our pizza dough
We take our dough very seriously here at Knead. Years of R&D in search of that perfect Neapolitan pizza base. Soft, floppy, airy, crunchy. There’s nothing quite like slinging out pizza after pizza with that perfect ‘leoparding’ on the crust. Oh baby!
All great dough starts with great flour and we couldn’t be more proud of our partnership with Wildfarmed, the pioneers of regenerative farming in the UK (more on them below).
wildfarmed
We’ve been proudly using a blend of Wildfarmed flours for nearly two years now and, well, we think the proof is in the pizza.
Tastes banging ✅
Easily digested ✅
Nutritionally dense ✅
Carbon negative, increases soil biodiversity, 100% traceable supply chain = Better For The Planet ✅
The story begins over 10 years ago when Groove Armada’s Andy Cato (I see you baby, shakin’ that ass, shakin’ that ass, shakin’ that ass) sold the rights to his songs and bought a farm in France after becoming disillusioned with the horrors of industrial farming. An overnight success story it was not.
After years of toil, Andy was awarded the French equivalent of a Knighthood for his services to agriculture – they are not handed out willy-nilly to Englishmen as you can imagine – and set about defining the Wildfarmed Standards that all today’s farmers must sign up to.
In a nutshell, soil and plant health are prioritised; the use of ‘cides (herbi-, fungi-, etc) is strictly prohibited; and where possible, livestock should be integrated.
why should i care?
Well, the problem with industrial farming is bigger than missing out on your fav pizza on a Friday night, or a lovely sourdough for breakfast. Much bigger in fact.
95% of all the world’s food relies on topsoil. That top couple of inches should be insanely full of bacteria. In a teaspoon of healthy soil, there are more living things than humans on the planet. However, the UN thinks there could be only 60-100 harvests left if we keep treating soil as we do. You can read more about what happens if we do ‘run out’ of topsoil here.
regen for the next gen
We took a cheeky chef’s trip down to one of their farms earlier in the year to see regenerative agriculture in action.
First stop for us was a field tour lead by Andy himself, where we saw the pasture cropping method on show. Here, the crop – wheat in this instance – is grown in strips with a herbal lay in between.
why, you ask?
Firstly, the plants such as clovers, legumes, and grasses are beneficial to soil health, assisting nitrogen being drawn down into the soil and attracting pollinators. They will also be chowed on by ruminants once a year, further helping to trap carbon as the soil remains as undisturbed as possible.
You will not see a plough or ‘cide anywhere near one of these fields.
It was striking, however, just how alive the field felt. So many different plants growing, as well as the gentle hum of content bees, tweeting of birds overhead and happy pizza chefs frolicking without a care in the world.
As we stepped through to the farm adjacent – a traditionally ploughed and treated plot – it was striking how quiet it was, not to mention how bland it looked.
The afternoon session was classroom based as we heard from fellow Wildfarmed founder George Lamb (yep, son of Larry) as well as farmers and agroecologists. All of whom painted a truly hopeful picture of the future.
Yes, if we carry on as we are, we really are up 💩 creek without a paddle. But by working with nature rather than against it, the change that needs to happen will happen.
So next time you’re in the pizzeria or grabbing a disc of joy from one of our vans, know that you’re doing your little bit to spread the word on soil health, biodiversity and support British farmers. Pretty cool.