Breadcrumbs 2011

 

Back issues of Breadcrumbs, the monthly e-newsletter from the Real Bread Campaign

As this page is an archive of back issues, please note that some of the infomation and links it contains might no longer be current or correct.

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• December
• November
• October
• September
• August
• July
• June
• May
• April
• March
• February
• January

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December 2011

Welcome to the last pile of Breadcrumbs for 2012. As you might well be crazily busy and perhaps even a smidgen hungover from seasonal festivities, I’ll try keep it short.

Thanks for your continued support for the cause, especially if in the last month you’ve:

• Joined or renewed your membership
• Bought a loaf from a Real Bread baker
• Visited a school to teach Lessons in Loaf
• Bought Knead to Know
• Baked your first loaf
• Signed up for the Loaf Mark scheme
• Taught someone else to bake Real Bread
• Talked about the Campaign to friends, family, a local baker, people in another organisation or members of the media

Yup, 2011 year saw TV land going mad for Real Bread, most recently with a whole slew of Campaign members on BBC2’s The Big Bread Experiment. Here’s to more of the same next year!

Merry Christmas, happy New Year and for one last time this side of the hols, please scroll down

Upper Crust

Last minute Christmas gifts
Stuck for an idea? Membership of the Real Bread Campaign is the gift that keeps on giving. That’s four issues of True Loaf and twelve months of benefits for just £25. And don’t forget our book Knead to Know, too. We’ll be posting this Thursday (15 December), which should hopefully get there before the big day. Otherwise, next Wednesday (21 December) is the last mailout before January, when they can at least receive their welcome email in time.

Teachers: learn to bake with TV cook and author Katie Caldesi
As part of our Lessons in Loaf scheme, cookery book author and La Cucina Caldesi owner is hosting this one-off class at her Marylebone cookery school on Wednesday 25 January. The half day workshop to help school teachers and cooks run Real Bread making classes in their own schools is half full already, so book your place today.

Campaign office volunteer needed
Chris needs a hand. So if you live in or near London and would be able to commit to volunteering in the Sustain office for at least one day a week for a few months, please click here to find out more.

Campaign members

CSB on the box
Being the organisation that has championed Community Supported Baking (CSB) since we began, and having provided advice to the production team since September 2009, it was great to see The Big Bread Experiment finally hit BBC2 last week. Over three one hour shows, CSB’s highest profile showcase yet followed the journeys of Campaign members Bread…Actually!, and Crakehall Watermill, who were aided and abetted along the way by fellow members Duncan and Patrick of The Thoughtful Bread Company, Dan and Johanna of The Handmade Bakery, and our co-founder Andrew Whitley of Bread Matters. If you missed it, you can watch it on iPlayer for the next day or two.

True Loaf competition
Thanks to everyone who entered. The winners know who they are already. If you’re a Campaign member, you’ll read who they are, and find details of another great competition in the next True Loaf, out in mid-January. Prizes include the books Bread Revolution by Big Bread Experiment stars Duncan Glendinning and Patrick Ryan, and The Fabulous Baker Boys by Campaign ambassador Tom Herbert and his brother Henry that accompanies their forthcoming Channel 4 series of the same name.

The professionals

The Real Bread Loaf Mark
We’ll be doing a second round of media work to promote this scheme in January, so if you want a mention for your Real Bread bakery, sign up today! If you joined the Campaign as an organisation, the admin fee is included as a benefit, so what have you got to lose?

Well bread
Thanks to the four bakeries that have been in touch since our appeal to find bakers who want to help put more Real Bread on the Menu of more hospitals. If you want to find out more about supplying Real Bread to a local NHS trust, click here.

What are you up to?
If you’ve done something in the name of the Real Bread Campaign, we’d love to hear about it. Taught bread making in a local school? Let us know. Started supplying a veg box scheme or local authority canteen? Drop us a line.

Thank you
Thanks to The Barefoot Bakery and Hartingtons, who both now offer 10% discount off their Real Bread making courses. Thanks also to Campaign member zombiepizza.co.uk for adding our supporter badge to their ‘leisurely evolving website’ and to Paul Munsey for The Loaf Mark feature in Wessex Mill’s Christmas newsletter.

Sippets

sippet [sɪpɪt] n (Cookery) a small piece of something, esp a piece of toast or fried bread eaten with soup or gravy [used as diminutive of sop; see -et] Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged

• Congratulations to Campaign co-founder Andrew Whitley, who collected the judges’ special prize at the BBC Food and Farming Awards for his work campaigning for Real Bread
• Well done also to Campaign member True Food Coop, which was named best retail initiative
• …and to Campaign member and virtuousbread.com founder Jane Mason who picked up the prize for food breakthrough at the Red’s Hot Women Awards – not missing the opportunity to give Sam Cam a loaf of Real Bread during the pre-awards reception at Number 10
• Bread as therapy at Freedom From Torture (pp 4&5)
• Campaign member Alex Gooch with Gizzi Erskine and Matt Tebbutt on Channel 4’s Drop Down Menu 25mins in
• Happy 1st birthday to Chalk Hills Bakery
• Thanks to Campaign member Jessica Edmonds of Leicester Born and Bread for helping to give the Real Bread Finder's profile a boost by writing to The Guardian
• Another great help to awareness of the Campaign was a Real Bread feature across three pages of The Metro (even if it did mis-credit Chris with founding the Campaign) 
• And if you have 25 minutes to kill, here’s Chris on an extended Real Bread rant at the Royal Academy of Arts

End crust

‘Good bread is the great need in poor homes, and oftentimes the best appreciated luxury in the homes of the very rich.’ A Book for A Cook, The Pillsbury Co. (1905)

November 2011

Since we launched it last month, The Real Bread Loaf Mark has got off to a great start, with nearly fifty bakers applying to sign up to the scheme already.

Also going great guns are applications from school cooks and teachers for the Lessons in Loaf workshop being hosted for us by Katie Caldesi.

If you’re scratching your brains for a Christmas pressie for the food lover in your life, how about the Campaign membership and Knead to Know combo? Or you could enter our True Loaf competition and win something for them, instead…

And before I leave you to get on with reading the latest gripping instalment of Breadcrumbs, if you haven’t had a nose round the website recently, please do as we’re adding bits and bobs all of the time – including how bakers can help put Real Bread on hospital menus.

For all this and more, please scroll down…

Upper crust

The Real Bread Loaf Mark
Thanks to the bakers who’ve signed up to take advantage of The Real Bread Loaf Mark scheme. If you haven't and you want to give your customers an at-a-glance assurance that this is Real Bread, please click here to find out more. We’ll be publishing the first fifty that sign up on the website.

Katie Caldesi to offer school cooks and teachers a Lesson in Loaf
On Wednesday 25 January, Katie Caldesi is holding a half day workshop to help school teachers and cooks run Real Bread making classes in their own schools. A cookery book author and well-known face to viewers of BBC TV shows including Saturday Kitchen and MasterChef, Katie is hosting this one-off class at her Marylebone cookery school La Cucina Caldesi. Book now!

Give the gift of (True) Loaf
Yes, we’ve thought of a Christmas (or birthday, bar mitzvah, wedding, whatever) present so you don’t have to. For just £25 you can give the gift that keeps on giving - a year’s membership of the Campaign. That’s four issues of True Loaf and twelve whole months of benefits for less than you'd pay to traipse around after hyperactive kids at certain theme parks.

Campaign members

True Loaf
Just a reminder to Campaign members that you’ve only got until 6 December to enter our current competition. For your chance to win a Real Bread class with Aidan Chapman at The Phoenix Bakery School (worth £100!); a baking starter kit from The School of Artisan Food; a copy of Dan Lepard’s new book Short & Sweet; or a handmade bread board from Woods World Wide by Williams, all you need to do is tell us what Real Bread means to you.  For full details, click here.

10% discount on membership
When you join us or renew your membership, you can now choose to pay by annual subscription, meaning that you don’t have to remember to renew each year. As it also saves us a lot of faffing about, we’ll give you 10% off each year as a thank you!

The professionals

On yer bike!
We’re working with the charity FoodCycle to help give unloved loaves a good home. If your bakery is in one of the following places, FoodCycle will take leftover Real Bread and use them to help feed people in real need of a decent feed: Bath, Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge, Clacton-on-Sea, Durham, Leeds, Liverpool, London: (Bromley-By-Bow, Camden, Haringey, Islington, South Kensington), Manchester, Norwich. For more information and contact details, click here.

Real Bread bakers wanted to supply hospitals
We have started work to help put more Real Bread on the Menu of more hospitals. If you would like to investigate the possibility of supplying Real Bread to a local hospital, click here.

Baking jobs and equipment
The most recent vacancies sent in for our bakers’ wanted page are at The Handmade Bakery in Yorkshire, Breadshare near Edinburgh and Pillars of Hercules in Fife. Also posted is a c1930 cast iron steam bread oven for sale in Lincolnshire.

Real Bread wanted in Betws-y-Coed
The Alpine Coffee Shop has asked for our help to find a bakery to supply them with around sixteen loaves of Real Bread a day for toasties, soup and sandwiches. If you’re interested in finding out more, visit their website or email jacha [at] jacha.co.uk

What are you up to?
If you’ve done something in the name of the Real Bread Campaign, we’d love to hear about it. Taught bread making in a local school? Let us know. Started supplying a veg box scheme or local authority canteen? Drop us a line.

Thank yous for course discounts and more
Thanks to The Loaf and Slow Loaf, both of which have offered fellow members 10% discount on Real Bread classes. Thanks also to Michelle Hunn for adding our ‘proud to support…’ badge to The Rustic Kitchen’s website. If you’ve not yet added the badge to you blog or website, you can download it here.

The Real Baker-e
As well as a great place to make contact with more than 350 of your fellow Campaign members, The Real Baker-e is the place to ask questions about your Real Bread enterprise, and to be the first to hear our latest news. In just the past month or so, Real Baker-e users were the first to hear about two 48 hour competitions. Well done to Tim who won a weekend learning from Andrew Whitley and Peter who got to spend the day baking sourdough with Dan Lepard.

Sippets

sippet [sɪpɪt] n (Cookery) a small piece of something, esp a piece of toast or fried bread eaten with soup or gravy [used as diminutive of sop; see -et] Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged

• Welcome to the gang at Seven Hills Bakery, who’ve just started baking Real Bread for the good folks of Sheffield.
• Congratulations to Campaign Ambassador Tom Herbert and his brother Henry who recently announced their very own Channel 4 series! The Fabulous Baker Boys starts early next year
• Campaign member Duncan Glendinning of The Thoughtful Bread Company and Bread Actually’s turn on The Mill might finally turn up on BBC2 this December, though nobody’s 100% sure
• More Real Bread on the box: Michel Roux jr  talking to Ben of e5 bakehouse, John of Oxford Bread Group & Chris the office boy on the Great British Food Revival; and Caroline of Leakers Bakery with The Hairy Bikers
• Felicitations also to Emma Parkin, who has been named Devon Life's Baker of the Year
• Several Campaign members were given a nod in The Independent’s 50 best breakfast spots list 
• Fingers crossed for BBC Food and Farming Awards finalists Andrew Whitley, Golspie Mill, and True Food Coop. Winners will be announced on 23 November
• A correction on our outline of the recently introduced bread weights legislation
• Not so good for local communities? Bad news for employees of all three of the Big Three Bakers, here, here, here and here   
• More Bake Your Lawn wheat diaries and pictures
• If you liked the look of Bethesdabakin (see the current True Loaf), you might be interested in the discussion planning next year's event.
• The Great British Bake Off is back and the production team is looking for home bakers to take part in the third series.

End Crust

Given the total absence of fermentation, we don’t recommend this, but as an interesting curio you might like to read The Old Foodie’s recent article on snow bread.

October 2011

Did you know that barm brack is traditionally eaten in Celtic parts for hallowe’en? Nor did I until I just asked my friend Google for something interesting with which to begin this message. What I did know is that on the following day in Mexico, they eat pan de muertos – you can read Thomasina Miers’ recipe here.

