Eureka! They said a pure sourdough baguette couldn’t be done, but sometimes that’s the best impetus for me to make something happen.

I’ll be honest with you, it was reading George R.R. Martin (Game of Thrones) that made me seriously question my grain-free life choices. The way he writes bread (usually with butter, honey or cheese) really illustrates it in a true light: it’s a staple, a tradition. Food is culture & bread is a hub to the western wheel.

“In a heartbeat, a thousand voices took up the chant. King Joffrey and King Robb and King Stannis were forgotten, and King Bread ruled alone. “Bread.” they clamored. “Bread, Bread!”‘

But I wanted to eat bread in some way that was healthy. I’d had troubles digesting wheat and wasn’t a fan of the carbohydrate load behind bread. It seemed somewhat impossible to get easily digestible, low carbohydrate bread that was healthy. But as I mentioned, sometimes impossibility is the best impetus to revelation.

Behold: sourdough! I learned very quickly that this staple wasn’t traditionally bad for us—we are now preparing it in a way that not only robs it of nutrients, but alters its digestibility. The outcome of cutting traditional corners in bread-baking are the negative affects we collectively attribute to bread itself. It’s not bread’s fault, it’s our love of convenience & our disregard for tradition that birthed this folly. Sourdough white bread is heaps better for you than a whole grain yeasted loaf, and it’s equivalent to whole grain quinoa on the glycemic index. The fermentation process unlocks nutrients in the grain, like sprouting can, and makes them bioavailable to you when you digest. Plus, the probiotics in the fermented loaf are excellent for your body, like yoghurt.

The best defence for respecting tradition I’ve ever heard was that we no longer remember why we started doing things a certain way!

Baking sourdough is… a bit more involved than a yeasted loaf. One of the challenges is texture. A fermented loaf changes texture as it breaks down; it becomes more liquid and softer. The easiest way to bake a cultured bread is in a contained vessel, like the crock pot used in my amazing recipe here. Not only does a vessel contain a loaf regardless of texture, a softer more liquid loaf is easier to get a rise out of. The challenges to making a free-form loaf, like the artisanal style loaves and baguettes (both baked on a stone) are: a. Getting the dough at a perfect moment of fermented-but-still-able-to-hold-shape & b. Getting it to rise while being firmer in texture.

Baguette crumb (the inside yums of the loaf) are notoriously full of big air bubbles—they need a looser freedom to rise. And they are baked on a stone—without any walls to hold them in. So they are especially hard to make 100% pure sourdough. I was told to add yeast to them. That’s the silver bullet. Apparently that is how they are made at every sourdough bakery in France—even those committed to sourdough levain use a bit of yeast. I’m stubborn. I’d just found my magic formula for healthy bread and I wasn’t straying course without a fight. I found another silver bullet, and it was the most unsuspecting one I could imagine: gluten.

I’ve literally spent I-don’t-know-how-many years avoiding gluten—now I’m suddenly adding it to my recipes?! Haha. Yes! I am. I add a tiny bit (less than any recipe I’ve seen) because I’m still averse to it (change is hard) and I found a crispy crunchy crust gets a little harder with more gluten. But just a teaspoon or two in a batch of 4 batons is enough to keep a nice firm bind allowing the dough to stretch out without collapsing—letting big air bubbles form—adding springy texture to the crumb while being little enough to still get a super crunchy crust. I’ve also taken to fridge fermentation now. Although it takes a bit longer, you get a better ferment in the cooler temperature. I appreciate a very sour loaf. It’s healthier, not to mention damn tasty. Plus, the dough keeps longer so I can make a week’s worth of bread in one batch and it will keep getting better as it ages in the fridge.

