Real Bread Campaign

Real Bread logo

What is Real Bread?

Real Bread is nothing fancy and has nothing to hide. 

And by bread, we mean crusty baps, sourdough, bagels, bialys, injera, khobez, cottage loaves, baguettes, chleb, naan, chapattis, roti, hard dough, stottie cakes, lavash, ruisleipä, ciabatta, bara brith, Staffordshire oatcakes, bannocks, tortillas, paratha, porotta, pitta, pida …the list goes on.

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Our definition

Everyone will have his or her own idea of what constitutes Real Bread, but here's how the Campaign defines it:

Real Bread is that made without the use of processing aids or any other artificial additives.*

Simple, eh?

* Don't forget to check the flour you use to make sure none get into your dough that way...

The essentials

Technically, the only ingredients essential for making bread are flour and water.

With these two things you can make flatbreads and sourdoughs. That said, without a little pinch of salt bread can be a tad bland, and you might prefer to let someone else culture the yeast, rather than do it yourself.

So, for plain Real Bread that gives us at most:

  • Flour
  • Water 
  • Yeast
  • Salt

Anything else is, by definition, unnecessary.

What Real Bread isn't

If you add anything but salt to butter, you can't call it butter; if you add anything at all to milk, it's no longer milk.  So why are we not afforded such legal protection when it comes to our daily bread?

The making of what we call Real Bread does not involve the use of any processing aids, artificial additives (which includes most flour 'improvers', dough conditioners and preservatives), chemical leavening (e.g. baking powder) or, well, artificial anything.

Which is more than can be said for many of the industrial products out there that are marketed under the noble name bread.

E481 (sodium stearoyl-2-lactylate), E472e (mono- and diacetyl tartaric acid esters of mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids), E920 (l-cysteine), E282 (calcium propionate), E220 (potassium sorbate), E300 (ascorbic acid), E260 (acetic acid) soya flour, vegetable fat and dextrose are just some of the other things that you might find in an industrial loaf.

What’s more, its production also could have substances including phospholipase, fungal alpha amylase, transglutaminase, xylanase, maltogenic amylase, hemicellulase, oxidase, peptidase and protease but if the manufacturer deems them to be processing aids, it wouldn’t have to declare them on the label. 

This could apply to a wrapped/sliced factory loaf or one from a supermarket in-store bakery.

The latter does not even have to have an ingredients label to help you make an informed choice.

Other ingredients

Sometimes, you might not want a plain loaf - you might want it enriched or otherwise jazzed up a bit.

Additional ingredients are great as long as they are natural (e.g. seeds, nuts, cheese, milk, malt extract, herbs, oils, fats and dried fruits) and themselves contain no artificial additives.

Better bred bread

From this simple starting point, we're finding ways to make bread better for us, better for our communities and better for the planet. These include:

  • Bulk fermentation of at least four hours, preferably in the presence of sourdough bacteria
  • Made using not only roller-milled white flour*
  • Made in one continuous process i.e. no part-baking or freezing of the dough
  • Made using at least 20% (by weight) locally** milled flour
  • Has a salt content in line with FSA guidance - 1% or less of final product weight
  • Product is certified organic

Please follow the links above or see our FAQs page for reasons why.

* e.g. all flour is stoneground, or all flour is over 80% extraction rate, or bread is made using at least 50% (by weight) wholemeal flour.

** In accordance with FARMA guidelines ‘A definition of 30 miles is ideal, up to 50 miles is acceptable for larger cities and coastal or remote towns and villages.’

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