first button in the recipes section of my profile link if you are ready to have a go at kvass yourself!

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If you make sourdough, you’ll know how much energy it takes and it how important it becomes in your kitchen and life. So it makes sense to get the very best raw ingredients you can.
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Today on the podcast, we welcome back Elly from @ellys.everyday to talk about the heart of bread: flour and grains.
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Listen in to hear about how to get the best flour for your bread, how to grind your own berries into flour, how to store grains/flour (including how to avoid weevils, which I just had in my spelt!) and how Elly seemlessly goes from the huge grain sacks you can see in this photo to beautiful fresh sourdough.
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Elly has taught me so much, listen in for an education as well as tonnes of inspiration! 🙂 You can search for @ancestralkitchenpodcast in your podcast app or stream/download from the link in my profile.

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Making traditional Scottish oatcakes…but can’t help going a little off-piste!
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The oatcakes are freshly rolled oats, lard and salt. After biscuit-cutting what felt like hundreds of them, I had this bit of the dough left. There were some very ripe figs in the fridge and the thought of the flavours together pushed me into making an oat cake and fig pasty!
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Check my story today for more oat cake pictures. I’m oat-crazy at the moment, researching an article for #wapf and making all sorts of ancestral oat dishes in my kitchen.
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What’s your favourite way to eat oats? Have you got a secret recipe up you sleeve I should know about?!

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Lard crackling spread.
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I don’t know what I prefer more – the amazing lard I render from @valledelsasso’s pork fat, or the crunchy cracklings left over after the lard is made!
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I eat them straight, make bread with them, and, thanks to learning from the IG community, I now make spread with them, which is a traditional use for cracklings in many parts of the world.
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This is onion and garlic fried (in what else other than lard!), cooled down and the added to the processor with my lard cracklings, two hard boiled eggs and lots of salt and pepper. So delicious (kinda reminds me of egg mayo) and keeps brilliantly in the fridge.
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I’m recording with @almostbananas next week for @ancestralkitchenpodcast and she’ll be showing us how they make this in Slovakia. Can’t wait.
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More pics (and lots of ancestral ale stuff) in my story today 🙂

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Here’s what’s on this plate, from 2 o’clock, clockwise:
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Left over fermented oat porridge (method on my homepage)
Crisped-up home-cured lardo (Italian pork fat – recipe in my newsletter tomorrow)
Local salad and tomato, topped with sauerkraut (recipe on my site)
Liver pate (recipe from @almostbananas)
Sourdough rye ‘borodinsky’-style bread (included in my course over at @thefermentationschool, link in profile) soaked in lard left from the crispy lardo pan!
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All of this (aside the tomato) was pre-prepared. Having things sitting in my fridge, waiting for me to put together is *such* a vital part of my kitchen.
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Make too much. Make in bulk. Make it routine. Use the fridge. Use the freezer.

And Ferment! All my carbs here are fermented and the fat and cabbage are too.
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What’s waiting for you in your fridge/bread bin today? I’d love to know!

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When someone with as much passion for photography as I’ve passion for sourdough spelt pizza makes and then takes her camera to my recipe, this is the heavenly result!
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Becky from @thestoriedrecipe.podcast interviewed me last week and she, as a complete newbie to sourdough, made my pizza. What a result! Swipe for more pics.
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You can listen to the podcast episode, titled “What is Ancestral Eating” by searching for The Storied Recipe in your podcast app, or by clicking on the link in my profile. It’s partly my story, partly me answering Becky’s insightful questions and partly sourdough chat!

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If you want to bake with rye, listen to this week’s podcast.
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In it, I talk through the four reasons I love rye sourdough: Its gluten content, its taste, the amazing, stress-free, starter it makes and the ease of working with it. I answer questions on mixing, ageing, health benefits, bringing out flavour and much more.
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And I share a discount code for my new course Rye Sourdough Bread: Mastering The Basics, a thorough, hands-on course with over two hours of video that’ll walk you through understanding rye baking, creating and maintaining a starter, baking two wonderful sourdough loaves and equip you with delicious discard recipes.
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Download the episode via your podcast app, by searching for Ancestral Kitchen podcast, or stream/download from my site (link in profile).

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This bread was made using ale yeast I grew at home.
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Last week I made ale. After brewing I decided to try using a bit of the same home-nurtured starter to make bread. It worked a treat – this beautiful wholegrain spelt loaf came from it.
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Although I made this ale starter from rye flour, just like I do my sourdough starter, the two mixes are quite different. Ale brewing uses yeasts and avoids bacteria. This is different to a sourdough starter which encourages both yeasts *and* bacteria. So using my ale starter in this bread meant the flavour was different.
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And you know what? I didn’t really like it! I am so used to sourdough and I missed the flavours the bacteria produce!
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How quickly we get used to tastes! Have you had that? You try something you haven’t eaten for ages and you wonder how on earth you ever used to like it?!
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I’m also guessing that this bread isn’t as nutritious, as it is lacking the transformations that the bacteria in a sourdough culture provide…

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Ancestral ale made with Italian rye and my own ale yeast!
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I’m so excited to get back to traditional ale-making. I’ve used quite a few starters in the eighteen months I’ve been playing with this – sourdough, mead, boza…yet I knew I wanted to have a go at making my own dedicated starter from scratch.
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What I needed was a yeast (not bacteria) dominant starter. Reading about Norwegian techniques I knew I could use flour and water, but that I also needed something to suppress potential bacteria. I didn’t want to use hops – they only came into ale/beer in the 1500s. I plumped for the locally-abundant anti-bacterial rosemary and boiled the herb in the water I used for every refresh.
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Along with rosemary, I also use bacteria-inhibiting salt and yeast-encouraging sugar. After 10 days I had a strong yeasty starter (pic in my story) which I then used with grain I’d malted myself to make this ale.
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Pictured here are three bottles about to go into a second ferment, one flavoured with cloves, another fennel seeds and the last elderflower and rosehip.
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I’m reading all about how women dominated brewing in England until the commercialisation that happened after the Black Death. Every page I read and every experiment I do connects me to those who came before me, whose DNA is in my own.
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I’ll put more details and pictures in my story today. There is an ‘ancestral ale’ highlight if you want to follow along in my journey.

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