You may not have noticed it, but over the past 6 months, we’ve made it our mission to dissect our babka + really take a look at what we’re putting inside it. The ingredients that we were using were good, but we wanted the best when it came to flavour AND a sustainable supply chain.
In a bid to be even better, we took at the ingredients we were using inside our babka + whether or not we could make it even more sustainable. Turns out we could, so we got to hunting for suppliers who held sustainability values that mirrored ours in wanting the best of the best. So with that being said, here’s what we’ve changed + why we think it tastes even better than before…
FLOUR
We started with the basis of any baked good – flour. Good quality, sustainable, organic + chemical free flour is not as easy of a thing to come by as you might think. We knew we wanted to go organic, so we did our research + found Shipton Mill. Hidden away in the Cotswolds + thought to have been a working mill since 1339, these millers know their grains.
So…what is organic farming, what does it mean when it comes to flour + why should you care? While we could try and tell you about them, we thought we’d take the info from the experts themselves.
“Organic flour supports a farming system that works to reduce the pollution of our soil and our environment. Organic farmers rely on natural soil fertility to produce their crops, so they use crop rotations to help break cycles of pests and disease and build soil fertility, instead of using numerous pesticides and fertilisers, which can pollute our soil and water systems.
What’s more, with fewer pesticides being used to grow wheat, organic farms are havens for wildlife and provide homes for bees, birds and butterflies. If you care about what our planet looks like today and for generations to come, about what countryside we will get to enjoy and what wildlife we will continue to see, making a simple swap to organic flour all contributes towards this
Choosing organic flour then is a step in the right direction if we want to minimise our exposure to chemicals, help to safeguard our planet and bake ourselves happy in the process. As the Soil Association, the UK’s leading food and farming charity and organic certification body, have proposed, our shopping choices affect not only our own health, but what our world will look like in the future.”
The more you know, ey?
So not only is it better for you + the planet, we also think its taste is hugely superior to other flours + blends that we’ve tried, making for a lighter, softer babka.
BUTTER
So flour’s got a big tick next to it on the “To Research” list…now it’s time for butter. It’s no controversial opinion that butter is, quite potentially, the king of dairy. And when it’s creamy, cultured butter that’s free range + made using sustainable methods that safekeep the countryside + maintain the habitat for the wildlife that lives among it then PASS OVER THE CROWN BECAUSE WE’VE GOT A WINNER.
And Estate Dairy in Somerset is all of the above and more. Sourcing milk from the Chew Valley + their Guernsey cows, their butter is unrivalled in its rich flavour. If you haven’t tried it slathered on a slice of bread, honestly? You need to.
They’ve got the flavour down, but they’ve also got their farming practises nailed:
“Our herd is farmed sustainably on over 500 acres of idyllic Somerset pastures. We believe in treating our dairy produce with the respect it deserves and close attention is paid to the cow’s nutrition. Their diet throughout the winter contributes heavily to the flavour of our dairy. Our unique farming system yields a high protein milk that deserves to be as unprocessed as possible and to best preserve our dairy’s goodness our milk and creams are unhomogenised.”
Well, we couldn’t have said it better ourselves. And we’re chuffed to have that creamy, rich goodness running through our babkas.
Did we mention it tastes really great too?
So there you have it, our most recent more-sustainable swaps so while you’re eating your hunk of babka, you can do so in the knowledge that we’re using the best of the bunch that’s making the planet that little bit better.
