Real Bread behind bars

Before I got involved in the world of prison food, I was a journalist, spending my days writing and evenings working in London restaurants. I have a passion for food justice but, like most people, hadn’t spent much time considering what people might eat while serving a sentence.

In 2016, I came across an HM Inspectorate of Prisons’ report about food standards. It detailed the negative impact that a diet of refined-carb-heavy food, lacking in fresh fruit and vegetables, was having on an overcrowded and dysfunctional prison system. The beige, largely ultra-processed, diet was feeding into poor mental health, declining rates of wellbeing and increased violence. 

I felt compelled to do something about the issue so, that year, founded Food Behind Bars. Our mission is to improve the quality of food in prisons, increasing the diversity and nutritional values of inmates’ diets across the UK. In 2020, we became a registered charity, since when we’ve worked with more than 14 prisons. This includes developing recipes, supporting catering teams, teaching prisoners how to cook and building kitchen gardens.

Flushed with (Mother’s) Pride

For around 170 years, food production had been integral to the prison system. Before the turn of the 21st century, self-sufficiency was a key part of prison policy. By the early 1990s, a national food distribution network meant HM Prison and Probation Service was able to supply food to all 147 prisons. This predominantly featured fruit and veg grown on prison estate land, but also included in-house breadmaking. 

Since 1990, the prison population has doubled. Despite this, in the early 2000s, prison food production was drastically reduced. Around 95% of prison farmland was sold off and supply moved to a centralised system with national contracts. Today, just two companies are responsible for supplying food for the entire prison population of around 80,000. One of these is Hovis, which currently has a six-year, £18m contract to supply ‘Fresh Bread and Morning Goods to all public sector and in scope private sector prisons in England and Wales’. Much of this is the company's white sliced Mother’s Pride product, a staple fixture of prison serveries.

When I first started visiting prisons, it didn’t take me long to understand the undeniable role ‘bread’ plays in prison life. I watched men pile their plates high with sliced-white at lunch, keen to fill up. At the same time, however, I met a prison governor who was running a ‘Ban the Baguette’ campaign. He was fed up of forking out thousands every month in maintenance because drains were getting blocked by unwanted sandwiches that prisoners had flushed down their cell toilets. I thought there must be a better way. Then I tasted Real Bread made by inmates in one prison kitchen. Fresh from the oven, it was delicious and cost half the amount of ultra-processed product contractually purchased from Hovis.

A fresh start

The history of breadmaking in prisons means that many kitchens still have bread ovens, mixers and shapers. Even when the equipment can be brought back into service, producing bread to the scale required can still be challenging due to strict schedules. Prison kitchen workers do a morning and an afternoon shift in the kitchen, which only amounts to around 4.5 hours of work per day.

Nevertheless, many innovative catering managers are determined to make it work. The team at HMP Wormwood Scrubs, for example, have recently breathed fresh life into their bakery, producing bread for the whole prison and training a steady flow of men. 

Food Behind Bars’ first foray into the world of prison baking began in 2021. During a project we were running at HMP Wealstun in West Yorkshire, we helped the ambitious catering manager to revitalise the under-utilised on-site bakery. We recruited Isaac, a professional baker, as a Baker Trainer, to upskill staff, teach prisoners and develop recipes for prison menus. The team’s fresh rolls, made from half-white and half-wholemeal flour, were a hit and they soon added house-made focaccia, ciabatta and pizza to the menu. 

In early 2025, we established an in-house bakery at HMP Bristol, as part of a wider food project we are running at the prison. Rise & Prove produces 600 bread rolls daily for lunch, as well as making products that are sold in The Key Café, a social enterprise located just outside the prison wall, which employs ex-offenders. All the items sold in the café are also served on the prison menu: current favourites include sweet potato cake and a spiced apple loaf. One prisoner told us he never thought he’d have the opportunity to learn how to bake, and found shaping the rolls to be therapeutic.

Health, wellbeing and quality of life 

For us, in-house production of any kind provides an exciting opportunity for prisons to enhance their food offering, increase diversity and provide meaningful work. It can even reduce costs, easing pressure on the food budget of just £3 per person, per day. Isaac has so far trained catering teams at three prisons in breadmaking, with around 60 inmates learning these skills, and we have ambitions to increase this further. 

I often say that improving the quality and nutrition of bread in prison is possibly the single most impactful change you can make to prison menus. Simply switching to a delicious, freshly-made roll at lunch can bring some much-needed health, humanity and joy to prisoners’ lives. Crafting Real Bread in-house offers a valuable training and education opportunity for prisoners. This can then be the foundation for exploring baking other item from scratch, such as cakes, puddings, pies and biscuits. 

There will always be people who believe prisoners only deserve sliced-white and water, but good food can go a long way towards improving their health, wellbeing and quality of life. Ultimately this can benefit us all, helping to reduce the risk of re-offending: less crime on the outside and reduced cost to taxpayers of keeping people inside. Perhaps it’s time we said goodbye to the Mother’s Pride and imagined a future with Real Bread at the heart of prison menus instead. Our food system, our society and our planet will thank us.

@foodbehindbars

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Originally published in True Loaf magazine issue 63, July 2025.

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See also

Real Bread On The Menu (public sector catering)
Bread behind bars (The Clink Bakery)
Mixing, kneading, proving, living (Companions Real Bread CIC)
I want to bake free! (The Freedom Bakery)
The Jackson Pollocks (The Barker Baker)