Celebrity Real Bread baker Tom Herbert launches Bake Your Lawn

On Monday 23 January 2012, Real Bread Campaign ambassador Tom Herbert sows the Bake Your Lawn challenge for schools around Britain: grow your own loaf!

To launch the Real Bread Campaign’s scheme, the fifth generation Hobbs House Baker, co-star of the current Channel 4 series The Fabulous Baker Brothers and co-author of the Headline book of the same name (published 19 January) will help pupils at Horsley Primary School in Gloucestershire sow a small plot of organic wheat in the school’s grounds.

Tom Herbert said: ‘I’m really excited to help show kids at my local school how easy it is to make lush loaves of Real Bread. This is where the natural magic begins and gives real meaning to the saying “dig in!”’

Horsley Primary School head teacher Martin Fry added: 'Bake Your Lawn is a great scheme for all schools. It gives pupils an understanding of how Real Bread is made by taking them on an inspirational journey through the whole process from seed to sandwich.’   

Teachers and other community youth group leaders can order 100g packets of organic wheat seeds from www.realbreadcampaign.org for £2 (to cover p&p) for planting between now and late-April. The free (donations welcome) grow it, mill it, bake it, eat it Bake Your Lawn guide to turning 25g of seed into a 1m2 wheat patch and ultimately a small loaf is also available to download from the site.  Children are encouraged to keep wheat diaries from sowing through to harvest, milling and baking.  Photos and wheat diaries from the first Bake Your Lawn in 2011 can be found in the events section of the Campaign’s website.

In support of Bake Your Lawn, members of the charity Garden Organic are being offered wheat seeds as part of their Members’ Experiments scheme. The Campaign also encourages bakers, farmers and millers to get involved by helping children from local schools with sowing, growing, milling and baking.

The Bake Your Lawn supporters’ coalition of the milling includes the Brockwell Bake Association, Capital Growth, The Children’s Food Campaign, Eco Schools, FACE (Farming and Countryside Education), Federation of City Farms and Community Gardens, The Food For Life Partnership, Learning Through Landscapes, The National Trust, Organic Seed Producers, The Traditional Cornmillers Guild, School Food Matters, The School Food Trust, The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (Mills section), and The Soil Association.

**ENDS**

Tom Herbert will be available for photos and interview at the sowing at Horsley Primary School at 1.30pm on 23 January.

To arrange please contact Chris Young BEFORE 5PM ON FRIDAY 19 JANUARY: chris@sustainweb.org or 0203 5596 777

For images or more information please contact Chris at any time.
www.realbreadcampaign.org       twitter.com/realbread     facebook.com/realbreadcampaign

Notes to editors

The Real Bread Campaign is part of the charity Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming, and funded by the Big Lottery Fund’s Local Food programme and The Sheepdrove Trust. The Campaign encourages people to eat more local loaves baked without the use of artificial additives or hidden processing aids, and finds ways to make bread better for us, better for our communities and better for the planet. 

Garden Organic is the UK’s leading organic growing charity. Dedicated to promoting organic gardening in homes, communities and schools and advancing organic growing through research, we use innovation and inspiration to get more people growing in the most sustainable way. For more information visit www.gardenorganic.org.uk

Published by Headline on 19 January 2012 to accompany the Channel 4 series of the same name, The Fabulous Baker Brothers (ISBN 9780755363650, RRP £20) is Tom and Henry Herbert’s first book. In it they share a world of gorgeous homemade breads, pastries, pies, cakes and confectionary. With carefully chosen ingredients and some easily-mastered techniques - this is healthy, wholesome, beautiful food that doesn't cost the earth to make.

Other current initiatives from the Real Bread Campaign include:

• Real Bread on The Menu: the Campaign’s scheme to encourage more 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 to make Real Bread available.
• Bake Your Lawn: A FREE grassroots guide to support teachers and parents helping children around Britain to sow a square metre of soil with a handful of wheat in the spring and grow it, mill it, bake it, eat it, to follow the Real Bread journey from seed to sandwich on their own doorsteps.
• Knead to Know: the Real Bread starter: the Campaign’s 140 page introductory guide to success in bringing Real Bread back to the heart of your local community, available as a limited edition book or PDF download. 
• The Real Bread Loaf Mark: Want to find Real Bread? Then Look for The Loaf Mark! This is the at-a-glance assurance from a baker that a loaf is what the Campaign calls Real Bread.
• 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.

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 also provides generous annual funding to the Campaign.