Breadcrumbs 2012

Back issues of Breadcrumbs, the Real Bread Campaign's monthly enewsletter

NB As this is an archive, some of the infomation and links given might no longer be current or correct.

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

For the most recent edition, click here.

December

Congratulations to Campaign member Pump Street Bakery winning the Best Food Producer gong at the BBC Food and Farming Awards. This makes it three years in a row that Campaign members have bagged awards, Andrew Whitley having picked up the Judges' Special Award in 2011 and 2010 seeing Richard Bertinet being named Food Champion and Alex Gooch scoop the Best Food Producer prize.

With the Campaign as a whole reaching the final three in the Derek Cooper category of this year’s awards, The Thoughtful Bread Company featuring on Nigel Slater’s BBC show, Jay Rayner visiting Homebaked Anfield for The One Show, Campaign ambassador Tom Herbert back with a Fabulous Baker Brothers’ Christmas special, and a whole host of Campaign members and other Real Bread bakers on ITV’s Britain’s Best Bakery, between us all we are helping to create greater recognition for the importance of delicious, locally-baked Real Bread.

So how about a chance to meet some of the people involved in the rise? Well, we’re giving you a great opportunity by organising a get together at The School of Artisan Food on 24 January.

As you might have noticed, before that will be Christmas, which again falls roughly at the same time as it has in the past. If you’re looking for a fab gift that also helps Sustain be able to continue running the Campaign, then gift membership is the answer.

And if you’re a teacher who can get to London on 15 January, please come along to the free Real Bread workshop we’ve arranged.

Well, happy everything and I hope to see you on 24 January.

Upper Crust

Real Bread get together
On 24 January join Real Bread Campaign members and friends at The School of Artisan Food for an informal, convivial, free afternoon of looking back on our achievements so far and forwards to the future. This is your chance to meet and chat with some members of the Campaign’s working party and other Real Bread lovers. There will also be a few short talks from Andrew Whitley, Mark Simmonds from Making Local Food Work, Welbeck Bakehouse, with more to be announced. For details and booking form click here.

Gift membership
This is the pressie that creates winners all round. Your ‘difficult to buy for’ nearest and dearest receives four issues of True Loaf magazine, eligibility for discounts on loads of bread making classes and opportunities to win stuff throughout the year; the Campaign gets much-needed income; and you benefit from warm and fuzzy feelings having bought the right gift that also helps a charity. Bingo! For details click here.

FREE teachers’ workshop
To help get yet more teachers running Lessons in Loaf for their pupils, we’ve arranged a workshop in central London from 4.30pm to 7pm on Tuesday 15 January 2013. Spaces are available for just twelve school teachers on a first come, first served basis. For full details and the application form please click here.

More news

Two new community shares funding schemes
The Community Shares Fund 'will seek to improve the chances of a community share issue reaching its target, or help the venture to proceed if it doesn’t. It can also provide finance, if needed, before the share issue is concluded.' The Community Share Underwriting Fund 'will seek to underwrite asset-backed Community Share issues by up to 50% of the project's fundraising target.'  Read more on both schemes here.

Homebake Anfield crowdfunding bid
The recent One Show stars have refurbished the bakehouse but still need help to buy a new oven. To read more about how you can help this Community Supported Bakery start making Real Bread, click here.

Leeds Bread Coop
In the same vein, well done to Leeds Bread Coop whose crowd funding bid secured the money they need to buy an oven well before the end of their appeal and continues to attract support.

Allendale discount
Thank you to Carrie and Larry Winger, who are the latest Real Bread class providers to offer a discount to fellow paid-up Campaign members. Find details of theirs and more than a hundred other Real Bread classes and courses here.

World Bread Awards
Entries in the first World Bread Awards open on 1 January 2013. The competition is open to professional and amateur bakers and categories include children and Real Bread. The judging panel includes Campaign ambassadors Emmanuel Hadjiandreou and Andrew Whitley. Find full details at worldbreadawards.com
Help save endangered breads
Our friends at Slow Food UK are running a campaign to support their Forgotten Foods programme. The programme travels the country collecting small-scale quality produce threatened by industrial agriculture, environmental degradation and homogenisation for the Ark of Taste.

The professionals

Demonstration Baker opportunity
The organiser of The CLA Game Fair 2013 requires a Real Bread baker to give baking and milling demonstrations and hands-on experience to children for all three days of the show at Ragley Hall, Warwickshire from 19 to 21 July 2013. Ideally the baker should be able to provide a mobile oven and demonstration-sized quern or pair of stones. Expenses can be covered subject to negotiation. If interested, please email Bex Welti on bex.welti [at] cla.org.uk for more information.

Jobs
The most recent vacancy we’ve published is at Long Crichel bakery. To find details of this and other jobs, or to add your own, click here.

Sippets

• Artisan Bread Organic in Vogue.
• Campaign members The Handmade Bakery sharing with Prestbake Community Supported Bakery group aiming to bring Real Bread to Prestwich from late January.
• Birch Cottage Bread - a microbakery in a shipping container.
• Bakers galore on Britain’s Best Bakery
• Nigel Slater visits The Thoughtful Bread Company and makes Duncan Glendinning a super sandwich.

End crust

Forget Gangnam Style, the weirdest craze of 2012 surely has to have been cat breading. As well as Facebook and Tumblr groups, the hobby (activity? What do you call it?) has at least a .com and a .org dedicated to it and generated an online game.

NB The Campaign utterly opposes animal cruelty and we urge anyone considering breading a cat only ever to use Real Bread. Mind you, that would be a waste of good food, so on second thoughts, forget it altogether.

November

With eight months of our Big Lottery Local Food funded phase of the Campaign still to go, we’ve now passed four of our original targets and are 90% of the way to the fifth, so I’ll start with a thank you.

If you’ve run Lessons in Loaf for kids or a bread making workshop for their teachers, helped make Real Bread available through a food access project, helped to put Real Bread on the Menu of a public sector institution, bought Knead to Know, or helped to fund our work by becoming a Campaign member or making a donation – thank you!

This doesn’t mean we’re resting on our laurels, though. Work continues to do more of the above, as well as preparing for the second proof of the rise of Real Bread from next summer.

PS - If you haven’t entered our draw for the chance to WIN Real Bread classes at The School of Artisan Food and Tracebridge Sourdough, or the books All You Knead is Bread and Bread Revolution, you need to get yer skates on!

Upper Crust

Free teachers’ workshop
To help get yet more teachers running Lessons in Loaf for their pupils, we’ve arranged a workshop in central London from 4.30pm to 7pm on Tuesday 15 January 2013. Spaces are available for just twelve school teachers on a first come, first served basis. For full details and the application form please click here.

The future of the Campaign
Work is well underway in building relationships and seeking funding to ensure the Campaign will continue to go from strength to strength from next summer. To read our plans and the help we still need to make this happen, click here.

Lessons in Loaf success
Thanks to a surge of reports received in the past month from Paul Barker at Cinnamon Square, Malcolm Williams at Little Eye Bakery, Stroud Valleys Project and Mike Armstrong, we have pushed past our target of Real Bread workshops being run in 100 schools. But that’s no excuse to stop teaching or sending us your feedback! If you've taught children to bake Real Bread at a school and not let us know yet, please let us know.

BBC Food and Farming Awards
On 28 November we find out if we or Pump Street Bakery have joined Richard Bertinet, Alex Gooch and Andrew Whitley as the latest Real Bread recipient of a BBC Food and Farming Award. The competition in our category, the Derek Cooper Award, is stiff (we’re up against school food crusader Martha Payne and long-time hospital food reformer Mike Duckett) so please cross your fingers for us. To find out how we get on, keep an eye out for #bbcfoodawards on Twitter or listen to The Food Programme on 30 November.

More news

New Campaign member discount
The latest person to join us and offer his fellow Campaign members discounts on Real Bread classes is River Cottage Bread Handbook author Daniel Stevens. Formerly Hugh F-W’s baker, Daniel now runs and teaches at Daniel’s Cookhouse in Battersea.  For details of his and more courses and discounts click here.

Latest Knead to Know feedback
As the number of Knead to Know readers, and those who’ve gone on to set up Real Bread enterprises, continues to rise, here are some more success stories.

Save your local bakery!
You now have greater rights and powers to join with your neighbours to help save a local community asset, such as a bakery or pub, that is under threat of being lost through closure or sale and conversion.  You can read the notes put together by Campaign volunteer Bex Clarke here.

