£400 off the new course for IPM Congress 25 Vouchers released & an amazing video !

PROVEN PROGRAMME — USE IT OR LOSE IT

It was amazing to meet so many of you at the IPM Congress. – this is such an amazing event. I have attached some of the most amazing moments including the video below of Versha Carter who is the Founder of the conference., explaining how she felt the Quad Bread from the Proven Bread programme was the thing that supported something utterly extraordinary during her Chemotherapy as her gut microbiome improved – which is extraordinary. Professor Robert Thomas, one of the most renowned oncologist in the UK also shared that her recommends my bread to all his patients. Dr Fe Amati dropped in and said how much she loves the bread is nourishing, along with her new book, and I loved sharing the bread with Rosemary Fergason and so many others. There were too many amazing moments to share all but and so many of you have told me that you don’t have time to bake. So this is a course designed to get you into bread, made properly, delivered to your door, ready-sliced, straight to your freezer. No oven. No skill. You don’t have to bake a thing; we do that for you. It is Proven to improve your gut health and your mental health.

Why should I pay for a programme when I could just buy a loaf?

This was the question most of you asked. I do not sell bread.

Why? Because just eating bread does not change your mental health. We ran the study for 3 months and the BALM protocol works. There are tangible changes in your gut health and your mental health but the 2nd study when we delivered bread alone found that the mental health outcome was very different. The study over 4 months showed the feeling better was optimised â€” thirty-plus plant ingredients, eighteen hours of live fermentation, six grams of fibre in every slice, nearly three times the polyphenols of wholemeal, blood-sugar balance, diversity, all of it. BUT on its own, that is still not enough because overall mental health did NOT improve.

The programme is that connection to the community and to the understanding that is the secret ingredient!

The second question that people ask is, will I learn to make the bread? Yes. If that’s what you want. I can’t think of anything more delightful. But to begin with, perhaps you could consider this the gateway entry into bread and healthy bread. Sometimes you just need the bread, and then the baking will come later.

Live lunch with me every 2nd Tuesday

This is not an arduous course. It is a relaxed, communal learning experience and we chat and have lunch. It’s a Zoom session, and yes, I am going to suggest how you can enjoy your lunch. There are delicious recipes to go with your bread. Symbiotic eating, sequenced eating, connecting to farmers, and to real people, and I shall be inviting guests to come and have lunch with us. Who are these guests? I have no idea as yet. Whoever is most interesting in my life at the time, I should imagine. This is fun. It is interesting. It is engaging. And what is more, it keeps you on track.

In this amazing Video you can listen to Versha taking about her gut microbiome in chemotherapy and our bread.

Why are the number of places so limited?

Well, there are two reasons. Firstly, because I prefer to be able to get to know people, and to recognise you. It is a year-long programme, and having lunch together throughout the year, discovering how you respond to the bread and how you are eating it, is equally inspiring for me.

And the bread is made entirely by hand. It is posted out to you. The flour is freshly milled. This is not your ordinary sort of bread, is it? It is nothing like anything you will have had before. It is completely extraordinary.

So I very much hope you will shut down the noise for a while, turn off your phones, come and join us, and take a little time for yourself â€” to connect, and to understand your most basic food on another level altogether.

Do please remember that there are only a limited number of places, so I should not delay, if you are thinking of joining us. This is the third run of the programme, and places are kept deliberately few, and deliberately private.

I am so looking forward to the programme. Please sign up this weekend as the voucher will be removed on Monday.

Kindest regards

Vanessa Kimbell

Ps – if you are not someone who attended this year then you can still use a voucher but there are very limited number so please be quick!

All reasonable care is taken when writing about health aspects of bread, but the information it contains is not intended to take the place of treatment by a qualified medical practitioner. You must seek professional advice if you are in any doubt about any medical condition. Any application of the ideas and information contained on this website is at the reader's sole discretion and risk.

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About Dr Vanessa Kimbell

Dr Vanessa Kimbell is acknowledged as one of the world’s foremost authorities on bread and human health — the first person to hold a doctorate in Baking as Lifestyle Medicine and Preventative Healthcare, and the pioneer who, long before gut health became a mainstream concern, first identified the crucial role bread plays in the gut microbiome and mental wellbeing. A fourth-generation baker of Italian descent, she has been baking sourdough since the age of 11, served her traditional apprenticeship in the Dordogne, and is a time-served, French-trained qualified baker who has worked alongside some of the world’s greatest bakers including Richard Hart and Gabriele Bonci. She has spent four decades asking the questions the food industry preferred no one asked: why was industrial mono bread slowly harming us, and what would it take to make bread that genuinely nourishes?

The answer became her life’s work. As founder and Course Director of The Sourdough School in Northamptonshire — a world-renowned centre of research and education — she has taught bakers from over 84 countries, integrated the BALM (Baking as Lifestyle Medicine) Protocol into NHS clinical practice at Bethlem Royal Hospital, and developed Proven Bread: the first bread built on clinical evidence, personalised to the individual through nutrigenetics and gut microbiome assessment. She delivered the Royal College of General Practitioners‘ approved course in the Nutrition of Bread, has been a regular contributor to BBC Radio 4’s Food Programme for many years, and collaborates with leading scientists and clinicians including Professor Tim Spector — who credits her with teaching people to make the healthiest bread in the world — and Professor David Veale. Named the Sourdough Queen by The Telegraph in 2013, her influence reaches far beyond the classroom — from artisan bakers and healthcare professionals to the world’s leading food scientists and multinational food corporations.

A bestselling international author of five books, her sixth — Proven — publishes in November 2026.

More information about Vanessa can be found at
The Sourdough School,
The Sourdough Club,
on Instagram at @SourdoughClub,
@SourdoughSchool and
@vanessakimbell,
on Facebook and
LinkedIn.