Earl Grey Sourdough Bread (London Fog Sourdough Bread)

If you like the idea of a London Fog but have never once ordered one at a drive-through, this is the loaf version. This Earl Grey sourdough bread is a crusty, milky, faintly floral Dutch oven battard or boule, built on the same tested method as every other sourdough on this site, so if you've made a loaf here before, nothing about the process will surprise you.

Jump to:

• Recipe Highlights
• What Is a London Fog?
• Why This Earl Grey Sourdough Uses Tea Twice, Not Once
• Ingredient Notes
• Tips for the Best Earl Grey Sourdough Bread
• Recipe FAQs
• Serving Suggestions
• Storage & Make-Ahead
• More Sourdough Bakes to Try
• London Fog Sourdough Bread (With Earl Grey Tea)

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It's malty rather than sickly, the crumb stays tender from the milk and honey, and the bergamot actually survives the oven because we are adding the tea not once, but twice to this loaf.

Earl Grey is Seb's favourite tea, and my dad's too, though I've never managed to get on with a milky cup of tea myself. Give me the same flavour in a dessert, though, and I'm powerless. This loaf started as an attempt to get that flavour into bread without it fading into "vaguely tea-scented," which turned out to be a genuine technical problem worth solving properly.

What Is a London Fog?

A London Fog is Earl Grey tea, steamed milk and a bit of vanilla syrup, essentially a tea latte for people who find coffee too much. It's usually credited to a barista called Mary Loria, who is said to have invented it at the Buckwheat Cafe in Vancouver as a coffee-free option for a pregnant customer.

Nobody seems entirely sure where the "fog" in the name actually comes from. The best guess going around is that it's a nod to the cloudy look of pale steamed milk swirling into a dark cup of tea, which, fittingly, is roughly what this dough looks like before it goes into the oven.

Why This Earl Grey Sourdough Uses Tea Twice, Not Once

Every other Earl Grey bread recipe I've come across steeps a tea bag in the liquid and stops there. Baked, it tastes like bread that was near tea once.

Bergamot oil, the compound responsible for Earl Grey's whole personality, is volatile. It cooks off in the oven, so brewed tea alone gives you a fragrant kitchen and a disappointingly faint loaf once it's cooled and sliced. Adding another finely ground tea bag straight into the flour fixes that, since the tea's oils are locked into the crumb itself rather than just passing through the liquid.

Ground tea on its own has the opposite problem. It's concentrated enough to actually survive baking, but used alone it can taste one-note, and gritty if you haven't ground it fine enough. Steeped tea gives you the roundness and the milk element that makes this a London Fog rather than just an Earl Grey loaf. Ground tea gives you the backbone that survives the oven.

Neither does the whole job alone, which is presumably why nobody selling this recipe as a single-tea-bag method has quite nailed the flavour.

Ingredient Notes

Full quantities are in the recipe card below, but a few ingredients are worth a word first.

• Earl Grey tea bags: decent quality matters more here than in a cup of tea, since cheap tea lacks bergamot flavour, especially once baked into bread. Finely ground tea is best, since it removes the need to grind it yourself for the second addition.
• Whole milk: does the real London Fog work here, both for flavour and for a tender crumb. We use UHT milk because it's more room temperature stable and, therefore, safer for lengthy bulk fermentation. Oat milk is a fine dairy-free swap; just avoid anything sweetened.
• Strong bread flour: at least 12.5% protein. This dough carries milk, honey and butter, and needs a flour strong enough to hold structure around all of that.
• Dried culinary lavender (optional): start low. It goes soapy fast if you overdo it, and I've written a full dosing note on this in my Honey and Lavender Sourdough Bread if you want the longer version.
• Water.
• Active sourdough starter: 100% hydration, doubled and properly bubbly. If yours needs building up first, How To Feed Sourdough Starter covers feeding ratios and timing.
• Vanilla bean paste (optional): rounds the London Fog flavour out. Leave it in if you can, it's doing more work than its small quantity suggests.
• Clear honey: mild sweetness and a hand in that darker crust colour. Maple syrup or granulated sugar works as a swap.
• Unsalted butter: for tenderness without pushing this into full enriched-dough territory.

Find the full ingredient quantities and instructions in the recipe card below.

Tips for the Best Earl Grey Sourdough Bread

🌡️ Cool the tea-milk properly. It needs to be well below body temperature before it meets your starter, or you'll knock the fermentation about before it's even started.

⏱️ Don't oversteep. Eight to ten minutes is the ceiling. Longer than that and the tea turns bitter, which no amount of honey will fix later.

🔍 Grind the second tea bag properly fine. A spice or coffee grinder does this in seconds. Sieve out any coarse bits before it goes in with the flour, or expect a gritty crumb. I used Sainsbury's Taste the Difference Earl Grey Fine Tea, and didn't need to do anything - it's fine enough.

🎨 Watch the crust. Honey and milk mean this browns faster than a plain loaf. I highly recommend baking it with a Dutch Oven lid on for the full time, otherwise it may turn bitter. We use this method in other milky breads, like our Pumpkin Spice Latte Sourdough Bread.

❄️ Score it cold, straight from the fridge. Don't let it come to room temperature first, cold dough scores far more cleanly.

⏳ Give it the full cooling time. The milk and butter mean the crumb needs longer than a lean loaf to properly set. Cutting in early gets you a gummy slice.

Recipe FAQs

Serving Suggestions

Toasted with salted butter is the obvious one, and it's obvious for a reason. It's also good sliced for an afternoon tea board alongside actual clotted cream and jam, which feels like it shouldn't work and does.

If you want to lean into the joke properly, serve a slice with an actual cup of Earl Grey. Seb will tell you that's the only correct way to eat it, and for once I'm inclined to agree with him, even if I'm having coffee.

Storage & Make-Ahead

Keep the cooled loaf wrapped in a tea towel or bread bag at room temperature for 2 to 3 days. It freezes well too, either whole or pre-sliced, so you can pull out just what you need and toast straight from frozen.

Find more information about keeping your sourdough fresh below:

• How To Store Sourdough Bread? Best Ways To Keep It Fresh
• How to Freeze Sourdough Bread (Freezing + Refreshing Guide)

More Sourdough Bakes to Try

If the double-tea technique here has you thinking about other ways to fold flavour into a loaf without it disappearing in the oven, my Flavoured Sourdough Mix-Ins guide covers the general principles, and the Honey and Lavender Sourdough Bread is the other floral loaf on the site worth trying next. And if you'd rather have this flavour in one hand than sliced on a board, my Sourdough London Fog Cookies take the same Earl Grey base into brown butter territory instead.