The story of Ember
A heritage sourdough starter born in 2011 and fed every single day since. This is not a recipe. It is a relationship.
Thirteen years, one starter
- 2011:
The first feed
In a narrow Edinburgh kitchen, baker Nora Callahan mixed rye flour and rainwater in a jam jar and set it on the windowsill above the radiator. She fed it every twelve hours, named it Ember after the glow of the pilot light below, and waited. By day seven it was alive, and she baked her first loaf: a dense, slightly sour miche that she called beautiful.
- 2014:
From jar to bakehouse
After three years of weekend baking and a growing queue of neighbours at the front door, Nora rented a half-share of a converted stone bakehouse on the edge of the Bruntsfield Links. Ember moved with her in a cooler bag, swaddled in tea towels. The first commercial batch was sixty loaves of country sourdough; they sold in under two hours at the Saturday market.
- 2017:
A second oven and a name
A wood-fired deck oven arrived on the back of a flatbed lorry and changed everything. The crust darkened, the ear opened, and the whole bakehouse smelled of caramel and char on bake mornings. That autumn Nora registered the name Crumb and Ember, hand-lettered a sign, and pinned it above the lintel.
- 2020:
Keeping the fire lit
When the bakehouse had to close its walk-in counter, the neighbourhood came anyway. Orders filled a shared spreadsheet. Nora cycled deliveries herself at six in the morning, paper bags tied to the handlebars. Ember kept bubbling through it all. The ritual of feeding, watching, and baking turned out to be precisely what a difficult year needed.
- 2023:
Stockists and slow growth
Rather than open a second site, Nora chose a different kind of reach: trusted stockists, each chosen by taste rather than proximity. Today Crumb and Ember bread reaches a handful of independent cafes, grocers, and delis across the city, all of them committed to turning it the same day it arrives. Ember is now over thirteen years old, fed twice a day, every day without exception.
“Every loaf is a direct descendant of that first messy jar on the windowsill. Ember remembers every bake we have ever made.”
The daily ritual
Ember is fed at 6 a.m. and 6 p.m., every day. Equal weights of stoneground organic rye flour and cool filtered water, stirred until no dry flour remains, then covered with a linen cloth and left in a warm corner of the bakehouse. On bake days a portion is held back, the rest goes into the dough. The jar is never fully emptied.
Why it matters
A mature starter carries a microbiome shaped by its environment. Ember's wild yeasts and lactic acid bacteria have been selected, over thirteen years, for the specific warmth and atmosphere of this bakehouse. No two starters from different kitchens taste alike. The sourness, the open crumb, the blistered crust: all of it traces back to this particular colony of microorganisms living in that particular jar.
Taste what thirteen years built
Crumb and Ember bread is stocked at a small number of independent cafes and delis across Edinburgh. Every loaf is baked the morning it is delivered.
Find a stockist