Support the rise of Real Bread in Leeds
Leeds Bread Co-op has just one month to get the money they need to get their bakery up and running! They are seeking bread bond investments of between £5 and £500 (with interest payments in Real Bread), as well as pledges of skills such as accountancy and bike trailer building. They are also offering pre-paid bread subscriptions with discounts increasing with the length of commitment. For more information click here or email info [@] leedsbread.coop

Crowd funding success
While we’re on the subject of dough for dough, congratulations to Campaign member The Thoughtful Bread Company, which reached its £55k investment target in just nine days!  A total of thirty four investors pledged the money in return for a 20% share of the business between them. The funds will be used to open a bakery and patisserie shop and school in Bath. For more on this story, click here.

Bread Angel finder
Campaign member Jane Mason’s Virtuous Bread has set up breadangels.com to help you find bread, a bread making class, or help setting up a home baking business from a Bread Angel (many of whom are also Campaign members) near you. 

The professionals

Free mentoring support
Could your community Real Bread enterprise benefit from free specialist support? As part of the continuation of support being provided through Making Local Food Work, Plunkett Foundation has launched a new wave of specialist support to all community food enterprises. For more information click here.

High street bakery campaign
British Baker magazine and the National Association of Master Bakers have launched ‘Use Your Loaf! Shop on the High Street,' which aims to help bakers promote the benefits of high street shopping.  To start, they want to hear all about the challenges professional bakers face in trading on the high street. So, if you run a high street Real Bread bakery, let them know your issues - and please tell them you're a proud member of the Real Bread Campaign while you're at it! Calling 01293 846594 or email BB [at] wrbm.com. Read more here and on Facebook

Free yeast for London bakers
West London microbrewer Julio Moncada hates seeing the yeast go to waste at the end of each week's brew. He would like to establish a relationship with a bakery or two (ideally in W9, W10 or W11) to create a signature local loaf with his yeast. The loaf could be available daily or as a regular special. If you run a bakery/microbakery and would like an introduction to Julio please email realbread [at] sustainweb.org. 

Sippets

• Who knew when we put together Lessons in Loaf that it would inspire a social enterprise in South Africa? Read about Silikamva Bakery here.
• November sees at least two new Real Bread bakeries: say hello to Forge Bakehouse in Sheffield and Rubens Bakehouse in Twickenham
• @RedDogBakery tweeted: ‘Loads of interest in The Loaf Mark at North Devon Food Festival. It tripled our business on the same event last year, BRILLIANT !!’
• Look how Campaign member Lucky 13 Bakehouse has worked our supporter badge into their homepage!
• Congratulations to Campaign member Baked DERBY, which won Best Newcomer in the Derby Food & Drink Awards

End crust

Scanwiches: a website for people with far too much time on their hands

Oh, and meet Doug the doughglobe…

October

This month, we sent a very short and easily digestible email version of ‘crumbs as an experiment. We only published the full-fat version, with of all the usual bits and bobs to chew over, here on our website. What do you think? Please let me know if you prefer this or the usual format.

And while we’re on the subject of feedback – we want more, please! See below for what we’d like to hear from you.

Seems we’re on the right track, mind: having been nominated for a BBC Food and Farming Awards by some kind soul(s), we’ve reached the final three in the Derek Cooper category.

You might also be interested to know that the new True Loaf magazine has not one but four prize draws.

Anyway, I said I’d keep this short, so here’s the skinny…

The Upper Crust 

Share your story
If you’re a Campaign member, schoolteacher or Knead to Know reader, we want to hear from YOU, please.

In what ways has being involved in the Campaign helped you? Conversely, what’s your part in the Campaign’s continuing success? We would love to add your story to our website, which will also give our current (and potential future) funders - and those nice BBC judges - even more evidence of the great work your Campaign is doing. We’re particularly keen to hear how our mutually-supportive network has helped you to bring Real Bread to the heart of your local community under the following headings.

• Bread making as therapy
• Microbakery business
• Community Supported Bakery
• Supplying the public sector (schools, hospitals etc.)
• Bread making and wheat growing in schools

A key issue for us is finding and sharing ways to overcome obstacles to food access – i.e. are you making Real Bread more accessible to people who have limited mobility, live where there is no bakery within walking distance, and in particular are on low incomes?

Please email a short paragraph to realbread [at] sustainweb.org

Am I a Campaign member?
If you live in the UK but haven’t received True Loaf in the past few days, then probably not. Find details of how to start or renew your membership here.

Overseas members: you can download your copy of True Loaf here.

WIN Real Bread classes and books
As Campaign members know already, thanks to a group of kind and not-at-all-secret Santas, the latest issue of our True Loaf magazine includes a sack full of great prizes from Real Bread Campaign members for Real Bread Campaign members – and you could win all of them! The prizes are Real Bread classes at The School of Artisan Food and Tracebridge Sourdough, as well as copies of All You Knead is Bread by Jane Mason and Bread Revolution by Duncan Glendinning and Patrick Ryan. Find details here.

More news

Bake Your Lawn: wheat diaries and pictures needed
If yours is one of the 200 schools to which we sent wheat seeds back in the spring but hasn’t sent us your update or photos this term (or at all), please do. That applies even if you didn’t get to harvest your wheat!

New: True Loaf magazine anthologies available to download
‘The average loaf was a shocker: fluffy, tasteless and of negligible value, an iconic food torn from its pedestal and subjected to abuse. The supermarkets sell it. The
public, conspiring to their own malnutrition, eat it.’ That quote from the writer Marwood Yeatman kicked off the first issue of True Loaf back in 2009. Until now, the magazine has only been available to paid-up Campaign members, but now anyone can download PDFs of the first nine issues, batched together in two crusty compendia: volume 1 and volume 2. All donations to help us continue our work are most welcome.

Real Bread in BBC Food and Farming Awards final
We’re chuffed to bits that not only has the Campaign as a whole reached the final three in the Derek Cooper Award category, but Campaign member Pump Street Bakery is in the top trio in the Best Producer category, too. Fancy joining us at the NEC on 28 November to find out if we’ve won? Click here for details.

Charity opens Real Bread bakery
Part of the Lantern Community and a member of the Campaign, The Lantern Bakery has opened in Ringwood, Hampshire. Staffed by residents who live as part of an on-site community, the bakery ‘offers adults with learning difficulties meaningful work.

Latest Campaign member Real Bread class discounts
Thanks to Artisan Foodworks and The Kensal Kitchen, which are the latest Real Bread class providers to offer a 10% Campaign member discount.

Marriages’ competition and prize draw
What do you get up to whilst waiting for your Real Bread to rise? Take a photo, upload it to Campaign member Marriages’ the millers’ Facebook page and you could win a bread making day at The School of Artisan Food. Every day until mid November they’re also offering daily prizes (aprons, tea towels, dough scrapers etc.) just for liking them on Facebook.

Nominate a Real Bread bakery as an Oxfam local food hero
Our world produces enough food for everyone. Yet every night, 1 billion people go to bed hungry. That's not right.  Oxfam wants you to nominate your local food heroes, the people in your area doing their bit to make a difference, whose stories could inspire others. ‘Big up the people who are taking action to build a better food system, and you'll help bring about powerful change too.’

The Daily Telegraph’s free Paul Hollywood baking recipe cards
This weekend, The Daily Telegraph started a seven-day series of more than fifty free recipes from Great British Bake Off judge Paul Hollywood's new book, How To Bake. They tell us that today’s (Monday 15 October) card will help you to ‘master the techniques of the artisan baker with essential bread making stages explained.’

The professionals

Is The Real Bread Loaf Mark included in my membership fee?
If you are a professional member (i.e. joined at the £50 or £75 rate) then the fee for this scheme is included in your membership. All you need do is sign the usage agreement. Other Real Bread bakers can sign up to this scheme for a nominal fee.

Latest Real Bread classified ads
Including equipment needed by Community Supported Bakery in Yorkshire, a job vacancy in Hampshire and a bakery for sale in Nottinghamshire, here.

Real Bread bakers wanted for Slow Food London and the HUB’s ethical winter market
On Wednesday 5 December, Slow Food London and the HUB Westminster are holding an indoor ethical winter market. There will be space for up to twenty food producers, a chance for three to speak about their businesses, and a tasting plate lunch prepared from a selection of the produce at the market. If you’d like a stand (£40 each) or to know more contact Dermot Sales slowfnorwich [at] gmail.com 07885773433

Gilchesters: heritage grain harvest exceeds expectations
‘We didn't expect too much from our heritage grains, even if they have stood up in the weather until the very last minute. We were over the moon to discover that our amazing old varieties came into the shed with between 13% and 15 % protein and a whopping Hagberg falling number of 300!’

Small bakeries wanted for Food Standards Agency research
Campden BRI food and drink research services are reviewing for the Food Standards Agency the HACCP guidance available to small food making businesses. They would like to get small companies (employing fewer than 50 - full time equivalent - people) across the UK involved. If you would like to participate please email Lorraine Green l.green [at] campden.co.uk.