But back to business, our big news is that, heralded by interviews on Radio 4 and several local BBC radio stations, we’ve just launched The Real Bread Loaf Mark.

Another exciting snippet – well, it’s got me excited, at least – is that we’ve just zoomed past the halfway point towards our target of Lessons in Loaf being taught in 100 schools!

And we’ve just launched a new gizmo that gives you the opportunity to save a tasty 10% off your membership fee - every year!

For details of these, how to win one of our latest batch of fab prizes, and many more things happening in the world of Real Bread, please scroll down – it’ll be worth it…

The Real Bread Loaf Mark
As you might have heard on BBC Radio 4’s You & Yours and several other shows, we have launched The Real Bread Loaf Mark. A dozen or so bakers signed up straight away, and if you were one of them – thank you. If you haven’t yet, or you’re not a baker and want to know what to look out for, please click here. 

Lessons in Loaf
As a result of our Lessons in Loaf scheme, children from almost sixty schools have now learned how to bake Real Bread.  We’re very grateful to everyone who’s helped to make this happen, but particular thanks go to Chefs Adopt a School, who have organised about a third of these school sessions.  Learn more about their involvement here. If you’re a baker who’s not yet been into a local school in the name of the Campaign and would like to, or have but not yet let us know how it went, please drop us a line.

Britain says that hidden additives are unacceptable
Our new survey of 1300 people (we didn’t invite any of our supporters to vote ‘cos that would’ve been cheating) found that more than 71% of Britons believe it’s unacceptable that processing aids don’t have to appear on an ingredients list. It also revealed that more than 70% said it’s unacceptable that an ingredient/additives list doesn’t have to be displayed for unwrapped loaves.

Bake Your Lawn
To see the great wheat diaries and pictures just in from schools to which we sent wheat and our Bake Your Lawn guide, click here. If you haven’t let us know how you got on – please do!

Campaign members

True Loaf
We posted the latest issue to Campaign members on Monday. If you’ve not joined us (or not got round to renewing yet) things you’re missing out on include the chance to win: a Real Bread class with Aidan Chapman at The Phoenix Bakery School (worth £100!); a baking starter kit from The School of Artisan Food; a copy of Dan Lepard’s new book Short and Sweet; or a handmade bread board from Woods World Wide by Williams.  For a full list of this issue’s features, click here.

10% discount on membership
When you join us or renew your membership, you can now choose to pay by annual subscription, meaning that you don’t have to remember to renew each year. As it also saves us a lot of faffing about, we’ll give you 10% off each year as a thank you!

P.S.
How to tell if you’re a current member of the Campaign? Go to our members’ homepage, enter the email address you used when you joined and your membership number (on the welcome email and membership card we sent you), and open sesame. If this doesn’t work, please drop us a line.

P.P.S.
Don’t worry – if your membership is up for renewal, we’ll email a reminder to you.

Course discount and thank you
Thank you to Leon Pearson at Slow Dough bakery for becoming the latest person to offer a discount (10% in this case) on bread making courses to other Campaign members. Thanks also to Adrienne Ruiz for adding our supporter badge to her website. If you’re a member and not yet added our supported badge to you blog or website, you can download it here.

Events

Click here

Sippets

sippet [sɪpɪt] n (Cookery) a small piece of something, esp a piece of toast or fried bread eaten with soup or gravy [used as diminutive of sop; see -et] Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged

• Real Bread rants from the Rude Health podium at Abergavenny Food Festival by Campaign ambassador Richard Bertinet and office boy Chris Young
• Great news that the Community Supported Bakery in Dunbar is now up and running!
• Well done to Campaign members Brian and Ursula Kirby at Clyston Mill on their second consecutive National Trust Fine Farm Produce Award
• From 22-30 October (and beyond) don’t forget to Bake with Compassion

End Crust

And if you think some British sourdough aficionados border on the obsessive – someone in Sweden’s running a lodge to lessen leaven loneliness

September 2011

How was the summer?  Been anywhere nice? Don’t worry – no need to answer that, no way I could cope if all four thousand of you started sending postcards…

It would be good to hear back from the Bake Your Lawn-ers amongst you, though – how was your harvest? More below.

Anyway, the headlines of this month’s ‘crumbs are – The Real Bread Loaf Mark, and our Real Bread on the Menu workshop at The Cookery School at Bordeaux Quay in Bristol.

Oh, and if you’re going to Abergavenny Food Festival this weekend, come and say hi. I’ll be at the Food Academy in the castle all weekend. Campaign ambassadors Richard Bertinet and Tom Herbert will be about during the weekend, too.

I know you’re busy, so let’s press on.

The Real Bread Loaf Mark
On 3rd October, the Real Bread Campaign launches The Real Bread Loaf Mark. This will allow bakers to give their customers an at-a-glance assurance that this is Real Bread. As well as helping shoppers and bakers, it’s also a great way to show support for, and raise awareness of, the Campaign. You’ll be able to read full details of the scheme from 3rd October here.

Real Bread on the Menu workshop
In support of the Campaign’s mission to help put Real Bread on the Menu, The Cookery School is offering places in this one-off workshop to just twelve public sector cooks at the very generously discounted rate of only £25 per person, including cake and a cuppa. Places are available to cooks working in public sector kitchens (e.g. schools, care homes, hospitals, fire stations, prisons) anywhere in the country that don't bake Real Bread already but are equipped and committed to start doing so. For full details and to apply, click here.

THIS IS A FANTASTIC OPPORTUNITY, SO IF YOU’RE IN THE SOUTH WEST AND NOT INVOLVED WITH PUBLIC SECTOR CATERING BUT KNOW SOMEONE WHO IS (E.G. THE COOK, HEAD OR A GOVERNOR AT A LOCAL SCHOOL), PLEASE PASS IT ON!

Bake Your Lawn
We’ve had a few photos and wheat diary entries back from some of the hundreds of you on your grow it, mill it, bake it, eat it missions, but we’d love to receive more. Please email photos and stories of how you got on and we’ll publish them on our site and Flickr feed. We’re particularly interested in your yield (i.e. how many grams of wheat you harvested for each gram sown), how you got on with threshing and milling, and what your loaves were like.

Knead to Know – reviews
We’re not selling the book through Amazon or Waterstones, but as both websites list it, leaving any positive feedback you have there (like a couple of readers kindly have done already) won’t do us any harm…

Campaign members

True Loaf
Will be with Campaign members in mid-October. Amongst another batch of great features will be our annual Christmas hamper of prizes, which so far includes a Real Bread class with Aidan Chapman at The Phoenix Bakery School (worth £100!); a baking starter kit from The School of Artisan Food; a copy of Dan Lepard’s new book Short and Sweet; and a handmade bread board from Woods World Wide by Williams.

NB If you’ve changed address since you last received your copy, please let us know now.

LAST CHANCE TO WIN!
Our prize draw to WIN How to Make Bread, the first book from Campaign ambassador and head of baking at the School of Artisan Food, Emmanuel Hadjiandreou closes on 21 September. If you’re a Campaign member, you simply need to take a photo of yourself reading any copy of True Loaf and email it to us. We shouldn’t tell you this but, right now, the odds of winning are pretty good…

Campaign members: the professionals

Lessons in Loaf
We still need to hear from more professional bakers willing to visit local schools to pass on bread making skills (not just soda bread, mind) in the name of the Campaign, please. We also want to hear from you if you’re willing to host a workshop to share baking skills with local teachers to pass on to pupils. If you’ve taught bread making in the name of the Campaign in a school over the past couple of years and haven’t let us know details already, please drop us a line.

Real Bread job ads page
Looking for a Real Bread baker for your bakery, a Real Bread bakery for your community, or people in your area wanting to join you in setting up a Community Supported Bakery? Please email details to realbread@sustainweb.org and we'll post them here.

Ads already posted are from Vanilla Bakery, Suffolk; The Bertinet Bakery, Bath; Allendale Bakery, Northumberland; The Artisan Bakery, London; Judges Bakery, Hastings; and e5 bakehouse, London.   

Bread for bread
Congratulations to Community Supported Bakery pioneers The Handmade Bakery, who raised all of the £40,000 they needed to renovate and equip their new Real Bread bakery, cafe and training school through their breadbonds and coursebonds. In these inspiring schemes, interest on investments is paid in either bread or baking courses.

Change in bread weight law
On 1st October the law restricting the sale of unwrapped bread to loaves of 400g, 800g etc is being changed. From that date, you will be able to sell unwrapped bread loaves of any size, provided that the weight is shown on a wrapper, ticket or notice.   You will still be able to choose to sell 400g and 800g loaves, but you will need to show their weight. Find full details here.

NB - if you're pricing bread by the kilo or part thereof, or by the half or quarter loaf already, you're breaking the law...

The Real Baker-e
Recent posts/discussions include wheat-free rye bread, bread packaging, buying an oven for a homebakery, spelt sourdough, Hobart mixer repairs, selling through farm shops, bread supply contract opportunities, and food safety and production courses for small businesses.  Campaign members can join the conversation here.

Everyone is welcome to post relevant offers and wants on our Facebook wall, and we’re always happy to re-tweet – please use the #realbread hashtag so we all see it.

Events

To help keep Breadcrumbs as short as possible, here are just a few of the Real Bread events coming soon. You can read or add full details of these and more bready activities around the country on our events page and classes on our courses page

17 & 18 September: Real Bread @ Abergavenny Food Festival
23 September – 9 October: Taste Local Food & Drink Festival, Gloucestershire
24 September: The Eye Bread Festival, Herefordshire
25 September: Capital Growth Harvest Festival at The Regent's Park, London
9 October: Cob oven building and bread baking, Norfolk
17 October: Real Bread on The Menu workshop, Bristol

Sippets

sippet [sɪpɪt] n (Cookery) a small piece of something, esp a piece of toast or fried bread eaten with soup or gravy [used as diminutive of sop; see -et] Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged

• Free finance and marketing training from Making Local Food Work for community food enterprises  
• Great Taste Awards congratulations to Real Bread bakers including Pullins Bakery, the Bertinet bakery, Long Crichel Bakery, More?, The Thoughtful Bread Co, Sally Clarke, GAILs and Chalk Hills Bakery  h
• Far to few Real Bread bakers on the BIA shortlist this year, but well done to those who made it
• Details of how to enter The Guardian Social Enterprise Award
• Lower salt in Real Bread

End Crust

Sesame Street's Environmental Health officer obviously more lenient than most: dogs baking bread

August 2011

How’s your summer going? Our volunteers Emily and Sarah are on their hols, so I’ve been even busier than usual.

I'm sure you're busy too, but if you have a Real Bread Finder record, please take a mo to check it to make sure that the list of your Real Breads (or flour from an independent mill, fresh yeast or starter, or domestic bread making equipment) and where people can buy them is up to date.

In the office I’ve been concentrating on Lessons in Loaf for the autumn term, and The Real Bread Loaf Mark, which we’re launching in October. Beyond these walls, I had a fun afternoon with people who're helping to revive the auld alliance betweeen beer and Real Bread when we helped CAMRA to give the Great British Beer Festival a taste of A Slice of Real Ale.

Elsewhere, quite a few of you were baking or enjoying Local Loaves for Lammas a couple of weeks back, and I see from our events calendar, plenty of you have things up your floury sleeves over the next month, too. I’ll be a few of them, so look forward to seeing some of you.

And don’t forget, time’s running out for Campaign members to enter our prize draw to win How to Make Bread, the very first book from Campaign ambassador Emmanuel Hadjiandreou.

For details of this and much more, please read on.  This month, I’ve made an effort to make this a short as poss…

WIN!
Time’s running out in our prize draw to WIN How to Make Bread, the first book from Campaign ambassador and head of baking at the School of Artisan Food, Emmanuel Hadjiandreou. If you’re a Campaign member, you simply need to take a photo of yourself reading any copy of True Loaf and email it to us. We’ll post them all online and pick one from the flour jar to win the book. If you’re not a Campaign member, please click here to JOIN US!

