Real Bread that's right up your street

Having said ‘pappy birthday’ to the Chorleywood loaf* in July, on 1st August the Real Bread Campaign is encouraging Britain to enjoy the taste 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 if 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 Slow Food members, flour mills in the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, the Traditional Cornmillers Guild, and on National Trust properties, there will be events to share the delights of Real Bread nationwide.

As well as bread making classes galore, Local Loaves for Lammas highlights over the past few years have included:

• Murray Edwards College in Cambridge baking loaves from wheat grown in college grounds.
• Little Salkeld watermill celebrating their barley bannock bake with the old English ballad of John Barleycorn.
• Denver Mill in Norfolk collecting wheat from a local organic farm in the morning, then milling it for a kids’ bread making class.
• Pinpastry in Exeter making loaves for local farmers’ markets using flour from Clyston Watermill, ale barm from Exe Valley Brewery, and honey from the Haldon Hills.
• The Loaf in Derbyshire baking a special Lammas loaf using flour milled at nearby Heage Windmill.

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, 100% 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.

**ENDS**

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

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

Notes to editors

*Named after the Hertfordshire town of its creator the Flour Milling and Baking Research Association, the Chorleywood ‘Bread’ Process (CBP) was launched in July 1961. It is now the means by which around 80% of the loaves we buy in the UK - some nine million units of the artificial-additive-laden, wrapped, sliced stuff per day - are produced. It is a system that eliminates most of the fermentation time needed by Real Bread, producing what the Campaign believes to be ‘unripe’ loaves.  It is also a system that eliminates most of the time bread dough needs to ‘ripen’ naturally. By contrast, a growing number of studies suggest that Real Bread produced with longer fermentation times could have positive implications in certain issues of health and nutrition, including digestibility. CBP also contributed to the elimination of the jobs of many of the skilled people who used to bake Real Bread for the nation, with the related negative implications for local communities and economies.

**Bake Your Lawn is A FREE grassroots guide to help children around Britain to sow a square metre 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.

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. 
• 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: working 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 buy local Real Bread, or get baking it in-house.
• The Real Bread Finder: the enhanced version of the only online directory dedicated to helping people find where to buy Real Bread locally is now much more user friendly for both Real Bread bakers adding their loaves and shoppers looking for them.

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.