Sippets

• Funding notes for Community Supported Bakeries and other Real Bread enterprises
• A short report from the Cake & Bake Show’s Big Bread Debate
• Pictures from Alnwick Food Festival
• Pictures from the first ever Real Bread Festival
• And the winner is… The Londoners’ Loaf revealed, plus pictures

End Crust

Pump Street Bakery’s van Cédric helping Real Bread reach the parts that other bakeries don’t…

September

As most of this year’s soggy harvest is finally brought in, we find ourselves in the midst of food festival season, during which many Campaign members are out sharing the love…and loaves. Though two of the heavyweights - Ludlow and Abergavenny – have been and gone, you still have time to catch Aldeburgh, Eye Bread Festival and many others. London is about to get a double whammy, with Campaign ambassadors and members at the sold-out Cake and Bake Show this weekend, and the Real Bread Festival in early October.

On a less cheery note, today the Advertising Standards Authority has rejected our complaint about a factory loaf manufacturer advertising its wares using the image of hands kneading dough.

And if you only read one thing in this edition of ’crumbs, please make it the End Crust.

Upper Crust

What standards?
'If a picture paints...' then the Advertising Standards Authority has allowed Allied Bakeries a thousand words to say 'Allinson Today' is made by hand. It’s bad enough that an industrial loaf manufacturer has used human hands to advertise its factory product. The organisation responsible for ensuring advertising is ‘honest and truthful’ letting them get away with it just rubs salt into the wound. Read full details of how the Real Bread Campaign believes that the Advertising Standards Authority has failed to meet its prime objective here.

Real Bread Festival
The all-star line up for this brand-new gathering on London’s South Bank includes Campaign co-founder Andrew Whitley, Campaign ambassadors Richard Bertinet and Emmanuel Hadjiandreou, Campaign member Ben Mackinnon of E5 Bakehouse, Great British Bake Off winner Edd Kimber, The Daily Telegraph’s Rose Prince, ‘Danish Delia’ Trine Hahnemann, a host of Virtuous Bread’s Bread Angels, and Campaign coordinator Chris with even more of our members. It will also feature the crowning of The Londoners’ Loaf. Oh, and stacks of Real Bread and other tasty treats to try and buy. realbreadfestival.com

More news

The Big Bread Debate
The Cake and Bake Show, Sunday 23 September at 4pm. Hosted by the Real Bread Campaign and The Soil Association, the debate will consider the state of bread in Britain under the title An Honest Crust? Chaired by journalist Andrew Webb, the panel will include Green & Blacks and Judges' Bakery founder Craig Sams, and experts from the Campaign. Representatives from the major supermarkets and the ‘Big Three’ industrial bakers have been invited to balance the panel. Questions will be invited from show visitors throughout the weekend and from the audience during the debate.

The Big Fair Bake
From 24 September to 7 October the Fairtrade Foundation is running a campaign to give people the excuse to bake for their friends, family and colleagues.  The twist is they’re asking us to remember that, as well as baking for others, we can share the benefits with farming communities in developing countries, by choosing Fairtrade ingredients. Campaign ambassador Tom Herbert and his Fabulous Baker Brother Henry have donated this recipe for flatbread with zatar herbs and Fairtrade olive oil from producers in Palestinian olive groves.

Bake with Compassion
Throughout October, animal welfare charity Compassion in World Farming is encouraging homebakers and professionals alike to ensure that all of their eggs, dairy and meat ingredients have been produced to higher welfare standards. So, when baking enriched Real Breads, reach for the free-range eggs, organic butter and outdoor-reared bacon!

Interested in an Italian-style Real Bread gathering?
Inspired by events such as Pane Nostrum, Slow Food Norwich and Slow Food London and are planning to hold a Real Bread and companatico (things to go with bread) tasting. This would be for around 30-40 people and feature British and Italian-style regional breads together with organic oils and wines. If you’d be interested in getting involved (as a producer or attendee) please contact Dermot Sales: slowfnorwich [at] gmail.com or 07885773433

Bakers’ dozen
On 13 September, representatives from thirteen organisations with links to the British baking industry met at Bakers’ Hall in London. With negative comments banned, the first session of what is planned to be an ongoing forum focussed on finding areas of common ground to help improve the state of bread in Britain. The group includes Campaign coordinator Chris Young. Campaign members can read a report from this meeting in The Real Baker-e.

The professionals’ bit

Case studies a go-go
Thanks to Campaign volunteer Bex Clarke, our lists of inspiring stories from people using Real Bread to build links between people in their local communities has started to grow. If you’d like to share your success on one of these lists, please email us and either Bex or Chris will get back to you.

• Social enterprise, food access and therapy
• Community Supported Baking
• Home-based microbakeries

The Loaf Mark – going for the ton
If you haven’t signed up for The Real Bread Loaf Mark scheme yet, please do today! You can read how it can help both your business and the Campaign here.

Need specialist support for your community food enterprise?
As part of Making Local Food Work, the Plunkett Foundation has launched a new wave of specialist support for community food enterprises. This includes business advice from experienced consultants, structured mentoring from people who have been there and done it, study visits hosted by successful community food enterprises, and  helping enterprises to select the right legal structure for them and best governance practices.

Sippits

• Congratulations to Campaign member Loaf social enterprise, which has just moved to its new home on Stirchley High Street.
• From mid-October, Campaign member Maria Mayerhofer welcomes Campaign ambassador Emmanuel Hadjiandreou to the Baking Lab team.
• PM Dave gets a taste of the Campaign, enjoying Real Bread baked by Bread and Roses using Gilchesters flour.
• Well done to Real Bread Finder listed bakery Dumouchel for their The Craft Business Award at this year’s Baking Industry Awards. We hope to see more Real Bread bakers there next year.

End crust

Rather than something fluffy this month, we just have a plea: If you haven’t got round to starting or renewing your Campaign membership, please do now!

We can only continue finding and sharing ways to make bread better for us, better for our communities and better for the planet with your help. Membership starts from as little as £1.88 a month, and includes a load of benefits in return.

August

It’s the home straight for the summer, so the main foodie festival season is almost upon us. Two particularly bready ones both happen to be in London – The Cake & Bake Show in September and The Real Bread Festival in early October. You can find – and add – details of more events with a bready element on our calendar.

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, should we be pleased if certain big players are upping their game? Or should we be questioning whether the ‘artisan’ and 'local bakery' talk is just a hollow crust of marketing spin? To find which route we’re taking, please read on…

And we have just published an outline of our plans for the future of the Campaign.

The Upper Crust

Londoners’ Loaf – last chance to vote
Londoners have until just 20 August to have their say. The loaves with the most votes will go forward to a final tasting by a panel of expert judges including award-winning food writers Diana Henry from The Sunday Telegraph, Lucas Hollweg from The Sunday Times and Victoria Stewart from The London Evening Standard. If the loaf you choose wins, your name will be entered into a draw to win a Real Bread class at the Cookery School at Little Portland Street, worth £100! Vote now.

The Real Bread Campaign: the second proof
Since January, Sustain staff and Campaign working party members have been discussing options for the future of the Campaign beyond June 2013, when our current Big Lottery Local Food and Sheepdrove Trust funding ends. For details of our plan and how you can help ensure the future of the Campaign, click here.

More news

Olympics no champion for Real Bread bakers
Whatever your views on The Games, we believe the organisers missed – or even avoided – a huge opportunity to support London’s local, independent bakeries by denying them a showcase for their diverse Real Breads. Read more.

Artisan or artful?
Doesn’t the new Greggs the Bakery ‘concept’ beg the question ‘so what are all of your other outlets?’ But at least that might be taken as an admission that most of their stores don’t bake loaves on site. And don't get us started on Tesco’s current attempt at ‘creating the kind of atmosphere you’d find in an artisan bakery.’ Oh okay - do.

Cake & Bake Show
Quick reminder – if you’re a paid-up Campaign member, True Loaf magazine is offering you the chance to win a pair of tickets to the show. But if you’d rather not leave it to chance, then we’ve secured a Campaign member discount price for online ticket purchases of £10 for Saturday or Sunday (standard price £12.50 in advance or £15 on the door), or £15.50 (full price £18) for the whole weekend. Get your discount code.

Come Dine With Me
The Channel 4 programme Come Dine With Me is planning to record in the Dudley area from 9 -14 September. The producers have expressed an interest in finding a keen Real Bread homebaker who’d be interested in taking part as a competitor. If this is you, please email Joe.Farr [at] ITV.com

The professionals’ bit

The growing CSB community
Our long-term hope is for everyone in Britain being able to choose to enjoy Real Bread. Towards this end, we are the only national organisation championing Community Supported Baking.  To read about the CSBers in our midst, click here.

