A good loaf consists of yeast, flour, water and a little dash of love.
Liverpool is a city of makers and dreamers and every now and then, those two come together in fantastic fashion. Jessica Doyle is an art student by trade, but is now less Jackson Pollock and more sourdough. If you see one of her loaves, you can see her degree wasn’t wasted, they’re pure art in their very own right. We love a good success story and The Wild Loaf is one of them. She swapped her palette for her palate, her dreams for reality but ended up keeping the apron. Only this one isn’t covered in paint, it’s covered in flour.
A few years ago Jessica helped open a bakery in Anfield and was taught how to make bread by Gary Hindley from the community college. She recalls his passion for bread making and the osmosis that transcended into her. It was love at first loaf when she was shown that very first sourdough. Not uniform like the relics of the supermarket bread. A loaf with imperfections, where the asymmetry is a sign of quality and where no two loaves are the same. It was then that she fell in love with the process and started her very own journey as a baker.
She went on a personal journey to find out everything she could about sourdough. Jessica started a culture out of flour and water to make a natural yeast which she has fed daily for the past four years and is the heart and soul of the bread. A dedication to the ancient process of bread making in a time of mass produced; that was her niche. It all started in October 2015 when she bought an oven off eBay. She needed somewhere semi-industrial to take the power of the oven and saw an ad online at Cains Brewery. She wanted to share her passion and unknowingly or very aware, you’ve probably had a Wild Loaf sandwich within your very own fair hands. That is, if you frequent at the likes of The Pen Factory, Unit 51, Camp and Furnace, White Wolf Yoga, Greendays, The Fat Flamingo and Cow & Co.
With very little machinery involved everything is hand mixed and molded. It’s fiercely physical work but she assures us, she literally wouldn’t change it for the world. Move over Paul Hollywood, there’s a new girl in town.