Home Courses - The School of Artisan Food Breads & Baking Sourdough and Sweet Baking

Sourdough and Sweet Baking

£215.00

Beginner

Duration:

1 Day

Timings:

09:00 - 16:30

Course start dates:

13 Sep 2026
11 Oct 2026
12 Feb 2027
13 Jun 2027

Hourly Schedule

Time

9:00
Arrival & welcome
Tea, coffee and warm pastries from the kitchen.

9:30
Course Start

13:00
Lunch
Seasonal lunch prepared by our catering team.

16:30
Course End

From enriched sweet doughs to naturally leavened sourdough, this hands-on baking course with expert baker Paul Raddan celebrates the versatility of artisan baking.

Throughout the day, you’ll create a selection of delicious sweet and savoury bakes while developing the practical skills and understanding needed to achieve excellent results at home.

Working with both sourdough and yeasted doughs, you’ll learn techniques including mixing, fermentation, shaping, filling and baking. With Paul’s expert guidance, you’ll gain confidence across a variety of artisan baking styles and leave with a collection of bakes to enjoy and recreate in your own kitchen.

What You’ll Learn

Through practical baking and expert guidance, you will:

Understand the differences between sourdough and yeasted doughs
Learn mixing, fermentation and dough development techniques
Develop confidence in shaping enriched and naturally leavened doughs
Explore filling, twisting and finishing methods for sweet bakes
Gain practical skills to recreate a variety of artisan breads and pastries at home

What You’ll Bake

During the course, you’ll make:

Cinnamon Buns
Learn how to work with enriched dough to create soft, light buns filled with warming cinnamon flavour.

Chocolate & Vanilla Custard Torsade
Master the art of shaping and twisting doughs to create an eye-catching pastry with layers of chocolate and vanilla custard.

Mini Doughnuts
Discover the techniques behind producing light, fluffy doughnuts with a beautifully soft texture.

Rum Babas
Create this classic enriched bake, learning how fermentation contributes to its distinctive light and airy structure.

Walnut & Raisin Sourdough
Make a naturally leavened sourdough enriched with walnuts and raisins, offering a subtle sweetness that pairs perfectly with strong cheeses or simply toasted and drizzled with honey.

Who Is This Course For?

This course is ideal for home bakers, food enthusiasts and anyone looking to broaden their baking skills. Whether you’re interested in sweet doughs, sourdough baking or both, you’ll gain valuable hands-on experience across a range of artisan techniques.

Please Note:
Whilst we make every effort to adhere to best practices regarding allergen control and cross-contamination at The School of Artisan Food, we sincerely regret that we are unable to cater for severe food allergies or coeliac disease. This is due to the continuous and varied use of our teaching spaces, common areas and food preparation areas.

If in any doubt, please contact us to discuss your individual circumstances prior to making a booking, as this will then enable us to produce a personalised Risk Assessment based on your own specific circumstances and better judge if we can safely accommodate you on site.

Your Tutors

Tutor

Paul Raddan

Paul Raddan

Paul’s love of baking started early, with happy memories of Sunday morning baking sessions at his Nan’s house.

Following Paul’s degree in Psychology at Reading University, the pull of the kitchen proved too great, and he spent the next 15 years in restaurants and kitchens across the East Midlands. A love of baking meant that he was baking bread and cakes on his days off as well as at work. When Paul’s wife established a sourdough culture in 2009, this obsession worsened!

Following a move to Rugby in 2012, Paul made the leap into full-time baking, and Rugby Real Bread was born. He started in his home kitchen, before building an extension to make space for the rapidly increasing oven and fridge space needed. Paul served the local community with an array of cakes and both yeasted and sourdough breads. Savoury scones were also very popular, favourites being feta & spinach, stilton & walnut and cheddar & marmite.

Sharing Paul’s love of baking and real food has always been important to him; Paul teaches practical classes at schools, food festivals, charities, adult education centres and community groups. He also run a Bread Club for local baking enthusiasts, so people can get together and showcase different breads and recipes.

Paul’s courses are fun, imaginative learning experiences. They will inspire you to take back what you have learned to your kitchen at home and to continue to spread the love of baking and good food.