Homebakers of the world unite!
For the same reason, we also support people setting up microbakeries in the own homes. To help encourage more people to do the same, we’ve begun to share on our site stories from some of the people we’ve helped to inspire so far.

Prizes needed, please
Each year, the October to December issue of True Loaf includes a bumper competition to win a sackful of prizes. To stuff this stocking, we rely on the generosity of not-at-all secret Santas, who get featured in the magazine, in tweets to our 10,000+ twitter followers, in ‘crumbs and so on. If you’re interested in donating a prize and being added to our donor roll of honour, please email realbread [at] sustainweb.org.

Networking opportunity
Real Bread bakers of London: on 11 September, Campaign sibling London Food Link offers you chance to meet a chance to meet fellow local food producers, caterers, retailers and other people who care about ethical and sustainable food. Join us for the afternoon, an evening of chatting and mingling over some tasty grub, or both. Full details.

Stalls available at Real Bread Festival
The Real Bread Festival is a whole weekend dedicated to Real Bread and other yummy stuff to eat and drink with it - the first of its kind, as far as we know.  If you’d be interested in a stand, contact please contact the show’s organiser Yael Rose and we’ll see you there. realbreadfestival [at] yahoo.co.uk

Supply contract opportunity
A hospital in Reading needs Real Bread!

Gizza job!
Our free classified ads page is really taking off!  Since the last issue of ‘crumbs, we’ve posted nine Real Bread job vacancies from around the country, plus the offer of a bakery for sale or rent. Find or add details of jobs, premises and equipment here.

Sippets

• Congratulations to all Campaign members who won Great Taste Awards, including More? The Artisan Bakery, The Flour Station, Flower Power City, Wessex Mill, Marriage’s, Imbhams Farm Granary, Dove’s Farm, Bakery Andante, The Island Bakers, and The Moody Baker at Barnard Castle.
• Vote Real Bread now! BBC Good Food Awards, Best in Britain Awards, Action for Market Towns,  Social Enterprise Awards
• Fancy the last place on the advanced diploma in baking course at School of Artisan Food?
• New grant programme to help community groups take over land and buildings
• Loads more funding opportunities
• Facts and figures about the rise of Real Bread

If you have news like this you’d like us to help you share – please email us!

End crust

The original Real Bread Campaign? Sue Perkins visits The Worshipful of Bakers for The Great British Bake Off (23m21s into the show)
(The dedicated bread episode will be broadcast on 21 August)

July

With just under a year of the first phase of the Real Bread Campaign to go, I thought it was time to round up just some of the highlights of what we’ve achieved so far:

• Helping around 5,000 children a day at 26 schools to have access to organic Real Bread with their meals – exceeding our target by more than 25%
• Enabling almost 4000 children at 80 schools to bake Real Bread – 80% of our target
• Leading the rise of Real Bread in local communities by distributing more than 1100 copies of Knead to Know - eleven times our target
• Empowering more than 50 people with baking skills to enable them to make Real Bread available through at least 26 food access projects
• Co-ordinating a mutually-supportive network of more than 6000 people, within which 1100 people have become paying members
• Linking more than 460 bakers with countless people in their local communities with our Real Bread Finder map
• Guiding children at more than 200 schools on the seed to sandwich Real Bread journey with our Bake Your Lawn grow it, mill it, bake it, eat it pack.

Oh, and we now have more than 10,000 @realbread followers on twitter!

Thanks to the Big Lottery fund’s Local Food programme, the Sheepdrove Trust, our Campaign members, and anyone who’s bought one of our publications or made a donation. Thanks also to those of you who’ve supported our work with donations in kind of time, skills, knowledge, facilities, prizes, and helping us to get the message out there.

We’ll be publishing details of what we aim to achieve in the second proof of the Real Bread Campaign soon…

Looking forward to the near future, here are some crumbs of what’s coming up…

The Upper Crust

WIN!
If you’re not one of our members yet, then you’re missing the chance to win a pair of tickets to The Cake & Bake Show in September and a copy of Campaign member Signe Johansen’s new book Scandilicious Baking.

So what are you waiting for? Join us today!

Local Loaves for Lammas
Not that you need an excuse, but Lammas (1 August) is an ideal opportunity to get baking Real Bread with flour milled as locally as possible – preferably by a traditional mill. If you need inspiration, here's Andrew Whitley’s recipe for a Lammas loaf.

Londoners’ Loaf competition
Real Bread lovers of London: you have until 20 August to seek out, taste and vote for your favourite loaf! If the one you choose wins, your name will be entered into a draw to win a Real Bread class at the Cookery School at Little Portland Street, worth £100! You can find full details, including competing bakeries, their loaves and where to find them at thejelliedeel.org

More news

Wholemeal?
The report from our investigation into industrial loaves marketed as ‘wholemeal’ and ‘wholegrain’ is with our designer. We will let Campaign members and members of the media know as soon as we publish it and post details on our website. If you are a journalist and want to be on our mailing list, please email realbread [at] sustainweb.org

Flour fortification under review
Since the 1950’s, a law has forced UK millers to add four hidden nutrients to most bread flour. Defra has announced that it will run a consultation on whether or not this should change. As part of this process, the government’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition has issued this position statement. The Real Bread Campaign intends to be involved and invites Campaign members willing to make a business, scientific or legal contribution to our submission to email realbread [at] sustainweb.org

Bake Your Lawn
If you're growing wheat at school, please don't forget it over the summer holidays! To avoid a classroom full of disappointed faces, we suggest someone pops in every now and then to check if it’s ready to harvest so the kids get to enjoy it, not the birds and mice.

The Real Bread Festival
The website for this free celebration of Real Bread on London’s South Bank is now live! Read full details of who you can see, what you can do and what you can taste here.

The professionals’ bit

Local Loaves for Lammas
If you run a bakery, mill or baking classes and plan to help people celebrate local loaves on and around 1 August, please add details of your event to our calendar today.

Londoners’ Loaf bakers
If yours is one of the twenty bakeries that entered, don’t forget to encourage your customers to vote. And if you tweet – please tweet! Hashtags to use are #realbread and #londonersloaf.

Real Bread jobs
The latest vacancy is for a head baker at Hobbs House Bakery in Chipping Sodbury. Applications close this Friday, 20 July! Find full details here.

Sippets

• All three finalists in the New Best Alchemist of the Oven category of The YBFs (Young British Foodies) this year were Campaign members. Congratulations to Fergus Jackson, Ben McKinnon, and especially to the winner Bridget Hugo.
• You only have until 12 August to nominate your Real Bread favourites for a BBC Food & Farming Award.
• And wouldn’t it be great to see a Real Bread hero winning a Cosmopolitan Ultimate Women of the Year Award? Nominate the woman (or man, says Cosmo) you believe should win here.
• A report from Melton Big Bake
• Photos from Trefriw Baking weekend
• Well done to Campaign ambassador Tom Herbert on his Cotswold Life Food Hero award and securing a second series of The Fabulous Baker Brothers

End crust

‘For those, then, who are determined to eat bread made from authentic 100 per cent wholemeal…there is precious little alternative but to buy the flour and bake it themselves.’ Elizabeth David, English Bread and Yeast Cookery, 1977

June

What an absolutely fantastic boost for the rise of Real Bread last month’s Real Bread Maker Week was! If you got involved - thank you, and please send me your stories and photos to share.

Bread lovers of Britain got to enjoy all sorts of events and offers; we had the best week yet for people becoming members, with more people joining us in seven days than we usually welcome in a month; and the week was rounded off by True Loaf being lampooned on Have I Got News For You.

To keep up the momentum, we’d love to hear as soon as possible from everyone who’s planning a Local Loaves for Lammas activity or offer on or around 1 August.

On the campaigning front, the Advertising Standards Authority is investigating our complaint about an Allinson loaf advert on five counts, and I’ve just written to eleven of the higher-profile industrial loaf manufacturers with a question or two about loaves they are marketing as ‘wholemeal’.  We hope to be able to report the results over the coming weeks.

The Upper Crust

Campaign volunteer needed
The thing with finding great volunteers is that sooner or later they get tempted away by great jobs... We're very happy that this has happened to Charlotte, but it means Chris is back on his tod in the office again. So, if you think that you or someone you know might be in a position to lend him a hand, you can find full details here.

Real Bread Maker Week
How was it for you? If you've got pictures, stories or links to media coverage from your activity (or even just a note of extra traffic to your website) please email them to us and you might spot it in True Loaf or on our website.