Here is my recipe (makes 4 batons):

300g Starter
200g Organic Wholewheat Flour
500g Organic White Flour
400g Very Warm Water
1/2 – 1Tb Gluten
Sea Salt (a Tb or 2)

1. Combine your starter with almost hot H2O.
2. Add Flours and loosely mix. Let sit for 30 minutes (this lets the flour absorb the water before the salt comes to lap it up).
3. Add salt. Play with it a bit (aka knead). Let sit an hour covered in a bowl (a tea towel works fine).
4. Play with it again. Just work the dough in your hands, the bacteria like air. Let sit for another hour.
5. Play with it one more time before laying a piece of clingfilm (saran wrap: my teen years in the UK sometimes show) directly over the dough. So, push it down to touch the dough and tuck it in like a wee fermenting baby.
6. Let sit for 24hrs. You can use after 12-16 easily, but I like a really sour loaf so I tend toward at least 24hrs.
7. Your dough will have doubled. Slice it in half, put half back in the fridge.
8. Halve your half again and shape into loaves.
9. Place your loaves in a little baby bread basket made from a well floured tea towel. Pic below. (Keep this tea towel for this purpose. I save mine in a glass container with the plastic wrap to reuse as well!) You want them to come up to room temperature before putting in the oven. It could take 1 to 2 hrs.
10. Heat up oven to highest temp possible (500+). I use a stone, if you do not have one, flour up a baking tray. Put a pan in the bottom rack of the oven for steaming.
11. Slit batons (or don’t, one time I rolled a baby loaf onto its top in the oven so the slits were on the bottom and it came out with the most beautiful explosion down the centre), put in the oven quickly and pour water into the hot pan creating a super steamy environment for your BBs. Close the door and watch the magic through the window… you should be getting an awesome oven spring (that’s the jump of joy the bread makes while baking)!
12. They should be done around the 25 minute mark!
13. Cool on a rack. In my house, that’s the toaster oven rack thing.

The rest of the recipe will get better with time in the fridge. But I wouldn’t leave them longer than a week! Super easy to have fresh sourdough baguette always. Note: the longer your dough ferments the less oven spring you’ll get (the amount it rises in the oven) so baguettes made later in the week will have to start in larger segments to get them the same size. They will also be a bit softer as they’ve broken down so much, but they’ll taste wonderful. Note: a super active culture is how I got the big bubbles in the pic with the avocado breakfast. A starter that has been fed even a Tb of flour with its equivalent in water around 4 times in 2-4 days before using will produce the most active culture. Otherwise, a culture fed 6hrs before using will be active enough to produce the bubbles in main header pic. It’s totally up to you and the time you have! For a more traditional loaf style, and adding flavour to sourdough loaves, you can check out my article here. I made an amazing turmeric, sage & black pepper loaf.

For more Get-Healthy life hacks, I hope to see you in my FREE workshop starting April 1st. You can enrol here!  

This kale salad should be called “Kale Cleopatra” because, while it is a relation of Caesar’s, it is far more badass.

It’s full of beneficial bacteria, fibre, vital—raw—nutrients, good carbs & tastes AMAZING.

I usually hate salad in the cold season. But not anymore! I don’t know about you, but I tend towards eating seasonally. It’s not something I do consciously, I’m just not usually into the delicate leafy greens all that much in winter. So, salad, as much as I adore the vital nutrients and flavours of raw veg, normally goes out the window in my diet for a good 6 months out of the year. Hearty greens like kale, however, are not only packed with nutrients, fibre & excellent for your digestive system—they’re actually a winter vegetable.

Zut alors! We’ve found a winter salad! I could eat this salad all day long, and would be a good move if I did! Not only does apple cider vinegar have beneficial bacteria that aids your digestive system, it also lowers blood sugar (which is the leading suspect in weight gain & essentially every other negative aspect of consuming carbohydrates), aids weight loss, helps you feel full (this salad is so satisfying), lowers cholesterol & it kills bad bacteria. One of the most challenging, and most dangerous, components of anti-bacterial efforts is the propensity to kill good bacteria as well as bad. This makes apple cider vinegar a somewhat magical weapon. (Level up!)