NEW discount
The latest of the growing list of discounts for Campaign members comes courtesy of the Baking Academy of Ireland. They’re offering 10% off any baking course. Click here for more details of this and other course discounts.

Panary helps put Real Bread on the Menu
Thanks to Campaign member Paul Merry, of Dorset-based baking school Panary, who’s supporting our mission to help put Real Bread On The Menu of more public sector canteens around the country by offering cooks a generous 30% discount on selected courses.  Click here for details.

GM wheat trials objection
Rothamsted Research in Hertfordshire has applied to conduct a field trial of genetically modified (GM) bread wheat in 2012 and 2013 (reference 11/R8/01). Should you want to know more about this trial and/or make an official objection to it, please visit the GM Freeze website. The deadline for objections is THIS FRIDAY 19 August 2011.

Pret sandwiches – au naturel?
Could it be that the reason that Pret's sandwiches are not 'plastered with labels containing lots of boring numbers, names, dates and symbols' is simply that current legislation does not require them to do so, rather than because the loaves and wraps it uses are made without them? Click here to read more

Bake Your Lawn
We’re slap bang in the middle of British harvest time, so if you’ve been out a reapin’, threshin’, millin’ an’ a bakin’ (not sure why I felt the need to drop my g’s), please email your photos and wheat diary updates to us to share online.

Knead to Know: the Real Bread Starter
We’ve now sold over 650 copies of our book and have started to hear back from people who’ve found it’s inspired to get baking Real Bread for their local communities. If you want to share your experience, please email us.

Campaign members: the professionals

Lessons in Loaf
We’re organising Real Bread workshops to share baking skills with teachers in London to pass on to pupils. We plan to do the same around the country, so if you have the facilities to host such a class in London or elsewhere, please email us. We also still want to hear from more professional bakers willing to teach Lessons in Loaf bread making classes in local schools.

The Real Bread Loaf Mark
We’ll be launching The Real Bread Loaf Mark this October. This will allow bakers to give their customers an at-a-glance assurance that this is Real Bread using a handsome logo. We’ll be publishing full details of the scheme in late September here.

Local Loaves for Lammas
So we can share with our other supporters, please email pictures of your event to us, along with links to any media coverage of your activities.

Events

Here are just some of the Real Bread events coming soon. To read full details of these and more bready activities around the country 9or add your own), please visit our events page.

To try to keep Breadcrumbs as short as possible, we’ve left all of the bread making classes posted on the calendar off this list, but you can still find them here.

Ludlow Food Festival Bread Competitions
20 August, Ludlow
Bread competitions for professional and home bakers. Please contact the Festival office for more details and entry forms now!

Bake & Taste the Difference
24 August, Randwick nr. Stroud
Bread making morning for 7-11 year olds. Limited places, so book in advance to avoid disappointment.

Community Bread Baking Day
27 August, nr Stroud
Bring your dough and bake it in the wood-fired oven. There's an opportunity to chat and have a cuppa while the alchemy is unfolding.

Organic September
1 – 30 September, nationwide
The UK’s biggest celebration of all things organic will be taking place throughout the month of September.

Small is....Festival
2 - 4 September, Rugby
At the Garden Organic stand there'll be talks about growing cereals at home, practical threshing and milling of Warwickshire garden-grown cereals and discussion about organic, old and new cereal varieties.

Keighley Show - bread master classes
3 September, Keighly
Visit the handcrafts tent for Real Bread workshops, demos, and tasting

Brockwell Bake at the Urban Green Fair
4 September, Brockwell Park, London
See (and have a go at) threshing, winnowing, milling, as well as Real Bread pizza making in a wood-fired oven. Real Bread baking competition for professional and amateurs.

GAIL's Garden Party
10 September, Hampstead
This 6th annual Garden Party is GAIL’s way of bringing the community back together and saying ‘thank you’ for welcoming them all those years ago. Not only will there be delicious food but live music and children’s entertainment too.

Brockwell Bake at the Feast on the Bridge
10 September, Southwark Bridge, London
Threshing, winnowing, milling and sifting the harvest again. Plans also include thatching, pizza making, corn dolly making and skep work as well - in other words everything to do with wheat!

Howsham Mill as it was
11 September, nr York
Come and learn how Howsham Mill worked when grinding corn. For children there will be an opportunity to make bread and bake it using our own hydro-generated electricity. Demonstrations of making corn dollies and a traditional rope making machine.

Abergavenny Food Festival Food Academy
17 & 18 September, Abergavenny
Earth Apple Bakery and Chris from the Real Bread Campaign will be running fun bread making workshops at the Food Academy at the Castle. Elsewhere at the festival, Campaign ambassador Tom Herbert will be doing a Real Bread demo. 

What are you up to?

Whether you’re a Campaign member or not, if you want a FREE ad for your Real Bread event, PLEASE ADD IT TO OUR CALENDAR as far in advance as you can. It will then appear on our website, and perhaps also here in Breadcrumbs, which goes to thousands of the most dedicated breadheads in the land!

Sippets

sippet [sɪpɪt] n (Cookery) a small piece of something, esp a piece of toast or fried bread eaten with soup or gravy [used as diminutive of sop; see -et] Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged

• Listen to Campaign members John Downes, Vincent Talleu and Andrew Whitley talking yeast on The Food Programme
• Watch The Baker’s Table and Talgarth Mill on BBC1’s Village SOS

End Crust

Campaign member Leaker’s Bakery are awaiting news of whether or not their bloomers helped to be the world record for the biggest ploughman’s lunch.

July 2011

Autumn’s not here yet and already this has truly been a summer of loaf. 

Back in June, we were over in Leicester with Everards for the launch of their Project Artisan; the following weekend we teamed up with Pauls Bakery and the Brockwell Bake Association at the Melton Big Bake; then I joined several other Campaign members and many other Real Bread enthusiasts for the fifth anniversary Bethesdabakin’; and just last weekend, we were in the eponymous Hertfordshire village to retire the Chorleywood ‘Bread’ Process loaf. 

The highlight of the next few weeks is Local Loaves for Lammas – yup, our annual do to help people celebrate their nearest and dearest Real Bread will be upon us in just two weeks.

And if you’re a paid-up Campaign member, you have the chance to win the new book from Campaign ambassador Emmanuel Hadjiandreou in the latest issue of True Loaf.

For details of all of this and much more, please read on.

Core Campaign activities

Knead to Know: the Real Bread Starter

If you’re umm-ing and ah-ing (is that how umms and ahs are spelled?) about how you can help to bring Real Bread back to the heart of your local community, whether as a high street baker, or from your own kitchen, then Knead to Know is for you. Don’t take our word for it: you can read some of the (frankly glowing) praise heaped upon our book here.

Lessons in Loaf

If you’re a baker and fancy teaching bread making skills in a local school, please get in touch with Chris or Emily in the Campaign office. If you’re a primary school teacher racking your brain for ideas for the autumn term, then rack no more - download our FREE booklet of lesson suggestions today.

Other news

Campaign retires the modern factory loaf

On 9th July, we took a Chorleywood ‘Bread’ Process loaf back from whence it came for its long-overdue retirement. We also took Paul Jones of Melton Mowbray’s wood-fired oven along to give local people the chance to show the world they can bake Real Bread. Flatteringly, bods from the Big Bakers even turned up…Get clicking to read the story and see pictures from the day.

Pappy Birthday!

Congratulations to Isaac Hickenbottom on his winning pappy birthday card design. Download your copy now, either as a poster or card to email to a Big Baker, supermarket, or whoever you reckon deserves it the most. For his efforts, Isaac wins a Real Bread starter kit, kindly donated by Hobbs House Bakery.

Bake Your Lawn

Pictures and wheat diaries continue to come in from schools and others around the country. If you are working to Bake Your Lawn, please send yours to us today. We look forward to being able to report bread making lessons using school-grown flour over the next couple of months!

Local Loaves for Lammas

Over the weekend of 1st August, Campaign members around the country will be celbrating Local Loaves for Lammas. Are you one of them? If so, please add the details to our calendar TODAY! We’re also happy to send Campaign members a media release template and tips to help get local publicity for events. For ideas and inspiration from past years, visit our Local Loaves for Lammas pages.

Campaign members

WIN!

Join today for your chance to WIN How to Make Bread, the first book from Campaign ambassador and head of baking at the School of Artisan Food, Emmanuel Hadjiandreou. You will also receive four copies of the EXCLUSIVE True Loaf magazine and be entitled to a whole flour sack full of DISCOUNTS. More importantly, you become a part of the ONLY national organisation that’s fighting for better bread in Britain and your pretty darn reasonable fee will help to ensure the continuation of our work. Click here to JOIN US!

Supporter badge thanks

Thanks to Campaign members PAUL, which is busy flaunting our ‘proud to support’ badge all over London on tens of thousands of bags and liners for their Flute Paul promotion as part of their Real Bread Festival, and prospective homebakery Michelle Hunn, who’s added it to her blog.

If you’re also wearing the badge with pride and want a mention, drop us a line.

One World Festival - help needed

Campaign member Dilly Boase could still do with a hand running a wood fired microbakery at the One World Festival in Derbyshire from 1st-7th August. If you’d like to get in touch with her, please email the Campaign office.

Campaign members: the professionals

Real Bread Loaf Mark

If you are baking Real Bread for sale, whether as a craft baker, part of a CSB or from your homebakery, and haven’t yet answered our short survey – please do today. This is to help us assess the potential demand for the scheme, and to tailor the marketing materials we create.  Everyone with entries on the Real Bread Finder received the link and some notes in an email back on 23 June, and Campaign members can find the same information here.

‘nother high profile telly show looking for a baker…

Young Baker of the Year is part of a BBC series that celebrates the working heroes of Great Britain. If you are a talented young (16-25) baker or know someone who fits the bill, then they want to hear from YOU! The show is looking for someone who is a true ambassador for their trade, up for a challenge and wants to showcase their skills! To apply email youngtalent@bbc.co.uk or call 0161 244 3716

Events

Here are just some of the Real Bread events coming soon. To read or add full details of these and more bready activities around the country, please visit our events page.

PS – To try to keep Breadcrumbs as short as possible, we’ve left off this list the bread making classes posted on the calendar.

Ale Tasting, Bread Weighing and Medieval Fayre
16 July, St Lawrence Lane, Ashburton, Devon    
The Portreeve of Ashburton and members of the Courts, together with members of the public parade to the bakers and pubs in town to weigh the bread and test the beer. After the event there is an auction of the bread.

Real Bread on the menu
16 July, Greenwich, London
Following the success of our joint workshop with The Greenwich Co-operative Development Agency back in March, they are running another.

Brockwell Bake open day
16 July, south London
Follow the whole seed to sandwich journey on one allotment plot.

Community Supported Bakery open day
23 July, The Handmade Bakery, Slaithwaite, Yorkshire
An open day for people interested in Community Supported Baking from the UK pioneers, in conjunction with the Soil Association.

Real Bread rant
29 July, Battersea
Chris from Campaign HQ will be taking to the Rude Health stand at 5pm to rail against a travesty (or more likely, several) of factory loaf production and marketing, and sing the praises of the real thing.

Community Bread Baking Day
30 July, Lovedays Mead, Stroud, Gloucestershire
Bring your dough, bake, have a cuppa, chat: lovely.

Bread making workshop and celebration of Real Bread
31st July, Ipswich
The story of setting up local bakeries; Community Supported Bakeries; secret Lammas rituals! All this and more. Confirmed speakers from Ipswich Food Co-op, Mains Restaurant Baking Club, Felixstowe Craft Bakery, Slow Dough Bakery, and Pakenham Watermill, with more guests to be confirmed.