More news

Ticket competition & discount
Amongst many respected bakers, The Cake & Bake Show (22 & 23 September) line up boasts Campaign ambassadors and members including Paul Barker, Richard Bertinet, Aidan Chapman, Duncan Glendinning, the e5 bakehouse crew, Anthony Kindred, Tom Herbert, Patrick Moore and Patrick Ryan, with more guests to be announced. We'll have a stand at the show, as will Marriage's and Wessex Mill. In the meantime, we have arranged a Campaign member ticket discount and competition to win a pair of tickets, details of which will appear in the next issue of True Loaf, out in early July.

The Real Bread Festival
This free event on South Bank from 5-7 October means that lucky Londoners get a double-whammy of Real Bread outings this autumn. Campaign representatives confirmed for the festival so far are our co-founder Andrew Whitley, ambassador Richard Bertinet, and Signe Johansen. They’ll be joined by food luminaries including Rose Prince, Trine Hahnemann, Valentina Harris, Rachel de Thample and Maunika Gowardhan. In addition to talks, demos and workshops, visitors will get the chance to enjoy putting together an ambling picnic from stalls offering Real Bread, cheeses, charcuterie, jams, cider and other delights from passionate producers. A full list of all events and exhibitors will be announced soon at realbreadfestival.com

New course discount
Thanks to Janice Bell of Bread at Home in Bewdley, Worcestershire for joining the ever-growing list of people offering Campaign members discounts on Real Bread classes.

The professionals’ bit

Local Loaves for Lammas
Please help us to make Local Loaves for Lammas as great a success for the Real Bread movement as Real Bread Maker Week by adding details of your events to our calendar today! If you have an offer, rather than an event, please drop us a line. Find more information and inspiration here.

The Londoners' Loaf
Real Bread bakers of London: we're teaming up with The Jellied Eel magazine to find the Capital's favourite loaf of Real Bread, as chosen by Londoners. The idea is simple: each bakery nominates the finest of its Real Breads and Londoners vote for their favourite. The loaves with the most votes will go to a panel of experts, with The Londoners' Loaf being crowned at the Real Bread Festival on Southbank (5-7 October) and featured in the October issue of The Jellied Eel, which has around 50,000 readers. Find full details here.

Wholemeal
We're working on a potentially high-profile wholemeal report, so please ensure you know the law about the use of the word in loaf names and marketing!  We look forward to reporting what the Big Bakers and supermarkets say in response to the questions we have sent to them.

Real Bread jobs
Jobs added to the page since the last ‘crumbs are at: The Celtic Bakers, The Baking Lab and Kindred Bakery, all in London; Uprising Community Bread Coop over Manchester way; Loaf Social Enterprise in Birmingham, and the loaf in Derbyshire. Find details here.

Oven share opportunity
Trove in Levenhsulme, Manchester has a two deck Tom Chandley oven that isn't being utilised to its full potential. ‘We'd like to make it available at night to a baker of organic Real Bread in return for a donation towards rent and electricity.’ To discuss a mutually suitable arrangement, please contact Marcus and Katy at info [at] trovefoods.co.uk.

Nuts!
Do you bake a walnut loaf? Equal Exchange is offering Campaign members a 25% discount on organic Fairtrade Chilean Flame walnuts, sourced from Agronuez Choapa Co-operative. The discounted rate is £18 + carriage for a case of 12 x 150g packets. Offer ends 31 August, unless the limited stocks run out first!  For your discount code, click here.

Feeding Britain’s Future - Skills for Work Week
Are you keen to help the next generation of Real Bread bakers?  Skills for Work Week (17-21 September) is calling on food businesses to open their doors this September to give young unemployed people between the ages of 16 and 24 training in the skills they need to secure a job.

More simply, you could host an open day, inviting young people to visit and gain an insight into working in a Real Bread bakery. It’s a bit like what they used to call ‘work experience’. Find more information here.

Sippets

• You’ve got until 29 June to nominate your Real Bread heroes (categories include best: cookbook, independent local retailer, food blog, and food personality) in the Observer Food Monthly Awards
• The BBC Food & Farming Awards 2012 will be launched this Sunday by The Food Programme. You will then have until 12 August to nominate your Real Bread favourites
• Bread and Portas
• Well done to Tim Lukehurst, who won our latest 48 hour competition, winning a Real Bread class at Braxted Park Cookery School
• …and to Jo Bottrill, Ursi Widemann, and Aniko King, the winners in the latest True Loaf competition for Real Bread classes at Cinnamon Square and Brook Bakery School, and No Need to Knead from Grub Street books.
• Congratulations to Campaign ambassador Emmanuel Hadjiandreou on winning the The Jeremy Round Award for Best First Book for How To Make Bread at the Guild of Food Writers Awards 2012.
• A guide to banneton care

End crust

A lovely little film about Campaign member Tom Baker’s Loaf Social Enterprise

 

May

Yes, as seen in The Times, BBC Good Food magazine and Which? (amongst other places) it’s Real Bread Maker Week and this year it’s not just about the machines! Thanks to all of you who are involved already, and thanks in advance to all of you who plan to be.

If you (or people you know) have been putting off becoming a Campaign member, then NOW is now's the time 'cos we’ve arranged:

• a FREE copy of Andrew Whitley's Bread Matters to everyone who joins this week
• discounts on flour from Shipton Mill, Marriage's and Gilchesters
• the chance to win one of two Real Bread making days
• loads more discounts and offers...

In other news: The Real Bread Campaign now has an anthem!

For details of these crumbs and many more, please read on.

The Upper Crust

Real Bread Maker Week
Fancy winning a Real Bread Course at Cinnamon Square or Brook Bakery School? How about being entered into Bakery Bits’ draw to win a La Cloche baking dome? Does a FREE copy of Bread Matters just for joining us grab you? Or how about a tasty discount on flour from Gilchesters, Marriage’s or Shipton Mill? Or even 50% off a class with Campaign co-founder Andrew Whitley? There really is too much on offer and going on to fit in here, but you can find full details here and on our events calendar.

Real Bread Campaign anthem
Thanks to multi-talented musician Wojtek Godzisz, the Campaign now has a joyous rallying cry. You can catch see a sneaky preview of the ditty, with moving pictures kindly supplied by Mandy Jennings, here.

Open letter to all bakers in Britain
To encourage even more people to get baking Real Bread this week, we’ve written an open letter to everyone planning to bake any sort of loaf. For people who had ruled it out, we’ve included a few thoughts that might help them find a way after all…

More news

Donation thanks
We are always very grateful to people making donations to the Campaign, but just wanted to say a public thank you to the Campaign member who, when renewing his membership, slipped in a cheque for an extra £250!  If you’d like to make a donation to support our work, you can do so here.

Community Supported Baking
Being the main national organisation championing the CSB idea, we always get a warm glow when someone else ‘gets’ it and helps us shout about it. Thanks, then, to Huma Qureshi for her brilliant two-page feature in The Times last week.  Very happy that we managed to get mentions for The Handmade Bakery, loaf, Dunbar Community Bakery, and Doughies, too. We’ve put a link to the article (and loads more press) on our media coverage page.

Our Daily Bread
After a suitably long proof, Jonathan Kent’s series is at last out of the oven and will be broadcast on BBC Radio Four at 1.45pm over four consecutive days from 21 to 25 May. Listen out for plenty of Campaign members and friends, including what I understand was an interesting chat between Campaign co-founder Andrew Whitley and Gordon Polson of the Federation of Bakers during our ‘Pappy Birthday’ trip to Chorleywood village fete last summer.

Not in my loaf!
Our support of GM Freeze’s action against the current GM wheat trials at Rothamsted Research in Hertfordshire helped to generate plenty of awareness for the issue. Thanks if yours was one of the 350+ companies that signed the anti-GM wheat pledge. If direct action is your thing, then you might be interested in another organisation’s opposition to the trial: Take The Flour Back’s protest will take place on 27 May.

Nasty pasty tax
A proposed increase on hot pie tax might not seem natural Real Bread Campaign territory, but with the margins on Real Bread being extra slim, many small independent bakers rely on other products such as hot baked goods to stay in business.  Click here for more.

The professionals’ bit

Work you’ve done in the name of the Campaign
Thanks to all of you who have updated us with what you’ve been up to recently in the name of the Campaign.  You can read updates on:

• Lessons in Loaf
• Real Bread on the Menu

Real Bread jobs
Want to find or advertise a Real Bread vacancy? Then please mosey over to our jobs page. The most recent bakeries to say they need a hand are Chalk Hills in Surrey, Flour Town in East Sussex, Bread Bread in London and Bake-Wells in Devon.