The homemade croutons are so chewy and crispy from being fried in butter, they make the salad seem really hearty. They’re ends from sourdough bread I make at home (you can find a recipe here). They’re also an excellent carbohydrate because the fermentation process of sourdough makes them low on the glycemic index (at least as low as quinoa—hard to believe, I know, but true). Again, you can find more info on that here.

Then we add the health industry’s darling: kale. It’s anti-inflammatory (this essentially means it prevents everything from muscle soreness to aging–ant-inflammatory is everything) plus it’s full of antioxidants which are as important. This isn’t to mention fibre, a bunch of vitamins, detoxifying properties… Kale is the industry’s darling for a reason. I love kale chips. I eat them … a lot. (I’ll post a recipe soon.) And I can find a million recipes to throw kale into: but all of them are cooked. Getting the raw, vital nutrients from kale (the “most nutrient dense food on the planet”), for me, is rare. There are some really yummy kale salads out there, but this one is woah. The tang from the apple cider, the soft chewy crispy croutons & the bite of the raw kale all come together to make a salad it’s hard to have one bowl of (but with all of the health benefits listed above, who cares, have two—have four)!

Kale Salad Cleopatra:

Dressing:

You can make your own favourite dressing and just sub out apple cider vinegar for the regular acid in the recipe, but always use a good oil. If you have a 3-6-9 or antioxidant blend in your fridge now is the time to use it (same goes for a flax oil, or any other you’ve bought for the benefits). I use olive oil because it’s healthy & it’s what’s on hand. I’m going to leave the amounts to you: I think your body will crave more of an ingredient when it needs it (I’ve been liking a really tart dressing lately and then I’ll opt for a fattier one at other times). I like to make a bunch in advance—you can just store it in a mason jar in the fridge for whenever (the vinegar and oil will both preserve & it keeps a very long time).

Olive Oil
Garlic
Dijon Mustard
Apple Cider Vinegar
Worcestershire
Sea Salt
Fresh Ground Black Pepper

–     For a classic emulsification get your blender ready with everything in it save the pepper & oil. (You can always just do the shake in a jar.)
–     Turn on the blender, take the plastic cap from the middle of the lid out and slowly add your oil.
–     Grind the pepper directly into your emulsification or reserve it for topping the salad.

Croutons:

I like to use a cast iron pan because it actually infuses the food with iron. Really weird, but true. I also buy cultured butter because… I’m obsessed with culture. This is usually unsalted so the croutons will need salt if that’s the case. You can get fancy and add seasoning, but I find they soak up the dressing anyhow, so there’s plenty of flavour. For fat-reduced diets I would reduce the oil in the dressing to make up for the butter here. (But it’s all good fat anyhow, so use your sLund judgement.)

Cubed Sourdough
Butter
Sea Salt (if butter is unsalted)

–     Sautée in a small pan to taste. They will need quite a bit of butter. Start with high heat & turn down.
–     Turning occasionally to often in the pan as they get browner and browner.

Salad:

Ok, this is going to sound a little weird, but trust me, I know what I’m talking about. I want you to wash the kale leaves, take their spines out and give them a rub down. Yes, I want you to massage your kale. Not only will this make the leaves softer and easier to digest, it will actually improve the flavour! Yes, this will take the bitterness out of the kale and produce a much sweeter, softer salad leaf.

Kale Bunch
Parmesan (optional)
Fresh Ground Black Pepper (optional)

–     Wash, de-spine, massage in your fingers. You will see the leaves get brighter & brighter green. Rip into bite size pieces. (Ripping is important if you are storing prepared kale for easy meals—it will last longer than being cut with a knife.)
–      Throw your super-relaxed kale, croutons & dressing into a bowl and toss. You can then top with ground black pepper, maybe a lemon wedge and parmesan if you desire!

