Baking Class at e5 Bakehouse: £180 Sourdough Day in Hackney

e5 Bakehouse runs its sourdough baking class from the railway arch it has occupied since 2011, at Arch 395-397, Mentmore Terrace, London E8 3PH, right under London Fields station. The Sourdough Bread Class costs £180 per person, starts at 10am, lasts seven hours and is written for beginners. You finish the day having baked four breads, a country loaf, ciabatta-style buns, seeded rye and bagels, and you leave with a sourdough starter of your own. Dates sell out quickly: the Saturday 24 October class was already fully booked when this was written.

The bakehouse sits in a spruced-up railway arch beside London Fields in Hackney, and the station of the same name is directly above it on the Overground. Hackney Central is a five-minute walk away. If you come by bus from Bethnal Green, the route runs along Mare Street and you get off at the Well Street stop. Parking is possible but fussy, because the surrounding streets have permit-holder restrictions between 8.30am and 6.30pm, Monday to Friday, so weekend classes are easier by car. There is lots of bike parking outside the bakery, and the arch is wheelchair accessible.

The class is billed as a fun full-day course for beginners. You start with the basics of sourdough and learn how to make a starter and, just as important, keep it alive. Then you are taught the techniques the bakery itself uses to knead and shape its loaves. Across the day you make four breads: a country loaf, ciabatta-style buns, seeded rye and bagels. The teacher is one of the bakery's own bakers, not a visiting presenter, which matters because the loaves you shape are the same family as the Hackney Wild and Stockholm breads sold over the counter. Class size is capped at 10 people, so you get hands on dough all day.

The price includes more than the lesson. You go home with a take-home sourdough starter, a wicker basket, a recipe booklet, an e5 dough scraper, and bags of freshly milled e5 flour and dark rye flour. The day opens with a light welcome spread of homemade jam, bread and coffee or tea, a freshly made seasonal lunch follows, and cake and biscuits arrive in the afternoon. You also get 10% off in the shop if you want extra baking equipment, cookbooks or organic produce. The bakery asks you to bring a large bag, because you will be carrying home plenty of bread as well.

Sourdough is the entry point, but the school runs other days. The Pastry Class costs £230, runs from 10am for six hours with a maximum of eight places and teaches a no-knead bun dough for cinnamon buns, a hand-laminated rough puff for sweet galettes and a shortcrust made with einkorn flour for frangipane tarts. It is suitable for all levels, and lunch, coffee and tea are included. The Advanced Sourdough Shaping Class costs £160, starts at 12 noon, lasts five hours and needs prior sourdough experience, so a beginner should book the full-day class first. Lunch is not provided in that afternoon session. The Fermentation Class is £120.

The name e5 is a nod to the former local postcode, and the company moved into its own arch in the summer of 2011. Over the years it tunnelled left and then right into the neighbouring arches, adding a pastry department, a flour mill, a chocolate facility and a deli shop. The mill is a French stone mill, and the flour for your class is milled on site, which keeps the germ and bran that conventional roller milling removes. The business is certified organic by the Soil Association, and the judges of the Food and Farming Awards gave it a special commendation in 2017 for its part in the rise of real bread. It says it has trained thousands of home bakers in its one-day sourdough courses.

Booking is online, with a maximum of four places per order. If a date is full you can leave your name, email and phone number and join the waiting list, and you are notified when a space opens. Bookings cancelled more than 14 days before the start can be refunded or moved to another date free of charge. Inside 14 days the booking is non-refundable and non-transferable unless the bakery can refill your place. The bakery takes card payments only and does not accept American Express.

The bakehouse itself opens Monday to Friday from 7.30am to 5pm and on Saturday and Sunday from 8am to 5pm, so arriving at 9.30am for a 10am class leaves time to see the loaves in the window first. If you cannot get a place at Hackney, e5 has a second bakery in Poplar at 8a Cotall Street, E14 6TL, open Monday to Sunday from 8am to 3.30pm, which began in 2017 as a cafe that trains and employs people from refugee communities. The classes themselves are taught at the Hackney arch, so treat Poplar as a bread-and-coffee stop rather than a lesson venue. London Fields park is a short walk, a sensible place to eat a warm bagel after the lesson.

Book the Sourdough Bread Class if you have never kept a starter alive and want a full day of repetition with a professional baker beside you. At £180 it is not the cheapest baking class in London, but it includes lunch, a starter, a basket, flour and four loaves, so the take-home is real. Skip it if you want a two-hour social session, because this is a seven-hour working day on your feet. If the class you want is sold out, join the waiting list for that date and look at the next dates on the booking form, which run into December, rather than settling for a day without the starter and recipe booklet.