UK Grain Lab x Real Bread Campaign

Click here for photos of the weekend

The Real Bread Campaign has teamed up with Small Food Bakery and YMCA Front Room @ Malt Cross to organise a day of UK Grain Lab fringe events in Nottingham city centre.

These are for budding Real Bread bakers, would-be microbakery owners, other grainiacs and everyone with an interest in the journey from seed to sandwich and the nation’s loaf life. In addition to sharing knowledge and practical skills, the day offers opportunities to discuss issues of food access and affordability, as well as diversifying regional grain networks and the Real Bread movement.

The panels include experts from England, Germany, Scotland, South Africa and the USA...

...and YOU? The Q&A sessions will invite the audience not only to ask questions but also chip in their knowledge and experience to the discussions. We’re here to learn from each other.

These talks are open to everyone, not just holders of tickets for the sold-out main UK Grain Lab gathering.

Places are free but please book to avoid potential disappointment!

NB All details are subject to change.

Fringe programme

11-11.45am Essentials of sourdough baking + bakers’ surgery
Learn from a baking master how to nurture, and make Real Bread with, your own sourdough starter. Baker, baking tutor, author and past Real Bread Campaign ambassador Emmanuel Hadjiandreou will share how to create and care for your own sourdough starter culture, as well as handy hints and tips to baking sourdough Real Bread at home. After the demo, he’ll help to answer your questions about bread and baking.

This session is for bakers of all skill levels, with a focus on home bakers looking to make sourdough bread. Limited to 20 places - booking essential.

12-12.45pm Microbakery: from home to high street
An introduction to turning your Real Bread making hobby into a home-based business and perhaps even growing it to set up shop on the high street. Gain inspiration and advice from a panel of bakers who’ve done just that. 

Each panellist will give a brief introduction to their bakery/microbakery business and their story so far. We’ll then open things up to the audience to ask questions about setting up, running and growing a microbakery. If you have experience yourself, please feel free to chip in your knowledge!

Panel: Sophia Handschuh (Sourdough Sophia), Jowayne Marks (Yello Yard), Rob Mackinder (Tied Up In Notts) and Ian Waterland (Knead Good Bread and The School of Artisan Food). Chaired by Chris Young, coordinator of the Real Bread Campaign and author of the microbakery handbook Knead to Know…more.

[Sophia was unable to attend and Seagull Bakery owner Sarah Richards joined the panel]

Knead to Know…more, the Real Bread Campaign’s microbakery handbook will be available from the UK Grain Lab bookshop.

2-2.45pm Real Bread for All
How do we ensure that people who live with daily dilemmas about how they spend their money have the chance to choose Real Bread? What can be done to make Real Bread more affordable for people on the lowest incomes, whilst ensuring that neighbourhood bakeries remain economically sustainable and neither bakers or their bread are undervalued? Join the conversation with a panel looking beyond redistributing surplus loaves via foodbanks, and finding ways to cover the costs of making bread cheaper.

There are many challenges/obstacles, to which there is no one-size-fits-all solution and we by no means have all the answers. You are invited and encouraged to contribute examples of affordable Real Bread projects, schemes and business models.

Panel: Kim Bell (Small Food Bakery), John Castley (Wild Hearth Bakery), Pete Smith (High Rise Bakers and charity/community projects in Glasgow), Steven Winter (Bread Source). Chaired by Chris Young, coordinator of the Real Bread Campaign

3.30-4pm Bringing diversity to our plates
Hodmedod co-founder Josiah Meldrum introduces their mission to bring greater diversity to Britain’s fields and plates. Hodmemdod is celebrating 10 years of working with British farms to create a range of top-quality ingredients and delicious foods. Their focus is in searching out less well-known grains and pulses, like the fava bean (grown in Britain since the Iron Age but now generally overlooked here) and black badger peas. In 2017 Hodmedod won the coveted Best Food Producer title at the BBC Food and Farming Awards.

4.15-5pm Building a regional mill   
Maine Grains founder and Maine Grain Alliance co-founder Amber Lambke tells the inspiring story so far of building a mill to support a regional network of farmers, bakers, brewers, cooks and others on a mission to revive a more local, sustainable grain economy in in Skowhegan, Maine.

5.15 - 6pm Diversifying our movement
Globally, people of every colour, cultural and ethnic heritage make Real Bread and enjoy eating it. This vast diversity is not being reflected currently as well as it could be in the networks of people spearheading the UK revival of non-commodity grain growing, independent milling and Real Bread making.

How do we start to change this? How do we better celebrate Black people and other people of colour in our movement, while inspiring, supporting and welcoming more people to become involved?

Though the focus of this session is the colour and ethnic heritage of people in our movement, if you feel that farmers, millers or bakers of your culture, background or other aspects of your identity are also underrepresented, please do join the conversation. 

This open discussion will be chaired by Greenfield Bakers owner and past Real Bread Campaign ambassador Sonya Hundal and introduced by Real Bread Campaign coordinator Chris Young.

More information

The venue for these fringe events is: Malt Cross, 16 St James's St, Nottingham NG1 6FG

• Find out more about, and contact details for, Malt Cross
• Find out more about, and contact details for, UK Grain Lab
• Link to Nottingham city centre map (includes car parks, tram stops and other key public transport hubs)

Panelist photos: Steven Winter (©Rosie Mills-Smith), Pete Smith, Emmanuel Hadjiandreou, Kim Bell, Sophia Handschuh (©Will Warr), Jowayne Marks, Amber Lambke, John Castley (© Craig Stephen), Ian Waterland, Sonya Hundal (©Joel Blevins, Woodenbarn Media), Rob Mackinder (©Stanley Otter), Josiah Meldrum (©D'Almaine Photography).