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Real Bread Week

The annual, international celebration of additive-free bread and the people behind its rise.

15 to 23 February 2025

BAKE Real Bread BUY Real Bread BOOST our charity

Download poster and logos
Real Bread business checklist
What is Real Bread Week?
Get involved
Real Bread for All
Whole lotta loaf
It's not just about sourdough
Rise of the machines
Make some noise!
Limited edition t-shirts aprons and mugs
Share YOUR #WeAreRealBread photos
Please remember the charity behind the hashtag!
How was it for you?
See also

What is Real Bread Week?

Created and run by the Real Bread Campaign since 2010, #RealBreadWeek is the annual, international celebration of Real Bread and the people behind its rise.

Campaign supporters: please download and use the Real Bread Week logo and poster.

BUY>BAKE>BOOST

We run this awareness-raising initiative to focus and brighten the spotlight on our key work of encouraging and helping people to:

BUY Real Bread from local, independent bakeries
BAKE their own Real Bread

We also rattle the collection tin a bit harder for Sustain, to BOOST the charity behind Real Bread Campaign.

Each year, bakeries, baking schools, mills, schools, care homes, youth and other community groups around the world make special loaves and run classes and other activities.

Meanwhile countless people bake at home, some with their children other family members, colleagues or friends, and take to social media with photos of themselves with loaves they've baked or bought.

A crust you can trust

With questions and concerns gathering around ultra-processed food (UPF), the idea of the much-wasted Chorleywood Process loaf may have staled for some people. Real Bread is the delicious, nutritious and additive-free timeless original, with a bright future and trusted heritage dating back perhaps as far as around 14,400 years.

Get involved

There are plenty of ways that you (yes, YOU) can get stuck in - and ideally raise some dough for our charity's work at the same time.

Perhaps you could run a Real Bread:

baking class / course
pizza night
feast / tasting
networking event for floury fiends and grainiacs round your way
social, bringing together friends and neighbours to bake together; chew over what everyone made at home; or chat and eat stuff from the bakery.

Basically, as long as it's in line with the aims of Real Bread Week, whatever works for you and your business / organisation!

Add the details to our calendar

A simpler option is creating (or nominating) a Real Bread as a special for the week.

The more the merrier

Perhaps you could join forces with other Real Bread bakers or other local food/drinks producers or eateries to organise a trail, festival or feast.

How about teaming up with a local community group such as a: school or nursery, youth club, retirement home, Scouts, Guides or other youth organisation, WI, farmers' market, grain network, Slow Food group, religious community...

Real Bread for All

We encourage every bakery to finds ways to make Real Bread available to people in their local community on the tightest budgets. We’re not talking about giving away leftover loaves to a foodbank, but offering fresh bread at a realistically affordable price. Download our free guide.

Whole lotta loaf

While there are larger, better-funded organisations that already focus on promoting wholegrain, we’d love to see more of you making, selling, buying and celebrating wholemeal Real Bread during the week.

It’s not just about sourdough

While all genuine sourdough is Real Bread, not all Real Bread is made by the sourdough process. As long as it’s made without additives, bread leavened with baker’s yeast nestles within our definition of Real Bread – as do unleavened flatbreads. While we tighten the focus for Sourdough September, this week is a celebration of Real Bread more generally.

Rise of the machines

As well as celebrating making Real Bread by hand, Real Bread Week now echoes its origins by inspiring people to dust off and use an underemployed bread machine, or pass it on to someone who will.

Mixing, kneading and shaping dough by hand takes very little of your time and many people find the process therapeutic. Other people discover that the answer to taking control of the food they do (and the additives they don’t) eat and feed to their families is a bread maker.

According to research carried out in 2023 for independent not-for-profit organisation Recycle Your Electricals, there might be around 1.4 million bread machines going unused in UK homes. Rather than asking anyone to shell out for a new machine, the Real Bread Campaign suggests people find a second-hand one from a trusted source, such as some charity shops or a reputable dealer that tests used electricals before selling.

As the cost of basic ingredients and energy to run a bread maker are pence, and the skill required to use one is minimal, adopting one is a very affordable and accessible way of more people being able to enjoy Real Bread.

Make some noise!

Whatever Real Bread Week shenanigans you organise (or get involved in) please share what you do!

Tell people about it in person
Create posters using the Real Bread Week logo
Blog about it
Contact local radio, TV, websites, papers - whatever media outlets you have round your way
Post on social media. The hashtag is #RealBreadWeek and please don't forget to tag us and/or link to our website.
Know a bread lovin' 'celeb' or influencer? Ask them if they want to join, and help spread the word about, the fun.

