People always told me that making bread was meditative. And, in theory, I got it. Mixing four ingredients in a bowl, mindfully kneading the dough and leaving it to rise, in peace, somewhere warm… it really did sound lovely.

But I had always found this not to be the case. In my small home kitchen, making a loaf of bread is monotonous at best and utter chaos at worst. There’s flour everywhere; the dough sticks to my hands more determinedly than superglue; I don’t do enough weight training to comfortably knead a 2lb loaf to the “windowpane” stage so many recipes demand.

Now, in an airy room with rustic plaster and views out onto southern Spain’s Sierra Nevada, my mind is being well and truly changed. “The thing about sourdough,” says Finn, one of our baking teachers for the week, “is that there’s no kneading.” I breathe a sigh of relief. Is this why people love sourdough so much? I wonder. No arm DOMS? 

I’m in Mairena, a tiny town in the Spanish Alpujarras, a couple of hours’ winding drive away from Malaga, for a week-long baking retreat run by cult Hackney bread makers E5 Bakehouse. The bakery, started by founder Ben Mackinnon almost 15 years ago, is renowned for its artisanal bread. Take a walk around London Fields on a Sunday, and you’ll often see cool east Londoners clutching loaves of its Hackney Wild sourdough.

Now, it runs week-long retreats (dates vary, but they’re usually hosted twice a year) at Las Chimeneas, a collection of converted village houses – plus a restaurant – run by British couple Emma and David, who relocated to the Spanish mountains more than 25 years ago. 

I rarely take holidays that feel truly relaxing. That might sound like a weird thing to say, but I can’t be the only one who’s felt like they need a few days of holiday after a city break to decompress from all the walking around. But this, it becomes clear, is different: our group of 10 bakers is greeted by mountainous views, a honey-coloured sunset and a relaxed three-course dinner cooked by local chef Conchi, who lives opposite the restaurant.

The idea of a yoga retreat has always (sort of) appealed to me, but I like bread way more than I like vinyasa flows, so a baking retreat sounded like an even better way to switch off. The week is divided into four days of baking, and the other three days are spent hiking in the surrounding mountains with Emma and David as our guides. All meals (and accommodation, of course) are included in the retreat. 

On day one, we learn the basics of sourdough. Armed with an apron and a dough scraper, we make two doughs: rustic sourdough rolls and a seeded rye bread. What this means, in reality, is that I’m going to have my mind blown almost half-hourly. Most importantly, we’re told that with sourdough, you make a series of gentle folds over the course of a few hours, literally picking up a section of the dough and letting it fall back onto itself to develop the gluten. A low-intervention bread, if you like, albeit with a higher time investment that involves a lot of leaving the dough to rest, rise and ferment. Luckily, just outside of the baking room is a terrace with a picturesque pool and pomegranate tree to lounge beneath. That evening, we cut into the rolls and gasp at how perfectly holey and crisp they are, and then use them to scoop up puddles of grass-green olive oil.

In the days that follow, we mix more dough. Some use stoneground wheat flour, others use niche ancient grains that are admittedly harder to track down, but worth it for the taste. I was googling suppliers of einkorn flour immediately after trying the loaf I made with it. We learn how to score our loaves, using a razor blade so as not to pop any air bubbles in the dough created by the fermentation process. We’re taught why steam is so important (otherwise, a crust will form before the dough has time to rise). At the end of the day, we each leave with loaves the size of our heads. 

Aside from flours, I started to understand the mindfulness of the bread-making process that I’d heard other people talk about in the past. You mix everything with your hands (particularly important with sourdough as the good bacteria from your skin can help the fermentation process, Finn explains). And, aside from taking a few pictures of your loaves, there is no phone involved. Chats with baking neighbours (a group of solo travellers all there to hone their skills) are regular and get deep – by the final day, conversation pivoted to business plans, birth and our hopes and fears for the new year.

Days off baking are spent on hikes, guided by Las Chimeneas hosts David and Emma. We climb mountains and end up (literally) in the clouds, see wild horses and pick walnuts straight from the tree. We walk past countless chestnut trees and pass through more tiny villages, and the weather, despite it being late October, is so sunny that SPF50 becomes essential. This is, I imagine, the definition of a retreat – seven full days outside of anything that resembles real life, focused solely on walking, kneading and eating.

By the final day, we’re working out how to divide up the sourdough starter we’ve been baking with all week. Starter is, it turns out, incredibly resilient – whether you freeze it, solidify it with a lot more flour than usual or forget to ‘feed’ it for a while, the likelihood is that it’ll bounce back. I feel like cooking with it made me a little more resilient, too – it turns out everyday stresses can (sometimes) be healed with good food and some dough-based TLC. 

The next E5 Bakehouse at Las Chimeneas takes place from 5–12 April 2025 and costs £1,350 for full board and course (excluding transport). Book your place here.

Images: Holly Bullock