Hello
I'm Lydia

A New Start in Spain

In 2014 my husband Mike and I upped sticks from England to start a new life in the beautiful Lecrin Valley near Granada

Back in Weybridge, we'd been blessed with a multiple-award-winning family bakery just a few doors away from home. In Granada, in spite of searching high and low, we couldn’t find any bread or patisserie to get excited about

So we set about learning how to make our own bread. New baby Lara was delighted with her first solid food - sourdough bread - hence the name Lara's Loaf!

 

Teaching

Before long we were showing Spaniards and tourists how to make delicious bread and croissants at home, using only simple kitchen equipment

Then Mike thought "Why don't we start offering sourdough activity holidays? Tourists could stay with us, learn artisan baking, and visit historical Granada and the splendid scenery hereabouts"

People came from all the corners of the world, and we really enjoyed hosting them, especially Lara!

This eventually led to Lara’s Loaf Sourdough School being recommended by the Times and Sunday Times as one of the fifty best holidays in Spain for 2020

 

A New Bakery

Sadly, the Covid-19 lockdown in Spain brought our school to an abrupt halt

Keen to keep our passion for baking alive, we obtained an artisan bakery license and sold our products to tourists, locals, bars and shops

In 2021 we successfully restarted the school. As you can see, our family has grown with Matthew and then Adrian

We needed more room! And not just for us!

In July 2023 we relocated to an ideal three story villa in the historic town of Pinos Puente, much closer to Granada.

We took a break from teaching while we fitted out a substantially larger bakery and created dedicated guests quarters with accomodation to a very high standard

"How can a nation be called great if its bread tastes like Kleenex?" Julia Child