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

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

When new baby Lara was born, we set about making own own bread. Lara was delighted with her first solid food - sourdough bread. Hence Lara's Loaf

We also learnt that people here in Spain are incredibly fond of bread and that there is a surprising amount of knowledge about how good "masa madre" bread used to be before the arrival of fake (industrial) sourdough

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 commercially

And here we were in January 2021, with new family member, Matthew. It turns out he is just as fiercely fond of his sourdough as Lara was! And now, in May 2022 we are resuming our teaching holidays once again having just announced the arrival of our newest family mamber, Adrian

 

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

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