Local Loaves for Lammas
!t August, Nationwide
Highlights confirmed so far include: Outdoor cob oven building and baking at Little Salkeld Watermill, Cumbria, 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, and Breadshare’s Community Supported Bakery celebration at Whitmuir the Organic Place, West Linton

A Slice of real ale
4 August:, Great British Beer Festival, London  
Matched real ale and Real Bread tasting workshop – SOLD OUT!

Ludlow Food Festival Bread Competitions
20 August, Ludlow
Bread competitions for professional and home bakers. Please contact the Festival office for more details and entry forms as far in advance as possible…

Sippets

sippet [sɪpɪt] n (Cookery) a small piece of something, esp a piece of toast or fried bread eaten with soup or gravy [used as diminutive of sop; see -et] Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged

• Happy baking in your new home to e5 bakehouse, which after only just over a year has had to move to a larger bakery to keep up with demand.
• Welcome back to the Real Bread fray to Troels Bendix, who’s bakery The Hungry Guest opens this week, with Pawel Litewka and Richard Dean  at the oven
• A great four days of dough bothering in Wales at Bethesdabakin’
• Real Bread sharing the spotlight with pork pies and Stilton at Melton Big Bake
• This year, let’s repeat (or beat) last year’s Real Bread successes (for Richard Bertinet, Alex Gooch and The Handmade Bakery)at the Radio 4 Food & Farming Awards  – vote now!

End Crust

The Real Bread Campaign presents: The long-overdue retirement of the Chorleywood 'Bread' Process

Works best with sound. Feel free to share with everyone you know...

June 2011

Our work to encourage the country to say that after half a century of the Chorleywood ‘Bread’ Process (CBP - the additive-laden, no-time system by which most factory loaves are made), enough is enough has got off to a good start, with the story being run by BBC Breakfast last week and The Daily Mail a few days ago. Lucas Hollweg of The Sunday Times, Dan Lepard of The Guardian and Bee Wilson of  The Daily Telegraph have all told us they’ll be featuring us over the next month, too.

In the first week of June, was honoured to be one of a handful of guests of the NFWI at their AGM. The main thing I learned was that if we want to enlist the national organisation’s support for Real Bread values and campaigns, the demand has to come from their grassroots. So, if you’re a member of a WI, it’s time to get your group on board!

I was also delighted the following day to be asked to join SPAB Mills Section at their planning day, to look at how links between Real Bread bakers and traditional millers can be forged and strengthened.  I’ll keep you posted with news in future editions of Breadcrumbs.

For details of what else has been going on and – more importantly – what’s coming up in the world of Real Bread, please read on.

Core campaign activities

Knead to Know: the Real Bread Starter

Our book on baking Real Bread for your local community continues to fly out of our doors. In the past month, The Eden Project and the School of Artisan Food have placed bulk orders, joining Bakery Bits, The Bertinet Kitchen, Books for Cooks, Bread Matters, Denver Windmill, Doves Farm, Loaf social enterprise, Love Loaves and Virtuous Bread as stockists. For details of how to order from any of them or us direct, click here

And if you fancy nominating Knead to Know for best cookbook in the Observer Food Monthly Awards before 24th June, it wouldn’t do the Real Bread cause any harm at all…

Real Bread on the menu

Would you be willing to host a Real Bread workshop for would-be bakers from public sector kitchens or food access projects? Are you a cook or caterer in such an organisation, committed and equipped to get baking Real Bread but feel you lack the skills or confidence to get going? If so, please click here for details and then get in touch with our part-time volunteers Emily and Sarah, or Chris, in the office.

Lessons in Loaf

Thanks to Steven Mansbridge of Mansbridge Bakers, Richard Bond of Paignton Bakery and Geoff Coleman of Cornfield Bakery, who’ve all told us this month about the Lessons in Loaf they’ve taught.

There’s still a long way to go to reach our target of 100 schools before June 2013, so if you’d like to get your bakery involved, please contact Chris or Emily in the Campaign office. If you’re a primary school teacher and want inspiration for running your own bread making lessons, or using Real Bread as a topic across a range of curriculum subjects, then download FREE handbook here.

Membership

If you’ve listed your loaves on our finder or simply receive Breadcrumbs each month, please take your support that extra step today. If you’ve not yet joined as a Campaign member or you’ve received an email to say that your membership has lapsed – we need your help! Click here to read why and how to JOIN US!

Other key work

Pappy Birthday!

On 9th July, we’ll be at the Chorleywood Village Day – see the events section below for details. One highlight of the day will be the announcement of our ‘pappy birthday’ card competition winner and from Monday 14th July, you’ll be able to download it as an ecard to send to Big Bakers and retailers of your choice….

Bake Your Lawn

These are the places you can read and see how just some of the kids around the country are getting on with their grow it, mill it, bake it, eat it Real Bread projects. We still want to hear from anyone who'll be running a community milling and baking day this harvest time - please add details to our events calendar today!

Campaign members

One World Festival - help needed

From 1st-7th August, Campaign member Dilly Boase will be running a wood fired microbakery at Spinkhill, Derbyshire with Paul Jones' oven where people can have fun learning or sharing breadmaking skills. As it runs for a week, she could do with a hand from grinding flour to edible artisanal art. Please bring your own tent & favourite recipes. Click here for details.

Junior bakers wanted

CBBC is looking for junior bakers aged between 9 -12 across the country to take part in the brand new series Junior Bake Off. Parents/guardians can visit www.loveproductions.co.uk for an application form or contact juniorbakeoff@loveproductions.co.uk (Tel: 0207 067 4876) for more information

Campaign members: the professionals

Campaign members can read and post small ads for bakery equipment, staff and volunteers in The Real Baker-e. Everyone is welcome to post relevant offers and wants on our Facebook wall, and we’re always happy to re-tweet anything bready posted by anyone – please use the #realbread hashtag so we see it. 

Vegware offer

Vegware has kindly offered Campaign members an 18% discount on online orders of biodegradable packaging. For your discount code, click here.

Local Loaves for Lammas

The clock’s a ticking: Local Loaves for Lammas takes place on the weekend of 1st August. This is the Campaign’s major annual drive to promote locally-produced Real Bread. We’ll be putting out the last media releases next week, so for the chance to get your activity/event mentioned, please add the details to our calendar TODAY! For ideas and inspiration from past years, visit our Local Loaves for Lammas pages.

BBC searching for a bakery

A new BBC2 series will feature a different business in each episode, such as a butcher or hairdresser, and the producers are particularly keen to feature a family-run bakery. If you are facing challenges or dilemmas and are happy to discuss the ups and downs of everyday life on screen and would like to find out more, contact Naomi on 0207 438 1812 or email familybusinesses@twofour.co.uk

True Loaf

We’ll be posting the next True Loaf out to Campaign members in the second week of July. Chris is putting the finishing touches to it as we write this, so if you have an event planned for July-September, please add it to our calendar TODAY and you might just get a mention on the bread board page.

Could you take on a voluntary apprentice?

If you want to get involved in our skills-for-labour exchange initiative by taking on a voluntary apprentice at your bakery, please drop us a line. We have a growing number of would-be Real Bread bakers around the country, dying to get learning.

Events

To find or add full details of the following and more bready activities around the country, please see our events page.

PS – To try to keep Breadcrumbs as short as possible, we’ve left off this list the bread making classes posted on the calendar but you can still find them on our website.

Real Bread get-together
17 June, Kirkby Muxloe, near Leicester
Last shout: family-owned brewery Everards of Leicester and the Real Bread Campaign invites Real Bread bakers to a taster of Project Artisan THIS FRIDAY! Join members of the Everards team, other artisan food and drink producers, and folks from the School of Artisan Food and the Real Bread Campaign from 6.30-9pm at The Royal Oak in Kirkby Muxloe, near Leicester, to hear about opportunities and the chance to chat. Currently about 30 people signed up to attend and if you’d like to join us, RSVP to Helen Parker at Everards hp@everards.co.uk or 0116 201 4137

Community Bread Baking Day
25 June, Lovedays Mead, Stroud, Glos, GL5 1XB
Bring your dough and bake it in the wood-fired oven. There's time for a cuppa and a chat (in the sunshine) while its baking. Taste the bread others have made.

The Melton Big Bake
26 June, Melton Mowbray Country Fair, Leicestershire
A highlight of the annual fair, with categories for both professional and amateur bakers, as well as kids.  Closing date for entries is THIS THURSDAY, 28th June. Even if you’re not entering, Paul Jones and his much-in-demand oven will be on hand to share the joys of wood-fired Real Bread baking. And if you feel like mucking in, we're sure the organisers would welcome an extra pair of hands...

Chorleywood Village Day
9 July, Chorleywood village green, Hertfordshire
We’ll be along with baker Paul Jones of Melton Mowbray’s mobile wood-fired oven to give local people the chance to reclaim the good name of their village by showing their flair for baking the real thing. We’ll also be taking a factory loaf across the village green to the building that once housed CBP’s creators, now the Beaumont House Care Home, for its long-overdue retirement. As frankly this is a rubbish present, Paul Barker of Cinnamon Square is kindly donating a hamper of Real Bread to take along, too.

Bread and Ale
13 July, The Bridge Inn, Topsham, Exeter, Devon
An evening to celebrate the companion crafts of brewing and baking, and to raise money for AgeUK Exeter. Tastings of Ale-barm leavened breads, including Pinpastrys' Brewers Mash Loaf, to accompany beer from the bar and a platter of local cheese and other produce. A beery/bready quiz, spot prizes and a raffle.

Ale Tasting, Bread Weighing and Medieval Fayre
16 July, St Lawrence Lane, Ashburton, Devon    
The Portreeve of Ashburton and members of the Courts, together with members of the public parade to the bakers and pubs in town to weigh the bread and test the beer. After the event there is an auction of the bread.

Real Bread workshop
16 July, Greenwich, London
Following the success of our joint workshop with The Greenwich Co-operative Development Agency back in march, they are running another. 

What are you up to?
Whether you’re a Campaign member or not, if you want a FREE ad for your Real Bread event, PLEASE ADD IT TO OUR EVENTS CALENDAR as far in advance as you can. It will then appear on our website, and perhaps also here in Breadcrumbs, which goes to thousands of the most dedicated breadheads in the land!

Sippets

sippet [sɪpɪt] n (Cookery) a small piece of something, esp a piece of toast or fried bread eaten with soup or gravy [used as diminutive of sop; see -et] Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged

• Congratulations to Duncan Glendinning, founder of Campaign member The Thoughtful Bread Company, who was named Food Hero at this year's Good Housekeeping Magazine Food Awards.
• Happy birthday to Campaign member Rinkoff Bakery, which is celebrating its 100th anniversary
• Having one of the Real Bread network winning (or even being shortlisted) in the Observer Food Monthly Awards would be a great boost to them and our whole movement, and you stand the chance of winning a great prize yourself, so please do get voting!

End Crust

This month’s is proper weird. Ladies and gents, we give you....breadfish

May 2011

Over the past month, the Campaign HQ volunteers and I have had a couple of great opportunities to get out of the office and meet existing members and new supporters.  First Emily and I had a great day in Stratford-upon-Avon at SPAB Mills Section and the Traditional Cornmillers Guild’s Crop to Crust conference, and then a whole host of Campaign volunteers, members, and Sustain staff kindly helped run our stand over four days at the Real Food Festival.  Thanks again to all of you who helped out, or come to say ‘hi’ to us. Meanwhile, the ever-busy Paul Jones was flying the flag, along with members of the increasingly active east midlands Real Bread contingent, at the Newark and Notts County Show.

For details of what else has been going on and – more importantly – what’s coming up in the world of Real Bread, please read on.

Happy baking,

Chris

Core Campaign activities

Knead to Know: the Real Bread Starter

Having sold all of the first print run of Knead to Know, we’ve ordered a few more copies.  Seeing that the June issue of the BBC Good Food Magazine has listed it as a ‘good read’, these could come in handy… If you haven’t ordered yours yet, please do before this lot go as well. The 33% discount for Campaign members still applies.  If you fancy selling the book in your bakery, mills, shop, course etc. drop us a line for details of our wholesale deal.

