Real Bread Campaign

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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.

Real Bread basics

Everyone will have his or her own idea of what constitutes real bread. The Campaign believes that the only essential ingredients of bread are:

  • Flour
  • Water 
  • Yeast - cultured or naturally occurring (as in sourdough), though some flatbreads don't even need yeast
  • Salt

This is our definition of basic Real Bread that is accessible to all.

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

What Real Bread isn't

If you add anything but salt to butter, you have to call it something else; if you add anything at all to milk, it's no longer milk.  So why does similar legal protection not apply to that other staple food: bread?

The making of what we call Real Bread does not involve the use of any processing aids, artificial additives, flour 'improvers', dough conditioners, preservatives, chemical leavening or, well, artificial anything.

Which is more than can be said for many of the products out there that are marketed as 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 legally, the manufacturer wouldn’t have to declare so 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.

See our bread labelling page for more.

Better bred bread

Beyond our basic definition, 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
  • 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
* 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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