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Bake Your Lawn
Are you ready to help children take a handful of wheat and head off together on a seed to sandwich adventure by growing your own Real Bread? Yes? Great!
Download the sneak peek sampler
(Copyrighted material. Not for printing, publication, reproduction or distribution by any means in any medium.)
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What is Bake Your Lawn?
What’s inside
Pay it forward
I want to stock Bake Your Lawn
Media enquiries
FAQs
Background
What is Bake Your Lawn?
The Real Bread Campaign has written this book to help teachers, (grand)parents, guardians, community group leaders and other youngster-wranglers guide them in hands-on, soil-to-slice journeys of discovery. Starting with just a dozen-or-so grams of wheat seeds and a square metre of earth, together you’ll see how Real Bread starts in a field, not a factory.
Bake Your Lawn by Chris Young and the Real Bread Campaign, with illustrations by Lara Durham, ISBN 978-1-903060-68-1, paperback, 148 pages, RRP £15.
Published 4 March 2024 by Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming, in time for spring wheat planting - and planning for winter wheat sowing...
What’s inside
Bake Your Lawn includes guidance on micro-scale sowing, growing, harvesting, threshing, winnowing, milling and Real Bread making.
Along the way, children (and some of their attendant adults) will learn fascinating facts and have the chance to try simple experiments. At the end comes the best bit – enjoying delicious, nutritious Real Bread made using the flour that they produce.
The key stages we cover in this book are:
Grow
- Getting your hands on wheat seeds.
- Preparing a seed bed.
- Planting.
- Caring for your crop.
Mill
- Harvesting.
- Threshing to separate the grains from the stems.
- Winnowing grain to remove the chaff.
- Grinding grain.
- Sieving and maturing flour.
Bake
- More about flour and other ingredients.
- Equipment.
- Using your flour to make the tastiest Real Bread ever.
Field notes
- Stories from grow-a-loaf school projects.
Lessons in Loaf
Some simple experiments to try at home or in school.
- Using bread as a topic across a range of subjects.
- Practicalities of doing all this at school
Wheat diaries
- Further inspiration from folk who took part in the Real Bread Campaign’s original Lessons in Loaf and Bake Your Lawn projects.
Download the sneak peek sampler
(Please note that this is copyrighted material and so not for printing, publication, reproduction or distribution by any means in any medium.)
Doughnate a book
Our Friends In Knead scheme allows you to buy copies of our books to pass on to schools, charities and other non-profit community organisations.
Please head to our doughnations page and select the pay-it-forward option.
I want to stock Bake Your Lawn
We offer a trade discount on orders of 5 copies or more.
If you'd like to sell Bake Your Lawn in your bookshop, bakery, baking/cookery school, mill etc. in the UK, please download and return this order form. We will then send you an invoice and dispatch after payment is received.
The Campaign is only staffed by one person on a part-time basis but he aims to respond within a week.
Media enquiries
For media enquiries about the book, the Campaign and Real Bread in general, please contact Bake Your Lawn author and Real Bread Campaign co-ordinator Chris Young: chris@sustainweb.org
For any non-media / general enquiries that are not answered on our jam-packed website (try the search facility), please email realbread@sustainweb.org
NB Chris is the Campaign's only staff member, working remotely on a part-time basis.
FAQs
For fuller answers to these first few (and many more) questions, please buy our book!
Where can I find wheat seeds?
If you live near a cereal farmer or small mill, you could try asking them. A member of one of the UK's regional non-commodity grain networks might be able to point you in the right direction - see the Britain and Ireland Community Grains Association map.
They include the Brockwell Bake Association, who offer 30g packets of April Bearded or Ölands wheat (enough for up to 2m2) for a donation plus p&p.
How much wheat and space will I need?
Results will vary but around15-30g of wheat seeds, sown on about a square metre of soil, can yield enough to produce flour for a small wholemeal loaf of Real Bread.
When should I sow wheat?
Varieties grown in the UK can be broadly divided into winter wheat, usually sown between October and late November; and spring wheat, sown from February through to April and (in cooler parts, such as Scotland) into early May.
I ordered the book but didn't receive confirmation - did you receive my order?
When you complete your order and payment, PayPal will automatically email a receipt to you. This is your order confirmation. If you did not receive it, please check your junk/spam folder.
When will my book arrive?
We send by Royal Mail 2nd class post and try to fulfil orders once a week, though are not always able to do so. If you have not received your book after three weeks, please email us.
How can I get a copy outside the UK?
We used to post things outside the UK but a number got lost or delayed. We are a small charity and decided that we couldn’t justify the time/expense of resolving those issues and handling complaints from unhappy customers.
Assuming the book sells quickly, we might investigate finding a publisher to make Bake Your Lawn available outside the UK and as an ebook. For the latest updates, please sign up to our free mailing list and follow us on social media.
I backed your crowdfunding campaign - why haven't I received the book?
If you selected the book as your crowdfunding reward, we will post a copy to you after publication on 4 March 2024. To check whether you chose a reward or made a donation without a reward, please sign into your Crowdfunde record
I still have a question about the book / my order
Please email realbread@sustainweb.org
Background
This book builds on the Bake Your Lawn and Lessons in Loaf projects created and run by the Real Bread Campaign from 2010 to 2012. They helped thousands of school children not only to follow the journey from crop to crust but also to discover the connections that Real Bread has with almost every aspect of learning and life in general.
What people said about the original Bake Your Lawn project
“We had a very successful time making our Real Bread with a kilo of our own homemade flour. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed the project and we hopefully taught the children a great deal about Real Bread.” Stocksfield Avenue Primary School, Newcastle
“We harvested a reasonable size sheaf, threshed it etc. ground it up, ended up with 400g of flour – just enough for a loaf – and what a loaf it is. The children have a new-found admiration for farmers and bakers, but more importantly were blown away by the process of making and eating their own bread. Brilliant campaign, we loved the experience.” Berkswich Primary School, Stafford
“Growing a loaf of bread! We planted the wheat in April and harvested in September. In October, we threshed the wheat, winnowed it and milled it in Mr. Banham’s coffee grinder. On 14 October we baked our flour as bread and ATE IT. DELICIOUS!” South Haringey Junior School, London.
See also
Real Bread Campaign: The Real Bread Campaign finds and shares ways to make bread better for us, better for our communities and better for the planet. Whether your interest is local food, community-focussed small enterprises, honest labelling, therapeutic baking, or simply tasty toast, everyone is invited to become a Campaign supporter.