Oh, and if you fancy nominating Knead to Know for best cookbook in the Observer Food Monthly Awards, we wouldn’t be at all upset…

Real Bread on the menu

Would you be willing to host a Real Bread workshop for would-be bakers from public sector kitchens or food access projects? Are you a cook or caterer in such an organisation, committed and equipped to get baking Real Bread but feel you lack the skills or confidence to get going? If so, please click here for details and then get in touch with Chris (or our part-time volunteers Emily and Sarah) in the office.

Lessons in Loaf

This month, we’ve heard back from Bordeaux Quay about the class they ran, and have offers from another couple of bakeries wanting to pass Real Bread skills on to kids in local schools. If you’d like to get your bakery involved, please contact Chris or Emily in the Campaign office. If you’re a primary school teacher and want inspiration for running your own bread making lessons, or using Real Bread as a topic across a range of curriculum subjects, then download our FREE handbook here.

Membership

Individual membership under £2 a month, which is less than two Pot Noodles – we know which we think is more worthwhile… If you’ve taken this extra step over the past month to become a Campaign member, thank you! You have joined nearly 650 other bakers, millers, educators and other people who care about the state of bread in Britain to help us continue our work. If not, it would be great to have you become one of us.

Other key work

Pappy Birthday!

The 50th anniversary of the Chorleywood ‘Bread’ Process (the additive-laden, no-time system by which most factory loaves are made) is fast approaching. If you have not yet entered our competition to design a ‘pappy birthday’ card to the modern industrial loaf, by the time the next Breadcrumbs is out you’ll be too late!   Oh, and please encourage everyone you know to enter, too. The judging panel includes chef Michel Roux Jr; master bakers Tom Herbert and Andrew Whitley; and artist Jake Tilson, whose favourite will win a Real Bread bakers kit from Hobbs House Bakery. Click here for full details and rules.

We also have something special planned for the 9th of July, and Campaign members registered to access The Real Baker-e online forum will be the first to receive details…

Real Bread Maker Week

Thanks to everyone who got into the spirit of Real Bread Maker Week last week. Congratulations to Captain Barrie Sampson of The Salvation Army, Letchworth, who took the machine along for the Silver Circle Club members to enjoy a fresh loaf or two. This truly community-spirited use wins Barrie an American bread slicer from The Cookshop Online and a supply of flour from Marriage’s.

Bake Your Lawn

If you’re one of the hundreds of people helping kids to take a handful of wheat and grow it, mill it, bake it, eat it... we need your help, please.

What we’re after are schools or other youth groups who are growing their wheat and planning to do the full bit (or as much as possible) at harvest time and willing to be interviewed and/or photographed by the press.  The media people we'll be talking to want great stories (so the more involved in the seed to sandwich ethos, the better) and also opportunities for great pictures - think a patch of green in an otherwise grey urban setting, a mob of moppets outside a windmill...and all things between and beyond... if you’re up for it, please email us.

Real Bread Finder

Want to find places to buy loaves locally? Want to add your bakery’s Real Bread to our map? Then the Real Bread Finder is the free-to-use gizmo for you. 

Campaign members

The Real Baker-e

We can barely keep up with the invitations to meet up locally, questions, answers, and all sort of other bits and bobs flying back and forth in cyberspace between members around the country.  Recent topics include dos and don'ts of wholesaling, portable bread ovens, social enterprise funding, baking enzymes, bread packaging, the character of dough after shaping and proving, advice on watering wheat, and calls from people wanting to meet other members in and around Merseyside/Cheshire/north-Wales, central Scotland, Cambridge, Ipswich, and south London.

If you have a question to ask, advice to share, are looking for or offering a bakery job, equipment or anything else related to Real Bread and the Campaign’s aims, or simply want to make contact with your fellow members, click here.

NEW Limited edition Real Bread print discount

To celebrate their 10th anniversary, Campaign member The Lighthouse Bakery has commissioned a limited edition print of their Real Bread manifesto. While stocks last, they are offering fellow Campaign members a 20% discount. Click here for your code.

NEW Willie’s cacao and olive bread recipe

Thanks to Willie Harcourt Cooze for letting us publish his intriguing cacao and olive bread recipe from Willie’s Chocolate Bible. If you decide to have a bash, please share your pictures with the world using the #realbread hashtag on twitter or on our facebook wall.

Real Food Festival winner

Thanks to our friends at the Real Food Festival for looking after us again the other week, and hello again if you popped over to our stall.  Congratulations to Emilia, whose name was first out of the prize draw flour jar. She not only wins her subscription fee back, but also signed copies of Dough and Crust by Campaign ambassador Richard Bertinet; a copy of Knead to Know; and einkorn and spelt flours, and a tin of original dry yeast from Doves Farm.

True Loaf

If you have news to share with fellow members in the next True Loaf, please email it to us by 10th June. If you have an event planned for July-September, please add it to our calendar by the same deadline.

Campaign members: the professionals

Campaign members can read and post small ads for bakery equipment, staff and volunteers in The Real Baker-e.   Everyone is welcome to post relevant offers and wants on our Facebook wall, and we’re always happy to re-tweet – please use the #realbread hashtag so we see it.

Real loaves down your local

Family-owned brewery Everards of Leicester and the Real Bread Campaign invites Real Bread bakers to a taster of Project Artisan. Join members of the Everards team, other artisan food and drink producers, and folks from the School of Artisan Food and the Real Bread Campaign on 17th June from 6.30-9pm at The Royal Oak in Kirkby Muxloe, near Leicester, to hear about opportunities and the chance to chat. Click here for full details.

Real Bread baker with mobile oven wanted for Abergavenny Food Festival

The festival’s organisers are looking for someone who’d like to run Real Bread/pizza making sessions and sell their wares, as Campaign member Manna from Devon did last year. If you’re interested, please contact Catherine Fookes catherine@everythingethical.com or 01873 851643   

Time to plan your Local Loaves for Lammas

Lammas (1st August) will be with us before you know it. We’re already working on this, the major annual national event to promote Real Bread and to help us to help you get publicity for your activity/event, please add details to our calendar as soon as you can. For ideas and inspiration from past years, visit our Local Loaves for Lammas pages.

Could you take on a voluntary apprentice?

If you want to get involved in our skills-for-labour exchange initiative by taking on a voluntary apprentice at your bakery, please drop Chris a line. We have a growing number of would-be Real Bread bakers around the country, dying to get learning.

Thoughtful baker wanted

The Thoughtful Bread Company based just outside Bath and Bristol is looking for a full-time and a part-time member of staff to join their growing team. If you are passionate about Real Bread and have experience, email hello@thethoughtfulbreadcompany.com with CV and relevant details.

Events

Here are just some of the Real Bread events coming soon. To read or add full details of these and more bready activities around the country, please visit our events page.

Which? Breadmakers Live Q&A
Online, 18th May, 12pm

Which? members can join in a live online chat for breadmaker advice, recipes and baking tips from Campaign member Patrick Moore, from More? The Artisan Bakery and Which? Experts.

School of Artisan Food
Welbeck, Nottinghamshire, Saturday 21st & Sunday 22nd May

It’s a whole weekend of Real Bread, with an Advanced Diploma open day, and introduction to artisan baking class on Saturday, and an Italian baking class on Sunday.

Baking in a Commercial Retained Heat Wood Fired Oven
Pwll Y Gaseg, Carmarthen, 27th-29th May

Are you considering using a wood fired oven in your bakery? Do you use a small brick or cob oven now and are thinking of scaling up your output but staying wood-fired?  Places on this three-day course are strictly limited to four professional bakers.

Community bread baking day
Lovedays Mead, Stroud, 28th May

‘Bring your dough for baking in the on-site wood-burning oven. Have a chat and a cuppa, make new friends, pray for good weather.’

Power of Flour - Going Wild
Plumpton Mill, Sussex, 4th June

The Lewes Bread Club day will focus on sourdough, enriched loaves and flatbreads. Fabulous flatbreads will follow on 11th June.

Basic Breadmaking Course
Acton Scott Working Museum,Shropshire, 9th June

Learn the basics with Peter Cook of Price's in Ludlow, You will bake your bread using everyday domestic ovens but there will also be the chance to use Acton Scott’s traditional wood-fired bread oven.

Bridport Food Festival 2011
Bridport Town and Asker Meadows, Dorset, 12th-18th June

A celebration of local food in the award-winning market town of Bridport on Dorset's Jurassic coast.

What are you up to?

Whether you’re a Campaign member or not, if you want a FREE ad for your Real Bread event, PLEASE ADD IT TO OUR CALENDAR as far in advance as you can. It will then appear on our website, and perhaps also here in Breadcrumbs, which goes to thousands of the most dedicated breadheads in the land!

Sippets

sippet [sɪpɪt] n (Cookery) a small piece of something, esp a piece of toast or fried bread eaten with soup or gravy [used as diminutive of sop; see -et] Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged

• Win £25K and venture support for your social enterprise from UnLtd's Big Venture Challenge
• Five pages of Real Bread in the new National Trust Magazine (from p60)
• Having one of the Real Bread network winning (or even being shortlisted) in the Observer Food Monthly Awards would be a great boost to them and our whole movement, and you stand the chance of winning a great prize yourself, so please do get voting!
• The Baking Industry Awards have launched a new award. We agree with Peter Cook of Price’s in Ludlow: ‘It would be wonderful if we could get someone from the Artisan, Real Bread world to win rather than the inventor of the Chorleywood process (for instance).’
• Good to hear that Bread Collection calls its second, retail-only site a bread shop. They reserve the term bakery for their shop where they actually do the baking round the back.

End Crust

'Whilst my other half and I were having a bread related conversation, our bread hero, the Campaign's own, Andrew Whitley came up, and I mentioned that he had been baking for over thirty years. My other half looked thoughtful and said: "What, you mean even when he was in Wham!?"'

Campaign member Sarah Vowles, whose other half’s 80’s pop knowledge seems to have fallen just short of a certain Mr Ridgeley… 

April 2011

At any one moment, the Campaign has so many plates spinning – mostly supporting practical ways to get Real Bread back to the heart of our local communities, with some challenging the ways in which Big Bakers and major retailers seem to like going about their business.

On the positive stuff - as we’ve sold almost all copies of our book Knead to Know in a little over eight weeks, we’ve ordered another short run.  We’ve received requests from nearly 250 schools and community groups for our free Bake Your Lawn wheat seeds, more Real Bread bakers have signed up to give Lessons in Loaf at local schools, and the print run for the latest True Loaf (out this week) is up by a third from January.

As for our challenger role (see, I can avoid a bread pun sometimes), the media has picked up on our support for proposed EU legislation to force retailers to market previously frozen foods (e.g. certain bake-off ‘loaf tanning salon’ products) as such; and we’d love you all to enter our competition to design a card to say ‘pappy 50th birthday’ to the Chorleywood ‘Bread’ Process.

If you’re joining us at From Crop to Crust this weekend, I look forward to seeing you there.

For details of these and more crumbs in the world of Real Bread, please read on.

Happy baking,

Chris

Core Campaign activities

Knead to Know: the Real Bread Starter

We’ve sold almost all 500 copies of the book and had some fantastic feedback. If you bought a copy and haven’t completed our mini survey yet, please do – it really will be a help to us. If you haven’t got your copy yet, what are you waiting for? Order yours now.

Real Bread on the menu

We’re now looking at options for future Real Bread workshops for would-be bakers from public sector kitchens and food access projects. If you’d like to chat about hosting such a training event (the one catch being there’s no budget) please do get in touch with Chris (or our part-time volunteers Emily and Sarah) in the office. For details of how to add your name to our waiting list click here.

Lessons in Loaf

Are you a professional Real Bread baker? If so, would you like to pass on bread making skills at a local primary school (and then perhaps see the little blesses drag their parents into your bakery)? Then please contact Chris or Emily in the Campaign office. If you’re a teacher and want inspiration for running your own bread making lessons, or using Real Bread as a topic across a range of curriculum subjects, then download our FREE handbook here. Read comments from bakers and teachers who have taught Lessons in Loaf and loved it here.

