Real Bread Campaign

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Real Bread Week is the annual, international celebration of supporting your local, independent Real Bread bakery and baking your own.

#RealBreadWeek will return 23 February to 3 March 2019

Get ready for #SourdoughSeptember

Find details of local Real Bread activities (and add details of your own) year round on our events calendar

Real Bread Campaign supporters can login to download:

What is Real Bread Week?

Launched by the Real Bread Campaign in 2009*, this is the annual, international celebration of Real Bread and people who make it. Its three aims are to encourage and help people to:

  • Buy Real Bread from local, independent bakeries
  • Bake their own Real Bread at home
  • Join the Real Bread Campaign

Each year, bakeries and baking schools in the Real Bread Campaign supporter network around the world organise hold classes, feasts and other events and activities.

Bigging up little bakeries

It's time to kick the additive-laden industrial loaf habit and support YOUR local Real Bread baker!

Small, independent, locally-owned bakeries help to:

  • support more jobs per loaf for people in your local community - skilled jobs at that
  • keep more money circulating in your local economy, helping to keep your high street alive

They may also offer social benefits, from being a place where older people at risk of isolation can see a friendly face and stop for a chat, to those that are set up to offer training and employment opportunities for people facing one of a range of challenges.

Don't be fooled by so-called 'artisan' loaves turning up on supermarket shelves: insist on the real deal.

Doughy digits

We're particularly keen to see more children learning to bake Real Bread, whether at home, in a bakery, baking school, nursery or in the classroom.

Not only is this great fun, but it's a way helping them to avoid all of the artificial additives that turn up in industrial loaves. It can also be a way of steering them towards healthier food - you'd be amazed at the number of children who 'don't like wholemeal' but love it when it was lovingly made by their own mitts.

NB The week isn't about cake or loaves raised with baking powder / soda. See our defintion of Real Bread

Join the campaign

The best way to support our charity's work is to join the Real Bread Campaign!

You don't have to be a baker to join us - in fact, the majority of our supporters aren't.

Support starts from £22.50 a year, that's LESS THAN £2 A MONTH. 

As a thank you, we'll send you an exclusive magazine each quarter and have arranged more than 100 special offers on Real Bread ingredients, equipment, baking classes and more.

Read more about why and how to join, including the benefits your receive, here.

Get involved!

Find details of local Real Bread activities (and add details of your own) on our events calendar

How are YOU celebrating Real Bread Week this year?

Whether you're a teacher, professional or amateur baker (or even a non-baker), there are plenty of ways to help people in your local community enjoy Real Bread...and maybe even raise dough for the Campaign at the same time.

Even better if you team up with local good food organisations and/or other small-batch food and drink producers to make a real party of it.

Here are a few more ideas of events and activities. You could organise a Real Bread:

  • beginners’ baking workshop
  • tasting dinner or pizza night – perhaps in association with a local pub or eatery
  • lunchbox masterclass to share all the great Real Bread alternatives to soggy factory loaf sarnies with parents at a local school
  • club event to bring friends colleagues and neighbours together to bake
  • networking event for fellow breadheads

The more the merrier

Perhaps you could involve a community group such as your local:

  • School
  • Youth club
  • Scouts, Guides or other local youth organisation
  • WI group
  • Farmers' market
  • Country Market
  • Slow Food group

If you are planning a class or other public event/activity, please add details to our events calendar NOW!

Limited edition t-shirts and aprons 2018

These are no longer available.

In support of the Real Bread Campaign, Balcony Shirts sold limited-edition t-shirts and aprons from Monday 5 February to Sunday 11 March.

The exclusive, collegiate-style, Team Read Bread design is available on organic, Fair Wear grey or royal blue t-shirts, and natural, fairly-traded aprons, only from balconyshirts.co.uk

Each is priced at £15, with Balcony Shirts doughnating £3 per apron and £4 per t-shirt to Sustain towards the Real Bread Campaign.

This exclusive design is only available from 5 February to 11 March 2018, after which no more will be produced or sold...

What's going on near me?

Find details of local Real Bread activities (and add details of your own) on our events calendar

When you join in the fun, please share your #RealBreadWeek photos and stories on Twitter

You can also post photos and tales on the Real Bread Campaign Facebook wall.

Gilchesters' Real Bread Week giving

***THIS HAS ENDED***

For every bag of flour or Real Bread Week Gift Box purchased from the Gilchesters website between 24 February and 4 March, the miller will doughnate 10% to the Real Bread Campaign.

WIN with Doves Farm on Twitter

***THESE COMPETITIONS HAVE ENDED***

The Campaign has teamed up with Doves Farm to run a Twitter competition each.

Follow @RealBread and @DovesFarm, then you can enter:

Competition 1

Tweet a photo of your favourite Real Bread with the message: Here’s my favourite #RealBread @dovesfarm. I’d love to win @realbread’s Slow Dough book. #RealBreadWeek

The prize is a copy of Slow Dough: Real Bread by Chris Young and the bakers of the Real Bread Campaign (RRP £20)

Competition 1 is run by Doves Farm with a prize from the Real Bread Campaign

Terms and Conditions

Competition 2

Tweet your 1 minute #dayintheloaf video clip of you baking Real Bread with the message: My #RealBreadWeek #DayInTheLoaf to win a @dovesfarm ancient grains hamper from @realbread

The prize is a Doves Farm Ancient Grains Hamper (RRP £50)

Competition 2 is run by the Real Bread Campaign with a prize donated by Doves Farm

Terms and Conditions

  • To be a valid entry, your tweet must be worded as above. The attached video must be one you have made yourself (or someone has made of you) of you baking or otherwise celebrating Real Bread
  • The winner will be drawn from valid tweets posted between 00:01 on 24 February and 23:59 on 4 March from a Twitter account that follows both @dovesfarm and @realbread
  • You can enter as many times as you like
  • You can enter from anywhere in the world but the prize will only be posted to a UK address
  • The organisers’ decision is final and no correspondence will be entered into
  • The prize comprises: An 18" wicker hamper, Doves Farm bread recipe booklet, wholemeal spelt flour 1kg, white spelt flour 1kg, wholemeal rye flour 1kg, white rye flour 1kg, Kamut khorasan flour 1kg, einkorn flour 1kg, emmer flour 1kg, buckwheat flour 1kg, and a bread proving banneton.