Wanted: Britain’s best bakery!
Do you know a bakery that makes bread, pastries and other baked goodies to die for? Or do you own or work in a bakery and believe yours are the best in the land? If so, Shine TV wants to hear from you for a new baking series for ITV1. They want to showcase Britain’s best independent, family and/ or community bakeries and their amazing creations, from scones and Eccles cakes to baklava, Chinese buns and Jamaican coconut bread. If you’re interested in taking part or want to nominate a brilliant bakery, please call 0207 985 7568 or email: bestbakery [at] shine.tv ASAP.

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

• Campaign member Igor Occiali from Rubens Bakehouse helps Sumedha Garg remind Londoners how Bread Street got its name
• Campaign member Jane Mason is stirred by a current True Loaf article
• Some Real Bread facts and figures
• Bread, not biofuel!
• Congratulations to Campaign ambassador Emmanuel Hadjiandreou, whose book How to Make Bread has made it to the finals of the Guild of Food Writers awards. As has True Loaf's sister magazine The Jellied Eel!

End crust

Take the Flour Back!   

April

As you’re reading this, you are either a Campaign member or at least support our work, yes?  Great, because we need your help, please. Real Bread Maker Week begins on 7 May, and your Campaign needs you to help everyone else you know celebrate the nation’s local Real Bread makers.

Looking back for a moment, the big news from the past month is that we have learned the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea’s decision to start serving Real Bread at twenty six schools (as reported in the last Breadcrumbs) is in part thanks to our work. It is an inspiring tale, so if you are part of a school community (teacher, cook, governor, parent…), an educational caterer or work within a local authority please do read the story and encourage whoever is in charge of the school meal purse strings to do the same. 

We look forward to being able to report that more schools are doing the right thing both for children and the local community by kicking the additive habit and switching to local loaves very soon…

The Upper Crust

Real Bread Maker Week
It’s back, and this year it’s not just about the machines! From 7-13 May, the Real Bread Campaign is helping Britain to celebrate the Real Bread makers in our homes, on our high streets and at the ends of our sleeves. Please click here for details of current offers and here for planned events.

If you haven’t yet told us how you’ll be helping people to join in, please add details of your public event here, our email us with details of your special offer today! We’ve had plenty of media interest already but the more events we can tell them about, the more headlines we’ll all make.

If you’re organising something just for friends, family, school, WI or other community group that you don’t need to advertise, it would be lovely if you could still take some pictures and/or jot a few lines that we can publish afterwards, please.

Real Bread on the Menu at 26 Kensington and Chelsea schools
Susanne Kent, Catering Contract Monitoring Officer for the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea (RBK&C), has told us that a conversation with Real Bread Campaign co-ordinator Chris Young and our website both helped to inform RBK&C’s decision to put Real Bread on the Menu (locally-baked organic loaves at that) at twenty one primary schools, three nursery/children’s centres, and two secondary schools in the borough.  For the full story, please click here.

Renew your membership or join us today!
If you received a renewal reminder email recently, or have not yet joined the Campaign at all, please help support our ongoing fight for better bread in Britain by renewing or joining us now! Now, now that is – you can come back to reading this afterwards. Please note that just taking advantage of the free stuff we offer ( e.g. Breadcrumbs or adding your loaves to the Real Bread Finder) don’t in themselves make you are a Campaign member...

Real Bread workshops
Our Real Bread workshops with Sustain's Food Coops project continue, with six people from four projects learning to bake Real Bread at Square Food Foundation in Bristol; seven people from six projects being inspired by Lesley Suddes, The Bread Lady, in Durham; and nine people from six projects at The Hornbeam in London. The next workshop in Manchester is fully booked already, but you can read full details of this part of our work here.

More news

True Loaf
The new issue will be on its way to Campaign members this week. If you’ve moved since you received your last copy, please email your new address to us today so we can send the magazine to the right place.

Bake Your Lawn
The first photos and wheat diary entries have started to come in from the 200+ schools to which we sent packets of organic wheat seeds. If you’re growing some to bake a loaf, please email your pictures and stories for us to share online.

Not in my loaf!
On Thursday 19 April, we’ll be joining GM Freeze at the Defra office to hand in a pledge agianst GM wheat signed by Campaign members and other farmers, bakers, trade unionists and consumers. If you’d like to come along with a loaf of Real Bread, please email Chris today. On 27 May, Take The Flour Back is organising a mass demonstration against the current GM wheat trials at Rothamsted Research in Hertfordshire.

Crofty on the case
A new Real Bread blog post from Campaign member Steven Croft on his day spreading word of The Real Bread Loaf Mark at FoodEx 2012

Discounts
As a part of our ‘thank you’ to paid-up Campaign members, we’ve secure yet more discounts this month. Thanks to Mill Green Museum and Eastcourt Manor for being the latest to join the ever-growing list of supporters with generous offers.

The professionals’ bit

Work you’ve done in the name of the Campaign
Beyond the all-important baking bit, have you done any of the following in the name of the Real Bread Campaign but haven't yet let us know the details:

• Run a Real Bread making lesson in a local school
• Started to supply Real Bread to a farmers' market, veg box scheme, Country Market, school, care home, hospital, meals on wheels service etc;
• Offered a voluntary placement to a up-and-coming professional Real Bread baker?

If so, please drop us an email to let me know the details so we can chalk up another win for the movement and use your story to help inspire more bakers to follow suit. If not done any of these things, would you like to?

Real Bread jobs and voluntary placements
There’s a job going at The Handmade Bakery and the latest bakery to offer a voluntary placement is Lucky 13 Bakehouse in Birmingham. We’ve updated our voluntary placements page, so please have a look if you own a bakery and could take on a volunteer, or are a committed would-be professional who needs to learn new skills to get baking Real Bread for your local community.

Pasty tax
There’s not much profit in Real Bread and many bakers rely on other baked goods to let them carry on being able to continue making local loaves for their communities. A looming threat to this is a planned change to VAT on hot take away food, which will apply to pies and other baked goods that are sold hot. To take part in the HMRC consultation click here. To sign the National Association of Master Bakers’ petition against the proposed changes or to join their march on Downing Street next week, click here.

Local Loaves for Lammas
Even if you missed all of the Real Bread Maker Week calls to action and it’s too late to plan anything for May, now’s your chance to get involved with our next big national event. Please let us know what you’ll be up to by posting details on our calendar now – we’re sending details to the glossy monthly mags this week!

Salt
Alongside attending Consensus Action on Salt and Health’s (CASH) MPs’ reception at the House of Commons, our support for Salt Awareness Week also included this new page on reducing salt in bread.

Events

You can read or add full details of these and more bready activities (including many bread making classes) around the country on our events page and classes on our courses page.

26 April: NAMB march to Downing Street against pasty tax, London
6 May: Somerset and Devon Campaign members’ shared lunch and loaf swap, nr. Exeter
7 May: Brixton Windmill May Day Recycling Parade and Festival
7-13 May: Real Bread Maker Week, nationwide
12 May: Ludlow Spring Festival
12&13 May: National Mills Weekend, nationwide
7&8 July: Trefriw baketogether weekend, Wales – book now!

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 tips from Patrick Ryan of Thoughtful Bread Company and Chris Young from Good Food Channel’s recent twitter #breadmasterclass
• Pictures of e5 bakehouse’s Ben Mackinnon inspiring Making Local Food Our future conference delegates to get baking Real Bread in their local food projects
• Well done to Bread Matters on their gold star award for green tourism.
• Two pages of hot cross bun tips in the Metro from Campaign members Andrew Whitley, Aidan Chapman, Tom Baker and Duncan Glendinning.
• Virtuous Bread would like you to take 30 seconds to help find out if Britain’s bread behaviour is changing

End crust

"What he saw was a Real Bread bakery producing Real Bread for real people."

Campaign member Patrick Moore on Prince Charles' visit to his bakery of More! Artisan

March

What a month it’s been! All copies of Knead to Know have sold out – again (though you can still download the PDF version), we’ve had orders for every packet of Bake Your Lawn wheat, places on our Real Bread workshops are filling up quickly, and The Real Bread Loaf Mark is gaining recognition fast!

Looking forward, Charlotte our volunteer is back on the phone to find bakers keen to pass on Real Bread skills in local schools, we want everyone who can help the people of Britain (or at least some of them) celebrate Real Bread Maker Week to let us know how NOW, and we’d love your help to fill the few remaining places in our workshops.

The Upper Crust

Real Bread workshops in Bristol, Durham, London and Sheffield
The first of our series of four Real Bread workshops with Sustain's Food Coops, taking place this Saturday at Regather in Sheffield, is full. The remaining three in Bristol, Durham, London are filling up fast, so if you are part of a food coop or other local community food access project and would like to book a place or find out more information about the remaining three workshops, please click here now!