Membership

Discounts, True Loaf magazine, The Real Baker-e forum to make contact, share with and learn from other Real Bread bakers and supporters, not to mention helping to fund our charitable work – these are just some of the reasons to JOIN THE REAL BREAD CAMPAIGN! Well, what are you waiting for?

Other key work

Pappy Birthday!

July 2011 sees the 50th anniversary of the Chorleywood ‘Bread’ Process, the additive-laden, no-time system by which 80% of the loaves we buy are made, and has been partly to blame for the demise of the Real Bread baking industry and, consequently, our high streets. Phew! And you thought it was just a cheap bit of fluff. To mark the occasion, we’d like you to design a card to say ‘pappy birthday’ to the modern industrial loaf.  The judging panel includes chef Michel Roux Jr; master bakers Tom Herbert and Andrew Whitely; and artist Jake Tilson. Our favourite will win a Real Bread bakers kit from Hobbs House Bakery. Click here for full details and rules.

Real Bread Maker Week

Right-ho – who else is running an event for this year’s Real Bread Maker Week between 9th and 15th of May?  Maybe as part of National Mills Weekend? It’s mentioned in the current BBC Good Food magazine, so people will be looking out for them. Please add yours to our calendar today!

For every one of you with an unloved bread machine moping away in a kitchen cupboard, we have a competition: dig it out and plug it in somewhere you usually wouldn’t*. Email a picture of (wo)man and machine in action in an unusual location (or post our Facebook or Flickr page) by 13th May and you could win an American bread slicer (worth £15.99) from The Cookshop Online and a supply of flour from Marriage’s.

*obviously having read the manufacturer’s safety instruction and not taking it scuba diving, or anything else daft…

Bake Your Lawn

Spring wheat sowing season is almost over, so if you haven’t ordered and planted yours yet, you’d better shake your tail feathers. Patrick at Bakery Bits is just waiting to send the last of the packets of FREE (+ a tiddly bit of p&p) seeds donated by Trevor Cope Seeds and Organic Seed Producers to schools, youth organisations, and other community groups working with kids.  To see who’s got growing already, click here.

Schools, nurseries and colleges in London that run a Bake Your Lawn project may be eligible to enter the A.B.Seed competition from our sister project Capital Growth. Full details here.

Real Bread Finder

The deal with this is: if you bake Real Bread or sell bready stuff – add it. If you want Real Bread or bready stuff – find it.  It’s free for anyone to use. 

If you’ve got a Real Bread Finder record already (or are a Campaign member), you can add or update the details of the bread/bready stuff you offer and where people can buy it here.

Campaign members

NEW wood-fired oven offer
Until June, Campaign member wood-firedoven.co.uk is kindly offering fellow members a discount of up to 15% on its traditional ovens. The company also has a chunky discount on models in the Four Grand Mere range. For full details and discount code, click here.

https://www.sustainweb.org/realbread/members/

NEW bread slicer offer
The Cook Shop Online kindly is offering our members the rather stylish American bread slicer at £12.99 (+ p&p), a saving of almost 20%. The code to use at TheCookShopOnline.com is valid until the end of June is here.
http://www.thecookshoponline.com/products/bread-knife
https://www.sustainweb.org/realbread/members/

Real Food Festival discount
Comes round quick, don’t it? If you fancy coming to say ‘hi’ to us at this year’s show at Earl’s Court, (5th-8th May) then this special offer on a ticket and the Real Food Cookbook (in which about half of the baking recipes are from our members) will come in handy. Campaign members can buy the book (RRP £20) and ticket (full advance price £13.50) here for just £15! Click here for your offer code. Our other supporters can buy the package for £17.50 by quoting BREAD1. Both offer codes allow you to buy two adult tickets and one book for just £26*.

* Package prices without offer code = £19.50 and £32.

True Loaf
Issue 7 of True Loaf is winging its way to Campaign members this week – or you can download now. As well as details of how you can win a copy of Bethesdabasics: sourdough made simple, and  an exclusive 20% discount on an American bread slicer from The Cookshop Online, features include Bread Hero: Clive Mellum, taking sourdough to another level in Canada, a poor baker’s retarder-prover, community baking in Edinburgh, Real Bread from heritage grains in France, and milling around Britain's water-powered flour makers.

Melton BIG BAKE
Sallie Hooper of Leicestershire Food Links is looking for volunteers to help run the Melton BIG BAKE on Sunday 26th June. If you’re interested in helping in any way please contact Sallie on 01509 881386 or email sallie.hooper@leicestershirefoodlinks.org.uk

Campaign members: the professionals

Campaign members can read and post small ads for bakery equipment, staff and volunteers in The Real Baker-e. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/realbreadcampaign/  Everyone is welcome to post relevant offers and wants on our Facebook wall, and we’re always happy to re-tweet – please use the #realbread hashtag so we see it.  

The Real Baker-e
Our online members’ forum has developed a life of its own, with questions and (very importantly) answers flying back and forth from all over the country. Topics of recent conversations include job vacancies; ideas for events with kids; searches for roll dividers and fermentation tubs; experience with wood-fired ovens; autolyse timings; how to get perfect crusty rolls; equipment for sale…

Sourdough survey
If you’re a professional baker or a Real Bread retailer and haven’t completed our short (i.e. 2 minutes, with no logging in or creating accounts malarkey) survey, please could you do so ASAP? Ta muchly.

Bakery scholarship
As reported in British Baker magazine, The Worshipful Company of Bakers is offering two professional (or trainee) bakers the chance to attend an all-expenses-paid three-day course in Bolgna, Italy. The course runs from 4-8th October and the closing date for applications is 2nd May.  For more details call: 020 7623 2223, email klu@bakers.co.uk or visit  bakeryinfo

Thoughtful baker wanted
The Thoughtful Bread Company based just outside Bath and Bristol is looking for a full-time and a part-time member of staff to join their growing team. If you are passionate about Real Bread and have experience, email hello@thethoughtfulbreadcompany.com with CV and relevant details.

Real Bread baker with mobile oven wanted for Abergavenny Food Festival
The festival’s organisers are looking for someone who’d like to run Real Bread/pizza making sessions and sell their wares, as Campaign member Manna from Devon did last year. If you’re interested, please contact Catherine Fookes catherine@everythingethical.com or 01873 851643  

Great British Bread Festival?
Plans are afoot for having a paired real ale and Real Bread tasting at the Great British Beer Festival, CAMRA's major annual shindig. It would also be fantastic to see a Real Bread baker, perhaps with a wood-fired oven, taking a stall to help feed the thousands of festival goers. If either of these might be of interest, please drop us a line for full details.

Could you take on a voluntary apprentice?
If you want to get involved in our skills-for-labour exchange initiative by taking on a voluntary apprentice at your bakery, please drop Chris a line. We have a growing number of would-be Real Bread bakers around the country, dying to get learning.

Events

To read or add full details of bready activities around the country, please see our events page. https://www.sustainweb.org/realbread/events/

From Crop to Crust
Stratford-upon-Avon, 16th April
This Saturday offers you a great opportunity to meet fellow Campaign members, as well as folks from SPAB Mills Section, and The Traditional Cornmillers Guild. The keynote speech is by Dan Lepard, and workshop sessions include The Farmer’s Tale, The Miller’s Tale, and The Baker’s Tale. Chris from the Campaign will be helping to tell The Customer’s Tale.

Open day at Mair’s Bakehouse
nr. Carmarthen , 25th April and 2nd May
Watch sustainable baking in action, as Real Bread is made from water/windmill flour, baked in an oven fired by carpentry off-cuts, at a bakehouse powered by a wind turbine.

Community baking day
nr. Stroud, 30th April
Take your own dough along after 11am for baking in the wood-fired oven, have a cuppa and a chat. Make new friends. Even learn how to bake if you fancy it.

The Real Food Festival
London, 5th– 8th May
As mentioned above, we’ll have a stand, and so will a few of our members.

Real Bread Maker Week
Nationwide, 9th – 15th May

National Mills Weekend
Nationwide, 14th & 15th May
During which many of our friends at SPAB Mills Section and Traditional Cornmillers Guild throw their doors open and lay on events.

A taste of Everards and Artisans
17th June, nr Leicester
The new scheme aims to help artisan producers bring life back to redundant buildings and real food to the communities they serve. Join members of the Everards team, folks from the School of Artisan Food and the Real Bread Campaign,and  other artisan food and drink producers to hear about opportunities and the chance to chat.

Baking classes
Nationwide
As usual, there’s a whole wodge of one-off bread making classes around the country over the next month. You can also find details of places that offer more regular or frequent classes, many of which give discounts to Campaign members, on our courses page.

What are you up to?
Whether you’re a Campaign member or not, if you want a FREE ad for your Real Bread event, PLEASE ADD IT TO OUR CALENDAR as far in advance as you can. It will then appear on our website, and perhaps also here in Breadcrumbs, which goes to thousands of the most dedicated breadheads in the land!

Sippets

• Keep kids cooking: It's vital that children learn basic cooking skills so they understand how food is produced, and where it comes from. The Government looks set to abolish compulsory cooking lessons for all secondary school pupils, so take action now!
• A guest Real Bread blog from Christine Haigh, a food justice campaigner for the World Development Movement.

End Crust

‘Modern baking has all the romance of a North Korean multiple wedding.’
Rose Prince, the Daily Telegraph

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March 2011

It’s been yet another great month for the Campaign.  As demand has been so high, we’re considering a second print run of our book Knead to Know; last week we ran a Real Bread workshop for over a dozen cooks and caterers from the public sector and food access projects; hundreds of schools, youth groups, city farms, and other community organisations working with children are all set to Bake Your Lawn (well, not your lawn, obviously, their own); and weekly membership numbers just grow and grow.

In recent weeks, this success has been driven partly by our ongoing media work to raise awareness for the Campaign, Real Bread, those of you who are baking it and supporting its many values.  Highlights of coverage we’ve secured include being featured by BBC2’s The Great British Food Revival, The Observer Magazine, and The Times. 

If you're going to the Crop to Crust conference on 16th April - Emily and I'll see you there.

For details of these and more crumbs in the world of Real Bread, please read on.

Core Campaign activities

Knead to Know: the Real Bread Starter

Well, the majority of the copies of our limited edition book have now left this office, with the potential to help people find success in baking Real Bread for several hundred local communities around the country. If you haven’t bought one yet, please do hurry. The 33% discount for Campaign members still applies. To flick through a sampler of the book, order your copy, or see who else now stocks the book, click here.

Real Bread on the menu

Our Real Bread workshop on Wednesday 9th March was a success. Generously hosted by Greenwich Co-operative Development Agency, Paul Rhodes of the eponymous artisan bakery and Yann Legallais kindly gave up their day to pass skills on to thirteen would-be bakers from public sector kitchens and food access projects. During the day, they also got to ask Tracy Simmons from Pabulum Catering how her organisation already bakes Real Bread in all of its school kitchens. For details of how to add your name to the waiting list for similar classes around the country in the future, click here.

Lessons in Loaf

Ten schools have now received Lessons in Loaf from a local Real Bread baker as a result of our scheme, and many more schools have downloaded our FREE handbook to help organise bread making and follow on classes for themselves. We’ve still a long way to go to reach our target of 100 schools and so if you’re a professional baker or a primary school teacher and would like to take part, or have already been inspired by our scheme to run a lesson, we’d like to hear from you. You can read more and download the free Lessons in Loaf handbook here.

Membership

If you’re a Campaign member, you’re now in the company of nearly 550 professional Real Bread bakers, traditional millers, educators, food campaigners, home bakers, and many more people who simply care about the state of bread in Britain. If you’ve not yet joined, or your membership has lapsed, click here now! Benefits include True Loaf magazine, prize draws, loads of discounts, and a forum in which you can ask questions of your fellow members, and share ideas and information.