Loaf’s what you make it*

Real Bread Week is a gift to small business owners, so please grab this marketing opportunity to get some free publicity.

Even if you don’t feel you can do something different/extra for the week, it’s worth taking the punt of reaching out to a local newspaper, radio station, influencer, magazine, website etc. to say something like: ‘see the international Real Bread Week that’s coming up? We’re flying the flag for it on your patch.’

This could bag yourself a whole feature or, at the very least, inclusion in a list of best local bakeries or roundup of events.

*or perhaps ‘seize the dough’.

If you appear in, publish or spot any Real Bread Week media coverage we missed, please do send us the link or (if it's not online) a PDF, pic or scan of the article: realbread@sustainweb.org

Limited edition t-shirts and aprons

Each year, Balcony Shirts produces a limited run of exclusive t-shirts, aprons and mugs, making a doughnation to the Real Bread Campaign for each one sold.

Read full details and buy now

Share your #WeAreRealBread photo

We launched #WeAreRealBread in 2019 to help encourage greater diversity and inclusion in the world of Real Bread. Social media is awash with photos of bread, so this hashtag is to celebrate the people behind the rise of Real Bread.

Buy or bake Real Bread
Post a photo on social media of yourself making, or with, it using #WeAreRealBread alongside other relevant hashtags

If you run a class or bakery team, see if they'd like to be in the photo, too. We also love to see cereal farmers and millers in action.

Remember, this hashtag is for use with pictures that include people, rather than bread on its own!

Send us your photos

We'll be publishing a selection of #WeAreRealBread photos on our site, magazine and social media. If the copyright holder (often the photographer) and person/people pictured are happy for us to do so, please email it to realbread@sustainweb.org

Please remember the charity behind the hashtag!

It's great to see the worldwide popularity of Real Bread Week but the purpose and charity behind it often get left out.

Everyone is very welcome to join in but whenever you refer to Real Bread Week or use our hashtag (in print, social media or elsewhere), PLEASE do one or more of the following:

> Mention that it is run by the Real Bread Campaign
> Link to www.realbreadcampaign.org
> Tag us on social media
> Say how people can support our charity's work

We're @RealBreadCampaign on Instagram and Facebook, and @RealBread on Twitter.

***This especially applies to businesses / PRs using Real Bread Week in the social media / marketing of spreads, kitchen appliances or totally unrelated products/services. Give us props or keep yer hands off our hashtag!***

Bake Real Bread

It's time to take back control of the food that you (and perhaps your family) enjoy.

Not only is making Real Bread great fun, it's also a very affordable way of avoiding the cocktail of additives that turn up in UPF industrial dough products.

We're keen to see more children learning to make Real Bread, whether at home, nursery or in the classroom. 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 Products raised with baking powder / soda fall outside our definition of Real Bread

Buy Real Bread

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

Small, independent, locally-owned bakeries help to:

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

Some offer additional social benefits, from being a place where older people and those 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.

Boost

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 bakers.

Supporter benefits you'll get to enjoy include our exclusive True Loaf magazine; and special offers on Real Bread ingredients, equipment, baking classes and more. Read more about why and how to join us.

Rates start from £24.30 a year.

Make a doughnation

If you'd like to make a one-off - or monthly - doughnation as well as / instead of joining us, you can do so here.

Help us to raise dough

Can your business make a special donation, or collect from your customers, during the week? Maybe you could send a percentage of your total sales, or just from a Real Bread Week loaf/class.

You can send what you raise to us by debit/credit card or PayPal payment via our doughnations page

NB You can't add Gift Aid to donations you collect from other people.

We'll be publishing a roll of honour of people who donate / raise over £100. If you'd prefer your name not to appear on the list, please let us know.

How was it for you?

As a charity, we need to demonstrate that our work is wanted, needed and of benefit.

After Real Bread Week (or you've run / taken part in at least one activity) please give used your feedback about what you did and how we could make improvements for the future.

Real Bread business checklist

As far ahead of Real Bread Week as possible:

Decide your Real Bread Week event/activity and add the details to our calendar.
Create / update your free Real Bread Map listing.
Add Real Bread Week activity to your PR and marketing plan.
Download the Real Bread Week logo and poster.
Schedule social media posts.
Sign up to The Real Bread Loaf Mark scheme.
Download the Real Bread for All guide.
Look at celebrating wholemeal Real Bread in particular.
Consider making a doughnation to (and/or how you might raise funds for) the Campaign.