Bon appetite! If you liked this recipe, sign up here to get more healthy insights from LaLee Lifestyle 🙂

I’m obsessed with culture.

Fermented foods straight up control DNA expression in your body; these little flora decide what genes become the art that is you and which ones stay silent. Ever since I was a kid, I’ve slurped up all the ferments I could find. So, when I decided to try grains after a long while being paleo, I, of course, wanted to try sourdough. Then a roommate moved in with a starter… The rest is recent history.

Sourdough bread is fermented – that is how it gets its bubbles – the little bacteria gets gassy after a hearty meal. Thanks to them, you don’t have to! In the fermentation process, even a wholly white, refined flour loaf lowers in glycemic index to around the same level as whole grain quinoa (a complete protein). Diabetics who were told they could never have white bread again eat sourdough without any spike in their blood sugar. Insulin responses to blood sugar spikes are what makes carbs ‘bad’ for you: it’s responsible for weight gain, addiction & mood swings. Take away blood sugar spikes; annihilate what’s wrong with bread. Sourdough has been tested alongside 100% wholewheat breads beating them by a landslide for nutrient availability, digestion and slow absorption. The long story short: we are definitely meant to eat sourdough. Bread is not bad for you, it’s just not being prepared properly.

I’m so excited, because bread feels like such a hub in the wheel of life, and I’ve finally found a way to eat it that’s good for my body. Having made what I consider the best bread I’ve ever tasted EVER, I had to share it with you! This bread is doubled up with anti-inflammatory turmeric (inflammation is the root cause for… everything – I know I’m not being very scientific, but trust me), black pepper to activate said turmeric (it’s a thing), and cleansing sage. Its crispy, crunching crust is intense! And the innards are like a slightly denser baguette with big air bubbles and a moist, fluffy texture. The flavour is earthy, subtle & complex.

You will need: a crock pot & a wire rack (I use an oven shelf!) Also, I’m sorry, my roommate is serious about this stuff, and she uses a scale. You can find conversions on the inter-webs.

275g Starter
275g Almost Hot H2O
375g White (AP) Flr
125g WW Flr
Maybe, er, 3 or 4 (heaped) Tb Turmeric
A palm full of Sage
As much Pepper you can grind before getting bored

– Mix with good vibes. Just a mix is all you knead.
– Set aside 30 minutes covered (on the heater works well for me).
– Add sea salt, a lot, like 2Tb? Work that in. It’s going to be a wee bit of a wet dough. Make a ball. Smear olive oil on the outside (prevents drying).
– Put back on the heater, covered. Tell it you love it.
– When it’s about doubled in size (about 2 hrs for me in my warm house) work it again, pulling and tucking in a ball. Repeat the olive oil baste, put back on heat. Tell it it’s a good dough.
– When it’s doubled in size again (about another 2 hrs on my heater), it’s ready to go.
– Turn on oven @500, put the bottom of a crock pot in to warm up.
– When the oven is at temperature, take the crock pot out, sprinkle flr on the bottom, work the dough a bit into a nice ball (I like to be a little gentle so to keep the bubbles in tact, but it will rise in the oven regardless) and plop in your little bundle being careful not to scald your hands.
– Now, I add around a 1/4c of h20 – which is lots more than other people do, but it works for me, the loaf is super moist with a super crispy crust – it will boil up around the sides, cover it with the lid and put it in the oven.
– Turn down to 450 or 400 after 15 – 30 min. (I actually like to do both – I turn it down to 450 after 15-20 min then take the top off at around 40 min and let it finish at 400). It won’t make a huge difference, but whatever you choose – take the lid off when the crust is crisp. Remember, at every stage of this process: watch the dough, not the clock (it should take an hr total, give or take).
– Now the hardest part: let it SIT on a cooling rack while it crackles and pops for at least 30 minutes. People say an hour, who has that kind of time? Try it with cultured butter & sea salt!

Ok, dig in, feel good, eat better. <3