Knead to Know
Thank you again to every one of the one-thousand-plus of you who have helped to make Knead to Know a success by buying a copy of the book or PDF. With extra thanks to those of you who responded to our latest readers’ survey, we have published the results here. Highlights include that more than 70% are baking Real Bread for their local communities or are planning to do so, and that at least 22 have started Real Bread enterprises since we published the book. You can still download the PDF version of the book here.

Bake Your Lawn
Great news: In just four weeks since Campaign ambassador Tom Herbert launched this year's Bake Your Lawn, we've distributed all of our wheat seeds! Last year we had enquires from 220 people over the space of four months, of whom around 50 ordered seeds. This year we distributed more than 280 packets of seeds to schools and youth groups in just one month! If you can help local kids with milling or baking later in the year, please drop us a line.

More news

True Loaf
We’ll be sending the next True Loaf to Campaign members in mid-April. If you’ve moved since you received your last copy, please email your new address to us so we can send the new one to the right place.

Not in my loaf!
As you might have seen, we are supporting GM Freeze in the opposition to field trials of genetically modified wheat in Hertfordshire. You can now take action by asking your MP to sign the ‘GM Wheat? No thanks!’ pledge here. Fro more information, click here.

Real Bread Upper Crust Award
Congratulations to Alliance in Partnership on winning our Upper Crust Award for their work supplying Real Bread (purchased from Aston’s Organic Bakery) to schools in Kensington and Chelsea. This was presented by London Food Board chair Rosie Boycott, and the Campaign’s Chris Young as part of the Good Food on the Public Plate Awards, which recognise positive steps taken by public sector caterers in London.

Why go organic?
We’ve just created a brand new page to publish an article arguing the case for organic bread, written exclusively for the Campaign by Soil Association Certification’s Lee Holdstock.

Food Cycle’s Real Bread workshop
Thanks to Vincent Talleu of Aston’s Organic Bakery for giving up an afternoon to share some Real Bread making skills with members of two of the charity Food Cycle’s café teams. We look forward to reporting that they’ve put Real Bread on the Menu soon. If you run a bakery in Bath, Birmingham, Bristol, Cambridge, Clacton-on-Sea, Durham, Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Norwich and would like to help Food Cycle by donating leftover loaves, please click here for details.

Real Bread and religious communities
The Plunkett Foundation is doing a project to encourage communities based around religious establishments (including churches, temples, synagogues and mosques) to embrace local food enterprises in their work. Are you involved in a Real Bread making enterprise that's associated with a religious establishment? Do you teach breadmaking or sell loaves at one? If you do, please email details of where you are and what you do to us and we'll pass them on.

Vote Real Bread!
C'mon kids: time to vote for your Real Bread faves in Food and Travel magazine’s awards to help give them and the Campaign a boost. Relevant categories include: Specialist Retailer of the Year, Book of the Year and Cookery School of the Year.

Real Bread for Seb Co & Bo Jo
Mayor of London Boris Johnson and Seb Coe, Chair of the London 2012 Organising Committee, got a taste of Real Bread when Campaign member Gaye Whitwam presented them with a loaf each during a visit to Sutton Community Farm. The pair were at the farm to launch Campaign sibling project Capital Growth’s Big Dig volunteer gardening weekend on 17 March.

The professionals’ bit

The Real Bread Loaf Mark gaining recognition
Media coverage is helping to make people aware of The Loaf Mark as a Real Bread assurance from bakers, and the bakeries, too. Recent mentions have included St. Kew Harvest in The Guardian, Bluebird Bakery in The York Press, and a story on the first fifty Real Bread Loaf Mark bakeries food trade magazine Food Manufacture. Do your business (and the Real Bread movement) a favour by signing up to use The Real Bread Loaf Mark, and then talking to your local media about taking part in the scheme today!

Real Bread Maker Week
Thanks to all of you who’ve sent details of your Real Bread Maker Week events and offers so far. For the bakers, millers and baking equipment people who haven’t yet let us know how they’ll be helping Britain to celebrate its Real Bread makers from 7-13 May, please let us know NOW! Please add events to our calendar here, or email Chris to discuss any ideas you have for special offers. For more information and ideas, click here.

Real Bread for your local community
To demonstrate how Real Bread Campaign members are helping to make Real Bread available to some of the people most in need, we’re putting together a series of case studies to inspire others to do the same. If you run  a bakery (be that on the high street, out on an industrial estate or with a home-based microbakery) and have begun to supply a farmers’ market, veg box scheme, Country Market, school, care home, hospital, meals on wheels or anything similar since the Campaign launched in November 2008, please drop us a line.

Real Bread jobs and apprenticeships
The latest vacancy to be added is at Aston’s Organic Bakery in north-west London. We’ve also seen an increase in would-be bakers offering their time in exchange for learning professional skills in response to our voluntary apprenticeship plan. If you run a bakery and have a vacancy for a paid professional (or trainee) or a voluntary apprentice, please email us.

Contract opportunity
Real Bread (they didn’t specify the real bit – but it matters to us!) supplier to schools in Staffordshire wanted. Find details of the contract and tendering process here.

Events

You can read or add full details of these and more bready activities (including many bread making classes) around the country on our events page and classes on our courses page.

17 March: Wise Traditions London 2012 - Festival for Traditional Nutrition, London
17 March: Real Bread workshop, Sheffield (FULLY BOOKED)
20 March: Making Local Food Our Future Conference (SOLD OUT)
21 March: Being an artisan baker, Minehead
22 March: Commercialise your baking, Minehead
24 March: Guardian Open Weekend: How to... start a community food business (SOLD OUT)
24 & 25 March: Bread Angels: Learn to set up your own home bakery, London
26 March - 1 April: Salt Awareness Week
28 March: Real Bread workshop, Bristol
30 March: Green Light – sustainable living festival, Leicester
15 April: Real Bread workshop, London

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

• Campaign member Denver Mill receives a visit from BBC2's The Fixer
• BBC news looks at why so many factory loaves are thrown away, and we say what can be done to stop the waste
• BBC Radio 4’s Food Programme 19 February featuring Campaign members Tom Baker of loaf in Birmingham and True Food Coop near Reading
• Campaign member Paul Barker of Cinnamon Square talks to Watford Observer and British Baker about his involvement in our Lessons in Loaf scheme
• Campaign member Emma’s Bread in a Food Coops film about the Real Food Store in Exeter
• Well done to Telegraph Magazine Best Small Shops in Britain awards finalist Holtwhites Bakery
• Congratulations to Shedlight on their RTS Media award for a short film about Virtuous Bread
• Shipton Mill reclaiming the sandwich loaf
• The search for Ultimate Ploughman’s Lunch in Leicestershire
• Real Bread baker Vincent Talleu at work on the Woodhouse loaf
• Real Bread making with Incredible Edible Todmorden
• Rose Prince announces the Pocket Bakery

End crust

Thanks to Colin Basham who spotted this quote on a slate hanging next to a mobile oven in Lüneburg, Germany:

‘Das Brot von gestern ist nicht hart – Ein Tag ohne Brot, das ist hart’, which can be translated as: ‘Yesterday’s bread is not hard – a day without bread, that’s hard.’

February

People of Bristol: we’re just about to close bookings for the Real Bread workshop being hosted for us next Tuesday (21 February) by Square Food Foundation. If you’re a teacher or public sector cook now is your last chance to book your place!

And if you are a Bristol parent who wants you child’s school to start serving and teaching Real Bread, this is your last chance to pass this invitation on.

While we’re on the subject of kids learning about Real Bread – Thanks to Fabulous Baker Brother Tom Herbert for helping to get Bake Your Lawn off to a cracking start, and to cookbook author Katie Caldesi for sharing Real Bread skills with sixteen teachers in London a week or so back.

This past month has seen the rise of Real Bread pass another milestone: the farinaceous fraternity (and sorority – but that’s no good for alliteration) of bakers whose loaves wear The Real Bread Loaf Mark with pride has just passed half a century.

Upper crust

Last chance for Lessons in Loaf in Bristol – booking closes 15 February!
Next Tuesday (21 February), Square Food Foundation in Bristol is hosting a Real Bread workshop for school teachers and public sector cooks. Hosted for us by the Foundation at their brand-new purpose-built training kitchen, it will cover basic Real Bread making skills for the canteen and the classroom. For full details and application form, click here today!

Bake Your Lawn
It’s only three weeks since Campaign ambassador Tom Herbert launched this year’s Bake Your Lawn scheme and already we’ve sent out over two hundred packets of wheat seeds to schools and community youth groups! That’s more than we sent out over the space of four months last year, and we’re running out rapidly. So, if you’re a teacher or youth group leader and want to get growing; or a baker or miller who wants to adopt a school to support on their Real Bread journey from seed to sandwich, please click here now. If you’re in Leicestershire and are taking part already, Leicestershire Food Links would like to hear from you.

