How our sourdough lives through the seasons

A loaf of sourdough is rarely just bread. It carries the mood of the kitchen that shaped it, the miller who milled the grain, the baker who folded the dough at dawn. At Ebury by Fat Macy's in Pimlico, our loaf has a particular personality, and a particular habit: it changes. The crumb you eat in February will not be the same one you slice in July, because the flour behind it tells a different story each season.

We bake on a long, slow fermentation, using a wild starter that has travelled with the kitchen through several kitchens and many sacks of grain. The bread sits on our counter beside za'atar oil, slow-cooked lamb and plates of bright tabbouleh, and it has become a quiet thread that ties our Lebanese-inspired menu together. Below is the story of how it came to be, what we put into it, and why we believe a loaf should never sit still.

From a humble starter to a London institution

Every sourdough begins with a bowl of flour and water, left out long enough for wild yeast to wander in. Ours began in a small flat kitchen more than a decade ago, when one of our bakers, then a student at a local cookery school, caught a whiff of fermenting rye from a neighbour's flat and became mildly obsessed. That bowl of slop, fed daily, travelled through shared houses, a market stall in Brixton, a school fair, and eventually into the prep room of our deli.

The starter we use now is descended from that same lineage, refreshed twice a day and never washed, just stirred and fed with organic flour and filtered water. It behaves less like a tool and more like a housemate. On warm mornings it bubbles over the rim of its jar. On cold ones it sulks, and we coax it gently back to life with warmer water and a longer rest. Treating it as a living thing rather than a recipe is the heart of the craft.

We did not set out to build a sourdough programme. The deli was conceived first around Lebanese small plates, natural wines and a social mission to train young people leaving temporary accommodation. The bread simply became the thing that quietly anchored everything else, the way a slow-cooked bean stew anchors a mezze spread. Now it is what people ask about when they sit down, and what staff learn to nurture during their training hours.

The Lebanese thread that runs through the crumb

Lebanese baking has always understood fermentation as something generous rather than precious. Taboon bread, markook and the everyday pita rely on hot surfaces, wet doughs and patience, not speed. Our loaf borrows more from that tradition than from a Parisian baguette. We hydrate the dough higher than a typical country loaf, around 78 percent, which gives the open, glossy crumb that pairs so well with a slick of green olive oil and a scatter of za'atar.

We also keep a small jar of pulped black olives in the fridge next to the dough, not because we put them in the bread, but because the scent reminds the team what the loaf is for. A sourdough this alive is meant to be torn, dunked, dragged across a plate of muhammara, used to scoop up the last smear of labneh at the end of a long lunch. It is not a polite, plated side. It is a working ingredient.

That philosophy shapes everything else in the kitchen. When we choose tomatoes for the fattoush, we think about how they will squeeze onto torn bread. When we season the slow-cooked chickpeas, we taste them on a thick slice first. The loaf is the silent reference point for almost every dish that leaves the pass.

How grains change with the weather, from field to flour sack

Flour is a farmed product, even when it is sold in a heavy paper sack. Wheat ripens in summer, is milled through autumn, and slowly loses some of its vibrant, grassy aromatics through the colder months. The protein levels shift, the moisture shifts, even the colour of the bran shifts. A baker who pretends flour is a constant is a baker who will be puzzled by their loaf every other week.

This is why our dough changes through the year. In late spring and summer we lean towards a stoneground, higher-extraction British flour with a touch more strength, which gives the loaf an open crumb and a sweet, malty edge. By November we have usually moved to a softer, lower-protein European flour, which produces a tighter, more custardy texture that suits hearty bowls of lentil soup and slow-braised cabbage. Each swap is small, but the loaves are visibly different, and we like that.

We also work with a small network of suppliers who tell us when a new harvest has arrived. A few weeks after each new crop lands we receive a sample, bake it into a test loaf, slice it, taste it, and argue about it. If it makes the loaf more interesting, we move. If it does not, we stay put for another season. The bread is, in this sense, a rolling record of the year.

A bowl that knows the southern hemisphere too

About a third of our customers, and a fair slice of our suppliers, sit on the other side of the world. Many of the grains and pulses we use are grown in places where the seasons run in the opposite direction to ours, and where harvest rhythms affect what we can source. We work closely with a cooperative in South Australia whose hard red wheat is at its peak between December and February, just as the UK is buried in midwinter. We use that grain sparingly in our colder loaves, because its deep, nutty backbone helps a slice of bread hold its own against a January stew.

Australia's bread culture has long been a sourdough culture. From the Brunswick bakeries around Melbourne's inner north to the quiet farmhouse loaves baked on the Tasmanian coast, Australians tend to approach a slice with a fair dinkum seriousness, and they expect good fermentation. The classic Aussie brekkie of smashed avo on toast is, in many cafes, smashed avo on sourdough, and that habit of pairing a tangy, chewy crumb with simple toppings has shaped how we think about service.

We also take cues from Australian olive oil producers, whose groves around McLaren Vale and the Mornington Peninsula turn out some of the cleanest, pepperiest oils in the world. When we change the loaf, we often change the oil we pair with it on the deli counter, so the act of dipping a torn edge still feels coherent. Spring loaves get a grassy, early-harvest pour. Winter loaves get a richer, rounder oil that has had longer to settle.

Baking as a language inside our training programme

Sourdough is patient in a way that suits a training kitchen. The starter does not care who feeds it. The dough does not mind if the apprentice is nervous or distracted. It only asks for consistency, time and a gentle hand. That is exactly the rhythm we try to offer the young people who pass through our 200-hour programme while they are living in temporary accommodation.

Each trainee spends at least one full rotation at the bread station. They learn to mix, fold, shape and score. They learn to read the dough by touch, by sight, by smell. They learn that a tired starter produces a flat loaf, and that a happy one climbs into the oven with confidence. For many of them, it is the first time they have been trusted with a long, slow task and seen it through from start to finish. That sense of completion travels with them after they leave.

We have watched several alumni carry the skill into jobs at bakeries, restaurants and small food businesses across the city. Some have even started their own weekend bake from a shared kitchen. A loaf that began as a single bowl in a Pimlico deli has, in a small way, become a passport into a trade that pays properly and respects craft.

Pairing the loaf with the rest of the deli

The sourdough is not just a side act. It appears, in different forms, across the menu. Thick batards get sliced for the breakfast plates, where they sit under poached eggs and a slick of green harissa. Smaller rounds get pulled apart and toasted under the grill for the fattoush, so the bread soaks up the pomegranate dressing without going soggy. A few lucky ends are saved for the staff meal, sliced thick and fried in olive oil until they are crisp at the edges and soft in the middle.

On the deli counter we sell the loaf whole, by weight, and we always keep a few pre-sliced for anyone walking past who fancies a quick sandwich. The natural wine list has quietly been built around the bread, with skin-contact whites and lighter reds chosen for their ability to match both the tang of the crumb and the herbal lift of za'atar.

Come and see for yourself one arvo. The loaf on the counter changes every few weeks, and we love showing guests what is on the bench that morning, alongside the wine list and the day's small plates. The deli opens from brekkie through to a late-evening pour, and the kitchen team is happy to talk through whichever flour has made it into that week's dough.