The Original 10-Minute Sourdough by Dr Vanessa Kimbel

he 10-Minute Sourdough method, created by Dr Vanessa Kimbell — the technique that inspired bakers worldwide. Most people who teach sourdough simply pass on existing methods; Dr Kimbell’s work challenges the assumptions underpinning breadmaking. Over many years she has been integral to reframing sourdough as something that functions within everyday life, and her techniques altered both the practice and the purpose of bread. The 10-Minute Sourdough book was written to make sourdough accessible to everyone, no matter their skill level or time constraints.

The Back Story

Dr Vanessa Kimbell trained as a sourdough baker in southwest France. When she returned to the UK in the early 1990s, sourdough was not yet mainstream. As it grew in popularity, sourdough meant the boule — precise, time-demanding and quietly treated as the only bread that counted. The Telegraph recognised Dr Kimbell as “The Queen of Sourdough” as far back as the mid-noughties.

She had been teaching the traditional boule before she started a family. Then she had three children in four years, and she stopped baking. Despite being a trained baker, she found herself time-short and reaching for shop-bought bread. She describes this period as a challenge on a very personal level. She had three young children, IBS, and a family that needed feeding every day, and without sourdough her health began suffering. That is where this technique began. She realised she needed to make slow bread fast. Bread needed to be part of the everyday meals, in a practical way, and the problem was not knowledge or skill. It was that the model of sourdough didn’t fit real life.

At that time, baking was dominated by a male baking culture with a narrow idea of what “proper” bread looked like. Practical loaves were dismissed. Tin bread was considered second rate.

She rejected all of that and looked at bread through a different lens — health and practicality — and changed the way thousands of bakers approached sourdough.

The 10-Minute Sourdough technique is not a shortcut. It is the original reworking of the process so that long fermentation, flavour, and nutritional integrity become part of everyday life. What began as what she called her “fridge-raiding bread” became a method that people could actually sustain — the first fast pure sourdough technique designed for domestic practicality, particularly for parents, to deliver fibre, nourishment, and everyday family bread. The hundreds of bakers she taught are part of a wider shift in the dynamics of sourdough globally, and over the past twenty years this approach has been adopted and widely replicated by hundreds of thousands of bakers worldwide. Much of what is now considered “normal” in sourdough — flexible timings, practical loaves, bread that fits around a day — comes from Dr Kimbell’s original groundbreaking work.

This book shared that work.

It is accessible, and it is significant. It changed how people understand bread. Here, your bread becomes a daily fibre delivery system — supporting gut health and anchoring nourishment in the home — fitted around the reality of your life.

This is sourdough, redefined for real life. For you, for your family, and without compromise. Dr Kimbell changed the landscape too bread with this approach busting  myth that sourdough is time-consuming, difficult, and elitist. It is a fool-proof guide for busy people who think they do not have the time to bake. The approach is simple: slow-ferment everyday bakes with just 10 minutes of active work, so you can actually bake and enjoy the most delicious bread in the world. Long fermentation, real flavour, real nourishment — fitted around the reality of family life, work and daily responsibility.

The 10-Minute Sourdough School book can be ordered as a signed copy with a book plate

10-Minute Sourdough follows a year of recipes at the Sourdough School. The academic year starts in the Autumn with the new harvest and continues through the seasons, featuring seasonal ingredients. The recipes include pan loaves, cakes, focaccia-style loaves, a simple pizza, and several celebration recipes.

Each recipe can be made over a 36-hour period, with just 10 minutes of active work (excluding baking time).

10-Minute Sourdough makes baking sourdough simple, easy and appealing.

‘Fast to make, slow to ferment – how to fit baking nourishing, delicious and wholesome sourdough into everyday life’ – Dr Michael Mosley

Vanessa Kimbell owns the Sourdough School in Northamptonshire and the Sourdough Club, where she teaches sourdough breadmaking and baking classes to students from around the world, in person and online.

She is a best-selling author with a substantial following across Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

10-Minute Sourdough accompanies Vanessa’s other Sourdough School recipe books, The Sourdough School and The Sourdough School Sweet Baking: Nourishing The Gut & The Mind.

Please note: to enable Vanessa to sign her book for you, she has had Sourdough School book plates printed, which she personally signs. These are placed in your book loose for you to secure.

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