Make some noise!

Whatever Real Bread Week shenanigans you get up to, please share what you do!

  • Tell people about it in person
  • Put up posters
  • Blog about it
  • Contact local radio, TV, websites, papers - whatever media outlets you have round your way
  • Tweet - the hashtag to use on Twitter is #RealBreadWeek and please don't forget to link to our website

Real Bread Campaign supporters can login to download:

Who took part? Share your stories, stats and photos

As part of a charity, we need to show the positive effect our work has.

Please help us by dropping us a very short line after your event/activity to say:

  • What you did
  • Who and how many people took part
  • What they (and you) got out of it - ideally a direct quote from a participant and/or from you on how it helped your business or organisation

Please also send us a photo or two of people getting involved in Real Bread Week.

We need:

  • original, large/ high resolution photos
  • pictures of people in action, doing stuff, rather than just of loaves or people standing there holding them
  • your assurance that we have permission to publish the photos from both the photographer and the person/people in the picture - in the case of anyone under 18 please confirm a parent/legal guardian's permission

Please email this to: realbread [at] sustainweb.org

Raising dough to do good

Real Bread Week is an initiative of the Real Bread Campaign, part of the food and farming charity Sustain.

We currently receive no grants, advertising or sponsorship for Real Bread Week or any of the rest of our campaigning and project work.

In order for us to keep doughing good, we need to keep raising money to do it.

Can we count on your support?

Great!

First off

Please remember to link back to www.realbreadcampaign.org whenever you refer to Real Bread Week - in print, online or social media.

Please also include @RealBread in any #RealBreadWeek Twitter posts.

***This goes especially for businesses using our charity's #RealBreadWeek as a marketing opportunity!***

Join us

The best way to support our charity's work is to join the Real Bread Campaign!

Make a doughnation

If you'd rather make a one-off donation than joining us, you can do so here.

Show us the money!

If you run a fundraising event or activity during Real Bread Week, it would be great if you could send what you raised to us by the end of May, please. You can do this in two ways:

  1. For amounts under £100, please send a cheque: made payable to Sustain (NOT the Real Bread Campaign) and sent to us at Sustain, Development House, 56 - 64 Leonard Street, London EC2A 4LT
  2. For amounts over £100, please email us for our bank details: realbread [at]sustainweb.org

We'll be publishing a roll of honour of all fundraisers. If you'd prefer your name not to appear on the list, please let us know.

Recipes

We've published some great ones - including a fougasse - in our book Slow Dough: Real Bread.

There are more in the recipes section of our website.

See also:

What is...

National Mills Weekend
Great bread starts with great flour, so it's no coincidence that we time Real Bread Week to coincide with National Mills Weekend..

Whether you're baking at home for yourself, or baking Real Bread for other people in your local community, there are many benefits to seeking out a local traditional flour mill.  These include:

  • Getting delicious, nutritious, stoneground flour direct from the producer
  • Buying flour that has been produced by wind or water power - two genuinely sustainable and environmentally sound sources of energy
  • Supporting an enterprise that is owned and run by local people - and in some cases will be a co-operative and/or charitable institution
  • Helping to safeguard local heritage for future generations
  • A fun and educational family day out

National Mills Weekend is run by the Mills Section of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings.  Many of the mills that are open to visitors are members of the Traditional Cornmillers Guild, and will be running activities to help you get the best out of making Real Bread with traditionally-milled stoneground flour.

nationalmillsweekend.co.uk

Craft Bakers' Week
This annual event is run by the Craft Bakers Association and Scottish Bakers to promote their members and baking as a career.

Their members range from one-off, small, local, independent bakeries, to regional and even national chains of baked product shops.While some only make what the Campaign calls Real Bread (and in some cases even support the Campaign as well), others use artificial additives.

British Sandwich Week
‘The people of Britain need to be reminded that bread isn’t just something to keep your fingers dry when eating a sandwich.’ Andrew Wheeler, Eat Britain! 101 Great British Tastes

We love a good sandwich, us! Of course the fundamental prerequisite for a good sandwich is Real Bread. An unusual filling is all well and good but if the slices betwixt it lies are pap laced with artificial additives, well...

The choice of Real Bread is up to you, be it white, wholemeal, granary or whatever takes your fancy; leavened with commercial yeast or sourdough starter; and baked by a professional or at home in the oven or bread machine.

It's time to seize sandwich supremacy by keeping it REAL!

National Bread Week
We've been unable to find out who's behind National Bread Week in April or their aims, though it seems originally to have been started as a marketing campaign by one of the industrial loaf manufacturers.

Still, it's a great opportunity to bake a loaf, take a Real Bread making class or support your local independent Real Bread bakery to get warmed up for Real Bread Week.

World Bread Day
Since 2006, a German-speaking food blogger known online as Zorra has encouraged people to bake a loaf on - not before and not after - 16 October and write a blog post about it and it alone.

Again, another great excuse to bake a loaf of Real Bread.