How to Eat Bread this Season: A Cultured Anchovy Butter Recipe

Bread is not meant to be eaten in isolation, particularly during the cooler months of the year. It is a superb vehicle for delivering other nutrients, and the order in which you eat those nutrients matters. 

The principle of sequenced eating – now supported by a growing body of research, including the work of Alpana Shukla at Weill Cornell – is something I have been teaching for years through clinical observation in the BALM Protocol. Blood sugar response changes significantly depending on the order in which foods are consumed, particularly in people with insulin resistance or prediabetes, though the mechanistic logic applies more broadly. Eating vegetables, bitter greens or fibre-rich foods before bread slows carbohydrate absorption. Adding protein and fat slows it further. 

I explain this at home using a simple image. Eating bread after greens is like driving behind a learner driver. The carbohydrate cannot race ahead. Add protein and fat, and you add weight to the system. Everything slows down. Blood sugar rises more gently. Energy lasts longer. Mood and concentration are steadier. 

This is why bread with soup, pulses or vegetables matters. It is why bread with butter matters. Fat is not the problem here; it is part of the regulatory system. 

There is another detail worth knowing, and it is one of those satisfying cases where the practical habit turns out to have a biological basis. When bread cools after baking, some of its starch retrogrades – it crystallises into a form that resists digestion in the upper gut and instead travels to the colon, where it feeds beneficial bacteria. Toast your sourdough, and you increase this resistant starch further. The same loaf, eaten differently, behaves differently in the body. It is a small thing, but it reinforces the central point: how you eat bread matters as much as which bread you choose.  

What to put on your bread  

Every slice of bread is an opportunity to lay on extra nourishment. When I am personalising bread, the things that you eat with it every day can really support targeted nutritional needs. Eggs are one of the richest practical sources of vitamin D, and pasture-raised eggs can be higher still – two eggs on sourdough toast is a meal that delivers vitamin D, protein, fat and choline in a single plate. Sardines on toast with bitter greens, smoked mackerel with horseradish and watercress – these are not elaborate meals, but they stack vitamin D, omega-3 fats and minerals onto a fibre-rich base in a way that genuinely supports the body through the darker months. 

Anchovies belong here because they are small but disproportionately useful. They bring iodine and selenium in a form people actually eat, which matters in a country where iodine insufficiency is quietly common. They also add omega-3 fats for membrane health and inflammation modulation, plus a modest amount of vitamin D. Not as much as sardines or mackerel, but still meaningful when diet is your most reliable source. Butter provides fat-soluble vitamins and slows glucose absorption.

Rocket is one of my favourite pairings too. Bitter greens like rocket can prime digestive signalling, including bile release, and bile is central to digestion, fat absorption, toxin clearance and gut motility – functions that tend to slow during the cooler months when we are less active. Bitter greens prompt the gallbladder to contract. Their sulphur compounds support detoxification pathways. Their minerals support the enzymatic work that keeps everything running. 

Good bread, good fat, bitter greens. It is the kind of meal that nourishes structurally rather than chasing stimulation.  

Bread as Foundation 

I do not like turning bread into a health claim. But my approach to bread as preventative healthcare is grounded in the principle that the bread that you choose to eat every day is the foundation of good health, and the pattern you eat it in is lifestyle medicine infrastructure. 

This is why I developed the BALM Protocol – Baking as Lifestyle Medicine. Bread is not the solution on its own. It is the foundation that allows everything else to work better: digestion, blood sugar balance, mineral status, immune resilience, mood. When bread is made properly and eaten in balance with fat, bitterness, protein and vegetables, it supports the whole system. 

So when winter and early spring asks more of us, don’t chase stimulation. Track and create nourishment in your everyday choices. Real bread, properly made and thoughtfully eaten, is the connection. You are connecting back to soil, to season, to the autumn harvest, to the rhythm that was the way our ancestors ate and the way we evolved. It is the most beautiful way to see ourselves through until spring – a slice of toast, a bowl of warm soup, connection to our friends and our family. It is a moment shared, and that moment deserves appreciating, even on the rainiest, coldest day. The smell of toast and butter and warmth. That is what carries me through the darkest, wettest days. 

And that is why we must value bread.

A recipe to enjoy with bread: Cultured Anchovy Butter  

Cultured butter is made by fermenting cream before churning, and that single step changes everything. Unlike the pasteurised butter you buy at the supermarket, this butter is alive. The kefir you use to inoculate the cream brings with it a community of live bacteria – all of them probiotics, all of them contributing to the kind of microbial diversity that supports a healthy gut.  

The anchovy paste isn't simply here for flavour – though it is extraordinarily good. Anchovies are one of the richest sources of long-chain omega-3 fatty acids (EPA and DHA), and there is now a compelling body of evidence showing that omega-3s play a meaningful role in reducing chronic inflammation. The Western diet tends to be heavily skewed towards omega-6 fatty acids, which promote inflammatory pathways; omega-3s help rebalance that ratio. Spreading this butter on your morning toast, or melting it over vegetables, is a small and rather delicious way to tip the balance. 

Making it yourself is also, as it happens, more economical than buying quality cultured butter – roughly two-thirds of the cost once you factor in ingredients. But that is honestly not the point. The point is that you are building something layered with intention. Probiotics from the fermentation. Anti-inflammatory omega-3 from the anchovy. Polyphenols and phytonutrients from the herbs and capers.  

And here is how we eat it at the Sourdough School, which I will not apologise for: let a piece of butter come to room temperature, drop it into a wide bowl, and pour the reserved buttermilk over the top. Tear your sourdough and drag it through, letting it soak up that pool of cultured butter and tangy buttermilk together. It is, without question, one of the finest things you can eat. Shouldn’t life occasionally be exactly that good? 

THE RECIPE  

Makes about 175g butter and ½ glass buttermilk 

INGREDIENTS 

500ml double cream 

50ml kefir (fermented milk) 

1 teaspoon anchovies (mushed into a paste)  

1 teaspoon small capers, finely chopped 

Small handful of flat-leaf parsley, finely chopped 

Fine sea salt (optional) 

METHOD  

Day 1 

Day 2 

Variations 

Play with additions. A tablespoon of garam masala folded through the butter adds warmth, complexity, and a significant boost of plant diversity – the spice blend alone can contain ten or more botanicals.  

Turmeric and black pepper is another favourite combination at the Sourdough School: the piperine in the black pepper dramatically improves the bioavailability of curcumin.   

Every addition is an opportunity to increase diversity.  Think of the base recipe as your canvas.