Real Bread workshops for food access projects
We’ve teamed up with Sustain's Food Coops to run a series of workshops in March for people from food buying co-operatives and other local community food projects and organisations. We will be running the workshops in Bristol, Durham, Leeds, London and Sheffield. Each will offer an introductory lesson in basic Real Bread making skills to give people the confidence to start baking and making Real Bread available through their work. For more details and the application form click here.

The Real Bread Loaf Mark – the first fifty
Since we launched The Real Bread Loaf Mark last September, home-based microbakeries, high street bakeries, and even a national brand have been lining up to sign up to the scheme. As reported by leading industry publications The Grocer and British Baker, there are now more than fifty bakeries saying to shoppers: ‘if you want Real Bread, look for The Loaf Mark.’ To find out who they are and how to sign up for the scheme, click here

Campaign members

Pop video maker needed
Now we have a Campaign anthem, we need moving pictures to bring it to life in time for Real Bread Maker Week in May. If you’re an animator or other sort of filmmaker and are interested in volunteering to make the clip, please email a link to your showreel / previous work to us.

Competition – closing soon
Want to win The Fabulous Baker Brothers by Campaign ambassador Tom Herbert and his brother Henry; Bread Revolution by Campaign members and Big Bread Experiment stars Duncan Glendinning and Patrick Ryan; and a ‘bag for loaf’ from Bud and Blossom? Then all you have to do is take a photo. For full details, see page eleven of the current True Loaf.

Any questions?
We’ve been asked to include a homebakers' advice page in True Loaf. For this, we need Campaign members to provide a steady supply of questions for each issue. So - what are you dying to ask? There's no such thing as a stupid question as what’s often called ‘common sense’ actually only comes from knowledge and experience. Please email your bready questions to realbread [at] sustainweb.org and we'll pick a handful each issue for our Bakers Angels to answer.

The professionals

Real Bread job vacancies
Since the last Breadcrumbs we’ve received details of new job vacancies from: Dunbar Community Bakery, the loaf in Derbyshire, Gastrono-me in Bury St. Edmunds, The Old Post Office Bakery in London, Shipton Mill in Gloucestershire, and a new community bakery in Wiltshire. For details of these and of how to get your own ad published, click here.

Real Bread Maker Week
Thanks to the bakers, millers and course providers that have contacted us to let us know about the offers and activities they'll be running between 7 and 13 May but we need more! What will you be doing to help Britain to give some love to the Real Bread makers on our high street, in our kitchen cupboards and on the ends of our arms? For more information and ideas, click here.

Bake, accelerate
Congratulations to Campaign member Chalk Hills Bakery on winning the Local Business Accelerators competition for Surrey. The scheme aims to help promising new businesses with support from a local business mentor.  

Bread Angels take flight
More of Campaign member Virtuous Bread’s Bread Angels are flapping their wings. Campaign member The Small Bread Company has just become the first of the heavenly host to take a lease on a bakehouse near Peterborough, whilst another has set up Eventful Bread to run bread-focussed community-based events. Two more are now teaching basic bread courses in Berkshire and Cardiff. 

LoveBread CIC
This new social enterprise is a small Community Interest Company in West Yorkshire aiming to bring the many benefits of Real Bread to Brighouse and Calderdale communities. LoveBread would be interested in taking orders from local shops for Real Bread baked by its volunteers, and in sourcing local ingredients from local suppliers.

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

• North Lincolnshire Council is the latest caterer added to our list of those serving Real Bread in schools. We’ve also sent them a new recipe to replace their current one that includes sugar and marge
• Mission Explore is seeking crowd funding for its latest project: Explore Food, inspired in part by our own Lessons in Loaf and Bake Your Lawn
• Pictures from the recent teachers’ Real Bread workshop at La Cucina Caldesi with Katie Caldesi
• We can’t vouch for all of their education materials (e.g. an industrial loaf video that inexplicably overlooks the use of artificial additives or processing aids in the Chorleywood ‘Bread’ Process), but The Grain Chain is offering a prize of £500 each for four schools to re-equip their kitchens
• Watch the Traditional Cornmillers Guild’s new short film (the password is MillsTCMG)
• Want to socialise through sourdough? Banter over baguettes? Surely Clandestine Cake Club will provide inspiration for more Real Bread baketogethers

End crust

A 1924 collection of bread proverbs from around the world.

January

I hope that you had a great Christmas and New Year.

Diving straight into 2012, as reported in The Times today, next week Campaign ambassador Tom Herbert helps us to launch Bake Your Lawn.  Also next week, Katie Caldesi is hosting a Real Bread workshop for teachers as part of our Lessons in Loaf scheme.

Further ahead, Square Food Foundation is hosting a similar workshop in Bristol; and we want to hear from you if you’d like to help people around the country give some love to their local Real Bread baker, be that one in the back of a cupboard, down their high street,  or on the ends of their arms. Yes, Real Bread Maker Week is back and this time it’s not just about the machines.

And if you’re a Campaign member, you’ll see from the leaflet in the new True Loaf, we’re supporting GM Freeze’s action to stop planned GM wheat trials in Hertfordshire.

Upper Crust

Bake Your Lawn!
On Monday 23 January, Campaign ambassador Tom Herbert launches this year’s Bake Your Lawn scheme. We have wheat seeds for schools and community youth groups and a guide on how to grow it, mill it, bake it, eat it. For more details and how you can get involved if you’re a teacher, youth group leader, baker or miller, click here.

Teachers: learn to bake with TV cook and author Katie Caldesi
Last shout: If you’re a school cook or teacher and want to pass Real Bread skills on in the classroom, Katie Caldesi will get you started. 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, and we only have a couple of places left. Book now!

Helping Bristol put Real Bread on The Menu
On Wednesday 21 February, Square Food Foundation in Bristol is hosting a Real Bread workshop for teachers and public sector cooks. Hosted for us by the Foundation at their brand-new purpose-built training kitchen, it will cover basic Real Bread making skills for the canteen and the classroom. For full details and application form, click here.

Campaign members

True Loaf competition
New True Loaf = new competition. The prizes are the books Bread Revolution by Campaign members and Big Bread Experiment stars Duncan Glendinning and Patrick Ryan; The Fabulous Baker Brothers by Campaign ambassador Tom Herbert and his brother Henry; and a ‘bag for loaf’ from Bud and Blossom. For more details about the latest issue, click here.

Project Artisan
Last year Campaign members will have read about this scheme from Leicestershire family brewer Everards in True Loaf. Tom Baker at loaf in Birmingham did, and is now on the verge of opening a new Community Supported Bakery and cookery school as an Everards tenant.

Course discounts
Don’t forget that many of the courses around the country that we have listed on our site offer discounts to Campaign members.

The professionals

The Real Bread Loaf Mark – join the first 50!
Last call to all Real Bread bakers who fancy a mention in the next bit of media work we’re about to do to promote The Real Bread Loaf Mark. If you bake Real Bread for sale, sign up for the scheme today!

Real Bread Maker Week
May might seem a long way away, but I bet you once thought that about the year 2000, didn’t you? And look where (when) we are now. So, we need your help now so we can let Britain know how the Campaign will be encouraging the nation to get baking and enjoying Real Bread during the week. Ideas include: offering discounts on a Real Bread course; giving a tour of your bakery; visiting a local school as part of our Lessons in Loaf scheme; setting up a drop-off/pick-up point for unloved bread machines. For more information and ideas, click here.

Real Bread Finder amnesty
It's January, which means we're asking all bakers who've listed loaves on our map to double check that they haven't accidentally added a loaf that's not what we call Real Bread (i.e. made without the use of ascorbic acid or any other food additive) and remove it, no questions asked. It's also a chance to make sure your details are up to date, including any new places at which people can buy your Real Bread. To amend your record, click here.

Good Food Network
If you’ve signed up for The Loaf Mark scheme, The Good Food Network now allows you to add it to your profile on their site. For details of how to get on the GFN directory, click here.

Baking class operators
The Wood Fired Oven UK forum is - well, the clue’s in the name, really. Like us, they have an open invitation to anyone running wood-fired oven and/or bakery classes/workshops (especially sourdough) to add details to their site, which you can do here.

Real Bread job vacancies
Artisan Bread Organic in Whitstable and baked DERBY are the latest bakeries to post Real Bread job vacancies on our site. For details, click here.

Sippets

• GM wheat? Not In My Loaf! New Real Bread blog from GM Freeze
• Whilst the rise of Real Bread continues, there’s more bad news for employees of the big bakers – both Warburtons and Hovis owner Premier Foods have announced more staff cuts.
• The Food Standards Agency has issued advice on new gluten labelling legislation.
• Episode 4 of The Fabulous Baker Brothers (25 January) features sourdough.