Matt Tebbutt and Sourdough Sophia launch Christmas leftovers sandwich to mark 500 years of turkey in Britain

TV chef Matt Tebbutt has collaborated with London bakery Sourdough Sophia on a Christmas leftovers sandwich, which goes on sale at six of the bakery’s London branches from mid-November. The sandwich marks 500 years since turkeys first arrived in the UK and is part of a wider campaign by a group of British turkey farmers celebrating the anniversary.

Tebbutt and the bakery’s founder, Sophia, based the sandwich on the components of a traditional Christmas dinner and added some less conventional ingredients. Slices of British turkey are paired with pigs in blankets, a cranberry kraut, cabbage with crispy bacon pieces and a handful of rocket, and finished with a jalapeño and sage mayonnaise. The fillings are layered between two slices of the bakery’s N8 sourdough bread.

The sandwich costs £9.60 and will be available from mid-November at Sourdough Sophia’s bakeries in Crouch End, Highgate, Essex Road, Hampstead, Covent Garden and Primrose Hill.

Tebbutt has joined the farmers’ campaign to show that cooking a whole turkey at home can be straightforward. He is also encouraging people to get more value from a whole bird by making use of the leftovers. The sandwich is an example of how the meat can be turned into a meal for Boxing Day, and its ingredients are drawn from the usual elements of a Christmas dinner, which home cooks are likely to have to hand after 25^th December.

During lockdown founders, Sophia and Jesse set up a micro bakery from their dining room as a way to support and connect with the community. Sophia, having grown up as a baker’s daughter in Germany, and having been an obsessive home-baker throughout her life, had always secretly wanted to own a bakery of her own in order to be able to share her creations.

Within a couple of weeks they attracted huge queues down the road from their little flat, and quickly ran out of space. With the help of a successful Kickstarter campaign and nearly 600 backers from the local community, they opened the doors to their very first high street bakery on Middle Lane in Crouch End in December 2020, just eight months after that first loaf came out of the oven at home. The queues grew, the team grew, and they ran out of space again. In March 2024, backed by a few crowdfunding rounds, they opened their second bakery on Essex Road in Islington, giving the baking the bigger home it deserved. Soon after, five more followed.

Food Desk

The Christmas leftovers sandwich is available from mid-November at Sourdough Sophia bakeries in Crouch End, Highgate, Essex Road, Hampstead, Covent Garden and Primrose Hill. For more information, visit the website here.