Other key work

Bake Your Lawn

If you’d like to follow the Real Bread journey from seed to sandwich on your own doorstep, download our FREE grow it, mill it, bake it, eat it guide now. We also still have a limited number of packets of wheat seeds, kindly donated by Trevor Cope Seeds and Organic Seed Producers, to give away FREE (+ p&p) to schools, youth organisations, and other community groups working with kids. For details of how to order yours from bakerybits.co.uk (thanks to Patrick for handling the mail order – we couldn’t have coped with the demand from here…) click here.

Schools, nurseries and colleges in London that run a Bake Your Lawn project may be eligible to enter the A.B.Seed competition from Capital Growth. Full details here.

Real Bread Maker Week

This year runs from 9th-15th May. The idea is simple: rummage round your kitchen cupboard, dust off that idling electric baker, and plug it in somewhere you usually wouldn’t*. Anyone posting a picture of him/herself and machine in action in an unusual location on the Campaign’s Facebook or Flickr page by 13th May stands the chance of winning an American bread slicer (worth £15.99) from TheCookshopOnline.com and a supply of flour from Marriage’s.

We’re also keen to hear as soon as possible from mills and anyone else wanting to organise public events to tie in with Real Bread Maker Week.

^{*obviously having read the manufacturer’s safety instruction and not taking it scuba diving, or anything else daft…}

Real Bread Finder

If you bake Real Breads, sell flour from an independent mill, run bread making classes, sell bread making equipment or fresh yeast, add them to our map now! 

If you’ve got a Real Bread Finder record already (or are a Campaign member, offer any of the above and want to appear on our map), you can add to or update the details here.

Campaign members

Special offer

We’ve just secured a special offer on a Real Food Festival ticket and cookbook (in which about half of the baking recipes are from our members) package for our supporters - and an even better one for Campaign members.  The cover price of the Real Food Cookbook is £20, and the full advance ticket price is £13.50, but with this promotional code Campaign members get a ticket and book package here for just £15!  By quoting BREAD1, our other supporters can get the package for £17.50. Both offer codes allow you to buy two adult tickets and one book for just £26*.

^{* Package prices without discount code = £19.50 and £32.}

More prizes!

Issue 7 of True Loaf (on the way to Campaign members in mid April) includes details of how you can win a Real Bread baker’s starter kit from Hobbs House Bakery (worth £85), and a copy of Bethesdabasics: sourdough made simple. The magazine will also include details of how members can get an exclusive 20% discount the American bread slicer mentioned above.

Winner

Well done to Campaign member Richard Clarkson, winner of a European baking class with Emmanuel Hadjiandreou at The School of Artisan Food in our members’ survey draw. We’ll be announcing another great competition in the next issue of True Loaf, the judges for which include the chef Michel Roux Jr, artist and real food fanatic Jake Tilson, and artisan bakers Tom Herbert and Andrew Whitley.

The east midlands Real Bread basket

Recently, we asked a number of Campaign members in the east midlands if they’d like to be put touch with other local people in the gang. Most said ‘yes’ and now they’re in conversation about how they can help support each other in raising the Real Bread flag in their region. To do the same in your area, why not visit The Real Baker-e and say ‘hi, this is my neck of the woods and I’d like to link up with the rest of you near me’? 

Campaign members: the professionals

Campaign members can read and post small ads for bakery equipment, staff and volunteers in The Real Baker-e. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/realbreadcampaign/  Everyone is welcome to post relevant offers and wants on our Facebook wall, and we’re always happy to re-tweet – please use the #realbread hashtag so we see it. 

Bakers required by Shrewsbury Breads

Positions for head baker and patisserie baker available.  Artisan baking experience not necessary but keen interest in slow/first principal baking required.  Head baker must have previous experience managing bakery production.  Patisserie baker must have previous patisserie experience.  Both will help develop artisan products for commercial customers and markets.  Full job description available. Enquire at info@shrewsburybreads.co.uk or visit www.shrewburybreads.co.uk .

Aussie sourdough baker seeks buswoman’s break

Lynn Cunningham, owner of Wild Crust Bakery near(ish) Melbourne in Australia will be visiting the UK in August and wants to meet (and lend a hand to) a Real Bread baker or two. She’ll be based in Manchester but will be able to travel. If you’re interested, please drop her a line: wildcrust@yahoo.com.au

Showing support

We’re always grateful to Campaign members who let us know they’re displaying our ‘proud to support…’ button on their websites. Our thanks this month go to the the loaf, and wood-firedoven.co.uk. Taking things further, Paul UK has kindly added the badge to menus in all of their London shops and inserts of 30,000 bread bags during their la flute Paul promotion.  Thanks also to London Bread & Cake Company, which printed copies of our posters to brighten up their stand at the IFE exhibition.

Could you take on a voluntary apprentice?

If you want to get involved in our skills-for-labour exchange initiative by taking on a voluntary apprentice at your bakery, please drop Chris a line. We have a growing number of would-be Real Bread bakers around the country, dying to get learning.

Events

To find or add full details of bready activities around the country, please see our events page.

The Real Food Festival

London, 5th– 8th May
We’ll have a stand and at the time of writing, we’re working with Campaign members who also have stands to lay a trail of real breadcrumbs through the event. If you have a stand at the show and want to join in, please let us know. Oh, and more or less half of the baking recipes in the festival’s forthcoming Real Food Cookbook are from our members…

From Crop to Crust

Stratford-upon-Avon, 16th April
This is your chance to hear from and meet members of The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, The Traditional Cornmillers Guild and the Real Bread Campaign. The keynote speech is by Dan Lepard, and workshop sessions include The Farmer’s Tale, The Miller’s Tale, The Baker’s Tale and The Customer’s Tale.

Baking classes

Nationwide
People have added to our calendar a whole slew of bread making classes around the country over the next month. You can also find details of places that offer more regular or frequent classes, many of which give discounts to Campaign members, on our courses page.

What are you up to?

Whether you’re a Campaign member or not, if you want a FREE ad for your Real Bread event, PLEASE ADD IT TO OUR CALENDAR as far in advance as you can. It will then appear on our website, and perhaps also  in Breadcrumbs, which goes to thousands of the most dedicated breadheads in the land!

Sippets

sippet n. (Cookery) a small piece of something, esp a piece of toast or fried bread eaten with soup or gravy [used as diminutive of sop] Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged
 

• To enter This is Your Kingdom’s competition, simply write about your favourite Real Bread bakery, bread making course, independent mill, or whatever.
• Keep kids cooking: It's vital that children learn basic cooking skills so they understand how food is produced, and where it comes from. The Government looks set to abolish compulsory cooking lessons for all secondary school pupils, so take action now!
• Well done to Campaign member Virtuous Bread, which came in at 32 on the Social Brands 100 list
• Congratulations also to the Oxford Bread Group and Heritage Harvest, which have just been awarded £25,000 from the Prince’s Countryside Fund for their ancient grain project. 

End Crust

Sing-along-a-loaf with the chaps from Balcony Shirts

 

 

---

February 2011

Get us, we’ve got all Gok Wan with our website, which we relaunch this afternoon! Okay, so Gok had nothing to do with it (it was our Gav), but have a shufti anyway – looks good, dunnit? As well as the visual makeover, we’ve made the Real Bread Finder much more user friendly for Real Bread bakers adding their wares, and people wanting to find ‘em. We’ve also added the chance to list bread making courses, and flour from independent mills.

In other news, we sold half of the copies of our new book, Knead to Know, in its first two weeks and it’s still selling fast. Bake Your Lawn has also captured the nation’s imagination, with schools around the country applying for their free wheat seeds and grassroots guide.

If you’re a member and have returned your questionnaire already, thank you – if not, you have just a couple of weeks to get it back to us for your chance to win a Real Bread making class worth £150 at The School of Artisan Food.

And public sector cooks and caterers, you have only until the end of this week to apply for a place in our ridiculously good value workshop with Michelin-starred chef, turned Real Bread baker, Paul Rhodes.

For details of these and more crumbs in the world of Real Bread, please read on.

Core Campaign activities

Knead to Know: the Real Bread Starter

If you want a copy of our 140 page limited edition book, you’d better get your skates on, as they’re selling fast. Please remember, all proceeds go towards funding our fight for better bread in Britain and if you’re a Campaign member, you’re entitled to a 33% discount. To flick through a sampler of the book, order your copy, and see where else you can buy it, click here. 

Real Bread on the menu

Public sector cooks and caterers are invited to a Real Bread workshop on Wednesday 9th March at Greenwich Co-operative Development Agency's test kitchen with master baker Paul Rhodes of the eponymous artisan bakery.  Each of the strictly-limited places in the heavily subsidised class costs just £10 per person (including light lunch) and applications close this Friday, 25th February. For further details and your application form, please click here.
 

We also welcome applications from public sector cooks and caterers who would like to news of future workshops around the country, and from people working on food access projects (e.g. community owned cafés, food co-op stalls or box/bag schemes, or lunch clubs for the elderly) who are interested in doing the same.

Lessons in Loaf

The tally now stands at eight schools that have run Lessons in Loaf with the help of a local Real Bread baker, four with dates in the diary, and a further fourteen in conversation about when they’ll be getting stuck into the dough. Many more schools have downloaded our FREE handbook to help organise bread making and follow on classes for themselves. If you’re a professional baker or a primary school teacher and would like to take part, you can now download the free Lessons in Loaf guide.

Membership

Our membership scheme has just passed the half-way point to our June 2013 target!  If you're one of us, thank you! If you don’t yet carry the card, you can read more about the benefits, including True Loaf magazine, prize draws, and loads of discounts, here.

Other key work

Bake Your Lawn

Kids, it’s time to Bake Your Lawn! To help you follow the Real Bread journey from seed to sandwich on your own doorstep, teachers and parents can now download our FREE grassroots guide. This shows you how to take a handful of wheat and grow it, mill it, bake it, eat it.  For this, and how schools can get a packet of FREE (+ p&p) wheat seeds, click here.

Keep your eyes peeled for a Bake Your Lawn feature in The Observer Magazine on 27th February.

Oh, and if you’re a farmer, miller, baker or somesuch, and want to help members of your local community get involved, then perhaps you could offer seed wheat for them to sow, or maybe you could organise a community milling or baking day later in the year? If you do, please put the details on our events calendar.

Real Bread Finder

We’ve given the Real Bread Finder an overhaul to make it much easier for bakers to put their Real Breads on our map and if you sell flour from an independent mill, run courses, sell bread making equipment or fresh yeast, you can now add those, too. 

If you're not yet on the map but bake what we define as Real Bread, or offer one or more of the above, click here. If you are already on our map, please take a moment to check that the details of your Real Breads and where to buy them are up to date.

Campaign members

True Loaf

Campaign members will have by now received the latest issue of our exclusive, full-colour quarterly magazine. As well as a prize draw to win a bread making class worth £150 at The School of Artisan Food, features include visits to Denver Windmill and The E5 Bakehouse, a look at the global grain market, considering the impact of adding dried gluten to flour, and we name Andy Forbes of The Brockwell Bake Association as our latest Bread Hero. To subscribe, join us!

Bag for loaf

We’re thinking of producing a Real Bread bag for loaf but before we do, are interested in potential demand. It would be organic fair-trade cotton, and retail at around the £3-£4 mark.  The design we’re considering is a version of the ‘I Real Bread’ logo, as seen on our Facebook and Twitter accounts. Is this the sort of thing you’d buy and if so, just one for yourself or a bundle to sell through your bakery/shop/mill/website etc? Drop Chris a line.

 Campaign members: the professionals

Inspiring ideas for Community Supported Bakeries

CSB pioneers The Handmade Bakery in Yorkshire has just added ways in which people can invest. The Bread Bond pays 6.25% interest on a £2000 investment, plus a weekly divi of a loaf of bread a week. More suited for people who are not-so-local but still able to attend at least one baking course during the year is The Course Bond, which pays 4% interest on a £1000 investment.

