Loaf: thy neighbour

Over the weekend of 1st August Real Bread bakers and traditional millers around the country are taking up the Real Bread Campaign’s call to help Britain to rediscover the joys of the real thing by baking and buying Local Loaves for Lammas.

Taking its name from the Old English for loaf mass, this ancient harvest festival’s traditional highlight is eating bread baked with autumn’s first grain. Where wheat has ripened, the event is a chance for Bake Your Lawn* kids to join in with community milling and baking days to complete their hands-on Real Bread journeys.

Even where the first harvest’s not in, it’s a great opportunity for everyone either to buy a loaf of locally-produced Real Bread, or roll up their sleeves to bake a loaf right at home. With Real Bread bakeries joined by flour mills in the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, the Traditional Cornmillers Guild, and on National Trust properties, plus Slow Food members, there will be events to share the delights of Real Bread nationwide.

As well as bread making classes galore, Local Loaves for Lammas highlights this year include:

• Outdoor cob oven building and baking at Little Salkeld Watermill, Cumbria
• Breadmaking workshop and celebration of Real Bread with Ipswich Food Co-op and a host of local millers and bakers
• Seeing Sussex-grown wheat ground into wholemeal flour using only the power of the River Itchen, then pick up Real Bread making tips from volunteer bakers at Winchester City Mill
• Breadshare’s Community Supported Bakery celebration at Whitmuir the Organic Place, West Linton

Part of Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming, and funded by the Big Lottery Fund’s Local Food programme, the Real Bread Campaign champions locally-produced, artificial additive-free loaves, and finds ways to make bread better for us, better for our communities and better for the planet. Membership of the Real Bread Campaign is open to everyone who cares about the state of bread in Britain, who can find full details at www.realbreadcampaign.org

*Bake Your Lawn is A FREE grassroots guide to help children around Britain to follow the Real Bread journey from seed to sandwich on their own doorsteps. It shows how to sow a square metre of wheat and grow it, mill it, bake it, eat it.

**ENDS**

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

13th July 2011

Notes to editors

Current initiatives from the Real Bread Campaign also include:

• 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 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.
• 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 and grow it, mill it, bake it, eat it, to follow the Real Bread journey from seed to sandwich on their own doorsteps.
• 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.