Knead to Know inspires Britain’s new breed of Real Bread bakers

In just six months since the publication of Knead to Know, over 600 people have turned to the Real Bread Campaign’s book to learn how to make a difference.

People who’ve taken inspiration from Knead to Know to start baking Real Bread for their local communities include:

• Ravi Muniandy in Suffolk baking around 100 loaves a week to supply a Country Market and two independent shops locally.
• ‘Chef on a Bike’ Dave Foster of Stocksbridge, Sheffield, has twenty regular customers, forty who buy less regularly, and has baked for two country fairs and several other events.
• Mark Woods in the West Midlands has also started a bread club, baking around thirty five loaves twice a week for subscribers.
• Michael Gopfert in Merseyside, who is now baking forty loaves at a time, and has taken on a helper, resulting in many gains for the local community. 
• Peter Barabas in south Manchester, who reported that Knead to Know gave him the confidence and the knowledge to start a small scale, subscription-based home bakery.
• Abi Tomlins and friends in Bournemouth are also just starting out, reporting that they’re running a Community Supported Bakery trial called ‘the baker's dozen’ from a suburban flat, where they’re baking twelve loaves of Real Bread a week to deliver to twelve households over a twelve week period.
• Gary Mercer in Surrey has also taken the first step towards starting a bakery, selling his wares at a local school fayre as part of his market research.

Chris Young of the Campaign said: ‘It’s so exciting to see our book helping to give so many people the confidence to take the first steps towards success in baking Real Bread for their local communities. Trailblazers in this new wave The Handmade Bakery in Slaithwaite and the E5 Bakehouse in Hackney both started in domestic kitchens and now bake thousands of loaves of Real Bread a week. We now look forward to seeing each of this latest batch of bakers develop in a way that suits them.’

Knead to know is still available from www.realbreadcampaign.org at £10 for Campaign members, and £15 to everyone else.

The Real Bread Campaign is Part of Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming, and is funded by the Big Lottery Fund’s Local Food programme. The Campaign champions loaves produced as locally as possible without the use of artificial additives, and finds ways to make bread better for us, better for our communities and better for the planet.

**ENDS**

For more information please contact Chris Young: chris@sustainweb.org or 0203 5596 777

www.realbreadcampaign.org       twitter.com/realbread     facebook.com/realbreadcampaign

2 August 2011                                                                                                                             

Notes to editors

Knead to Know is is also available from: bakerybits.co.uk; The Bertinet Kitchen, Bath; Books for Cooks, London; Bread Matters, nr. Edinburgh; Denver Windmill, Norfolk; dovesfarm.co.uk; The Eden Project, Cornwall; Loaf Community Bakery, nr Birmingham; Love Loaves, nr. Oxford; The School of Artisan Food, Nottinghamshire; and Virtuous Bread, London.

Current initiatives from the Real Bread Campaign also include:

• The Real Bread Finder: the only online directory dedicated to helping people find where to buy Real Bread locally. Free for bakers to add, and people to search for, places to buy Real Bread locally.
• Lessons in Loaf: A FREE download for teachers on planning hands-on Real Bread making sessions for any age, plus lesson plans to tie the topic of bread in with a range of curriculum subjects at Key Stage 2.
• Real Bread on the Menu: details of workshops to help public sector institutions (such as schools, care homes and hospitals) and food access projects (e.g. co-operative buying groups, community cafes, box schemes) around Britain get baking Real Bread in-house.

Local Food has been developed by a consortium of 15 national environmental organisations, and is managed on their behalf by the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts (RSWT). Supported by the Big Lottery Fund's Changing Spaces programme, Local Food has distributed grants to a variety of food related projects to make locally grown food more accessible. www.localfoodgrants.org

The Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts (RSWT) is a registered charity, incorporated by Royal Charter, to promote conservation and manage environmental programmes throughout the whole of the UK. It has established management systems for holding and distributing funds totalling more than £20 million annually to environmental projects across the UK.

The Big Lottery Fund’s Changing Spaces programme was launched in November 2005 to help communities enjoy and improve their local environments. The programme funds a range of activities from local food schemes and farmers markets, to education projects teaching people about the local environment.

The Big Lottery Fund, the largest of the National Lottery good cause distributors, has been rolling out £2 million in Lottery good cause money every 24 hours to health, education, environment and charitable causes across the UK. www.biglotteryfund.org.uk.

The Sheepdrove Trust provides generous annual funding to the Campaign.