Call for Volunteers

The Handmade Bakery is about to move and needs a hand. If you would like to volunteer please get in touch with Dan info@thehandmadebakery.coop

Bread Angels

Campaign member Jane Mason of Virtuousbread.com dreams of Bread Angels: a network of people up and down the land running their very own home baked Real Bread businesses. To help this dream to become a reality, Virtuousbread.com has set up a course, which teaches not only basic bread making skills, but also the logistical, legal and marketing aspects of establishing and growing the business. For details, click here.

Apprentice wanted

Town Mill Bakery in Dorset is looking for a full-time apprentice, to learn bread, cake and patisserie skills.  Starting on a volunteer basis, the apprentice would move through a number of stages towards full pay by the end of the year.  For full details, please contact Clive Cobb on 01297 442959

Could you take on a voluntary apprentice?

If you want to get involved in our skills-for-labour exchange initiative by taking on a voluntary apprentice at your bakery, please drop Chris a line. We have a growing number of would-be Real Bread bakers around the country, dying to get learning.

Events

To find or add full details of bready activities around the country, please see our events page.
 

Learn to bake sourdough bread - London, 23rd February

In this interactive class you will learn about rye and wheat starters, how to make, care for, and use them.

Introduction to baking basic bread - London, 26th February

In this interactive session, students learn to bake a basic loaf of bread. In addition to learning about bread, you’ll have the chance to explore the second oldest building in London, have a simple, elegant lunch, and plenty of chat and good cheer.

Real Bread on the Menu - public sector workshopLondon, 9th March

Hosted by the Greenwich Co-operative Development Agency, master baker Paul Rhodes will lead our workshop on how to move away from additive-laden, industrial loaves and get Real. Hurry – with no more than 12 places available at only £10 each, it’s booking up fast. Applications close THIS FRIDAY, 25th February. https://www.sustainweb.org/realbread/on_the_menu/ 

From Crop to Crust - Stratford-upon-Avon, 16th April

There are still a few tickets left for the national conference being organised by The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and The Traditional Cornmillers Guild. Several Real Bread Campaign members will be speaking, and workshop sessions include: The Farmer’s Tale, The Miller’s Tale, The Baker’s Tale and The Customer’s Tale.
http://www.spab.org.uk/downloads/mills/SPAB%20spring%20meeting%20booking%20form%20april%202011.pdf  

The Real Food Festival - London, 3rd – 8th May

We’ve just secured a special ticket offer for our supporters and an even better one for Campaign members – details soon. At the time of writing, we’re busy laying a trail of real breadcrumbs through the event. If you’re a baker or miller with a stand at the show and want to join in, please let us know. Oh, and more or less half of the baking recipes in the festival’s forthcoming Real Food Cookbook are from our members…

What are you up to?

Whether you’re a Campaign member or not, if you want a FREE ad for your Real Bread event, PLEASE ADD IT TO OUR CALENDAR as far in advance as you can. It will then appear on our website, and perhaps also here in Breadcrumbs, which goes to thousands of the most dedicated breadheads in the land!

Sippets

sippet [s?p?t] n (Cookery) a small piece of something, esp a piece of toast or fried bread eaten with soup or gravy [used as diminutive of sop; see -et] Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged

• Congratulations to Campaign member The Thoughtful Bread Company, which was named ethical and environmental business of the year at Bath Life Awards.
• Thanks to Leakers Bakery for adding our Keep Calm… poster and link to us on their home page. Members can find the poster and our ‘Proud to support…’ button on our site. 
• Thanks to Tom Herbert of Hobbs House Bakery and Todd Sadler of the Artisan Food Centre for helping us to spread the Real Bread message to farm retailers at the Farm & More show back in January.
• Real Bread at The School of Artisan Food gets a royal once-over.

End Crust

“For less than the cost of a Big Mac, fries and a Coke, you can buy a loaf of fresh bread and some good cheese or roast beef, which you will enjoy much more." Steve Albini

 

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JanuaryJanuary

This is the last time I’m going to write this (promise) – happy New Year!  Thanks to some very busy beavering away behind the scenes here in the weeks leading up to and following the holiday, it’s all going on in January.

• Knead to Know: the Real Bread starter, our introductory guide to success in baking Real Bread for your local community, is out NOW!
• Bake Your Lawn, our scheme to get children of Britain taking a handful of wheat and grow it, mill it, bake it, eat it, begins next Monday, 24th January.
• And the latest issue of True Loaf, is out now. If you’re a Campaign member, you’ll receive your copy this week.

More great news: in the last three months of 2010, we received renewals from 58% percent of Campaign members whose memberships had lapsed.  If you are one of them or you have just joined – thank you so much. We cannot do this without your support.

For details of these, more crumbs in the world of Real Bread, and how to win a Real Bread making class worth £150, please read on.

Core campaign activities

Knead to Know: the Real Bread Starter

Our introductory guide to success in baking Real Bread for your local community is out NOW. This 140 page, limited edition book is the major publication from the Campaign and members are entitled to a 33% doorstep of a discount. To order your copy or to read more details, click here.

Real Bread on the menu

We still would like to hear from any public sector cooks and caterers who either buy in Real Bread or bake it from scratch for a school, hospital, prison or other public sector institution for us to use as case studies to help inspire others to put Real Bread on the Menu. Read more here.

We also want to hear from food access projects (e.g. community owned cafés, food co-op stalls or box/bag schemes, or lunch clubs for the elderly) that are doing the same.

If your organisation doesn’t currently bake Real Bread but would like to start doing so, please drop us a line and we’ll keep you up to date with details of the bread making training days we are lining up around the country.

Lessons in Loaf

The Lessons in Loaf scheme is now running nationally. If you’re a professional baker or a primary school teacher and would like to take part, you can now download our FREE pack.

Membership

As noted in the introduction above, membership goes from strength to strength.  As a thank you to paying members, we continue to arrange special offers and prize draws.

Other key work

Britain: Bake Your Lawn!

Next Monday (24th January), we launch Bake Your Lawn, our scheme to encourage children to follow the whole Real Bread journey from seed to sandwich on their own doorstep. We have produced a FREE grassroots guide for teachers and parents to help them support children of all ages in taking a handful of wheat (limited packets FREE +p&p to schools) and grow it, mill it, bake it, eat it. Download yours here from Monday.

We still want to hear from:

• Seed merchants willing to sell (or perhaps donate, in the case of schools) small packets of bread making wheat seed direct to the public.
• Farmers and other landowners willing to work with local people wanting to grow their own wheat.
• Millers (or people with small mills) willing to hold milling days in the autumn.
• Bakers willing to run baking events for people using their own flour.

Real Bread Finder

We’ve given the Real Bread Finder an overhaul to make it much easier for bakers to put their Real Breads on our map. If you are already on our map, please take a moment to check that the details of your Real Breads and where to buy them are up to date.  It’s now just a three step process, start in box three here.

If you're not yet on the map but bake what we define as Real Bread, please add your loaves, and places from which people can buy them, here.

Campaign members

Fantastic discounts from Bread Matters and The Phoenix Bakery School

Thanks to Andrew Whitley and Aidan Chapman, both Bread Matters and The Phoenix Bakery School now offer to pay the first year’s membership fee (worth £20) for new individual members who join the Campaign at the same time as booking a course.

To existing members, The Phoenix Bakery offers a 10% discount on a course or Apprenticeship Saturday; and Bread Matters offers a 10% discount when two existing Campaign members book places on the same course. Simply quote your membership number (as shown on your membership card) when booking.

True Loaf

The latest issue of our exclusive, full-colour quarterly magazine is now in the post to Campaign members.  As well as a prize draw to win a bread making class worth £150 at The School of Artisan Food, features include visits to Denver Windmill, The E5 Bakehouse, a look at the global grain market, considering the impact of adding dried gluten to flour, and Andy Forbes of The Brockwell Bake Association being entered into the Bread Hero rolls.

Campaign members: the professionals

Could you take on a voluntary apprentice?

If you want to get involved in our skills-for-labour exchange initiative by taking on a voluntary apprentice, please drop Chris a line. We have would-be Real Bread bakers around the country.

Real Bread at Farm & More

On 26th January, Campaign ambassador Tom Herbert of Hobbs House Bakery, Todd Sadler from Quinney’s Bakery at The Artisan Food Centre and Chris Young will be at Farm & More, the farm retail sector's annual conference and trade show, at BIC in Bournemouth. They’ll be in the demonstration theatre at 11.30, to give a ‘how’ and ‘why’ of a farm shop establishing a relationship with a local Real Bread bakery, as well as inspiration and practical advice on how to set up to set up a bakery on a farm.

Bread pricing

The coalition government has revived the previous government's proposal to do away with
fixed weights for unwrapped bread. What implications, if any, do you see in this move? Will it give bakers more flexibility? Will displaying price per kilo make it easier or more difficult for consumers to compare prices? Share your thoughts in The Real Baker-e.

Events

What are you up to?

Whether you’re a paid up member of the Campaign or not, we’d love to help you share details of your Real Bread events with our national network of thousands of supporters. If you’re planning something, PLEASE ADD IT TO OUR CALENDAR as far in advance as you can. We can then include it here.

The Power of Flour, part 1, 28th January

Flour milling and bread baking workshop at Plumpton Mill, with Robin Van Creveld and Paul Nicholson.

Selling Your Food Successfully, 3rd February

You have the chance to put your product in front of buyers from LOCOG - the official food supplier for the 2012 Olympic Games. Let’s get Real Bread on the menu!

Bread making weekend break, 4th-6th February

Bread making with Tom Herbert and two night break at Bedruthan Steps Hotel, Cornwall.

Bakery opening, 7th February

Good luck to Campaign member, Andy Cole with the launch of his new Real Bread bakery in Felixstowe.

Making Food Fair, 9th February

A free public event in Manchester with a panel of international experts in organic and sustainable food discussing what are often seen as conflicting issues in the food system.

Introduction to baking with wild yeast, 13th February

Learn to make your own crusty, crackling, golden soughdough using a wild yeast culture, with Hilary Cacchio.

From Crop to Crust 16th April

Tickets are now available for this national conference being organised in Stratford upon Avon, by our friends The Traditional Cornmillers Guild and mills section of The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings. We'll be there and we hope to see you, too.

Courses

There are a few classes listed on our calendar. You can find details of many more bread making classes/courses (many of which offer discounts to Campaign members) on our courses page.

To find or add details of these and more Real Bread events please visit our calendar. 

Sippets

sippet [s?p?t] n (Cookery) a small piece of something, esp a piece of toast or fried bread eaten with soup or gravy [used as diminutive of sop; see -et] Collins English Dictionary – Complete and Unabridged

• The Fife Diet has space in its existing Bread Clubs (Burntisland and Kinghorn) for more members and an opportunity to set up a third (or fourth) hub. If you live in southern Fife between Inverkeithing and Kirkcaldy get in touch with them to discuss setting up a Bread Club hub, with handmade loaves from the Steamie Bakehouse.
• Inspiration for would-be Community Supported Bakeries in The Daily Telegraph.
• Local loaves from a Welsh watermill
• Leakers Bakery in Bridport, Dorset, keeping calm… 
• Andrew Whitley talking to Joanne Malin on BBC Radio WM about Bake Your Lawn (from 1hr 6min) 
• Michael Portillo visits Denver Mill on BBC2’s Great British Rail Journeys

End Crust

We're on the Big Bakers’ radar. According to the Federation of Bakers’ 2010 annual report:

“The Real Bread Campaign was awarded £240,000 of funding last year over a 4-year period from the Big Lottery Fund. The Federation are concerned this will give the group more funds to use to denigrate plant bakery bread. To combat this we must ensure we shout about our proud achievements in local communities. Plant bakeries are an important part of community life offering employment and producing a nutritious food that is made in a cost-effective way making it accessible to all consumers. There is no reason at all why the plant bakery industry cannot happily sit alongside a thriving artisan bakery industry in the UK.”