Real Bread on The Menu

The Campaign works towards a future in which everyone has the chance to choose Real Bread. An element of this is Real Bread being made available on school, hospital, care home and other public sector menus.

Do you make / serve Real Bread?
To help inform and inspire other public sector caterers, we'd love to hear from you if you offer additive-free bread to your customers/diners. Please email us.

Public sector procurement

The Campaign believes that, rather than additive-laden, ultra-processed industrial dough products, taxpayers' money should be invested in making delicious, nutritious Real Bread bread available on public sector menus.

Here are the Campaign's proposals of minimum standards for bread served in schools, hospitals, care homes, council office canteens, prisons etc.

We'd love to hear from councils and public sector caterers that use these, or similar, standards.

We understand that it might not always be possible to meet all of these straight away, but we urge caterers to incorporate as many as possible to their ethical/healthy/sustainable food policies and work towards meeting them all as soon as possible.

The Real Bread Campaign's proposed criteria

Beyond the legal requirement for the composition of bread products to comply with the Bread and Flour Regulations 1998 (as amended):

Bread must meet the Real Bread Campaign’s basic definition: made without the use of any chemical raising agents, 'processing aids' or other additives.
To support local, skilled employment and economy, the preference for supplied bread is to buy it from a local, independently-owned, SME Real Bread bakery.
The preference is for wholemeal bread, which has a higher fibre and natural micronutrient content than products made from white flour.
The preference is for flour and bread products that are produced from wheat grown and milled as locally as possible to the point of serving.
The preference is for certified organic Real Bread and flour.
The sodium /salt in bread should not exceed the Food Standards Agency’s target maximum.
The preference is for bread to be produced without the use of added fat/oil or sugars, neither of which is necessary. (This provision wouldn't apply to enriched breads such as brioche, focaccia etc.)*

*If the caterer does choose to permit the use of fat/oil, they might set a maximum amount and stipulate the type(s) that can/can't be used - no palm oil/fat (which might be labelled simply as 'vegetable'), or no animal fats, for example.

Why get Real?
How?
The bottom line
Hidden costs of factory loaves?
Why become a local loaf lover?
Better bred bread
Real Bread is Food For Life!
Bread in the School Food Regulations
Whole school approach
Past activity and success

Why get Real?

School pupils, hospital patients, older people, and people who rely on food access projects are arguably the members of our society most in need of healthy, nutritious food. Their ability to choose whether or not to eat the food offered by such institutions and organisations can be limited. For some people, public sector catering is their best - perhaps only - opportunity to eat a delicious, balanced, healthy meal.

More and more caterers are taking positive steps in terms of health, nutrition and sustainable/ethical sourcing, investing time, effort and their budget into less but better meat; sustainably-caught fish; local, organic, fresh fruit and veg; more whole grains and pulses...

The Real Bread Campaign encourages caterers to pay the same care and attention to another fundamental staple food. To give your customers a strong, positive message about the bread you offer, it’s time to get Real.

Making Real Bread in-house offers school cooks opportunities to learn extra skills and knowledge as part of their personal and professional development. This can contribute to enhanced job satisfaction and even overall mental wellbeing.

How?

We encourage public sector caterers to make Real Bread from scratch in-house, or buy it in from local, independent bakeries.

The bottom line

Though an additive-laden factory loaf might have a lower price at till than Real Bread from a local bakery, it still represents great value. Just think how many sandwiches a loaf of Real Bread can make, or the significant contribution to a meal that a freshly-made roll or hunk of focaccia makes.

The basic ingredients of Real Bread (flour, water, yeast, salt) are inexpensive and labour time short - cooks are free to carry out other tasks during the mixing, rising/proving and baking stages.

Hidden costs of factory loaves?

The manufacture of additive-laden industrial dough products can involve larger doses of salt, yeast, salt and perhaps sugar than required in Real Bread baking. Undeclared added enzymes and a spraying of an anti-fungal agent, such as calcium propionate, might also be used.

Though all legally-permitted 'processing aids' and other additives have been declared safe, each has only been tested in isolation over a relatively (in terms of human history) short period. What is not known is what effect the cocktail of additives we consume might have on the human body over time.

Opinions of what is 'safe' can change, and history is littered with substances that were once defended by the food industry but later withdrawn or even banned. For example, despite concerns over chemical bleaching of bread flour having been raised since at least as far back as the 1950s, it was only in 1999 that this long-established practice was banned in the UK; and even though alarm bells have been ringing since 1984 over trans fats (which raise the type of cholesterol in the blood that increases the risk of heart disease) found in partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, use of this synthesised substance is still permitted in industrial loaves and other.

Why become a local loaf lover?

A local loaf of Real Bread represents true value for money.

Making Real Bread on site, or nearby, adds skills and further meaning to jobs for members of your own local community and perhaps even offer new employment opportunities. Wages for local people will be of greater benefit to the local economy and money spent with local businesses is more likely to be reinvested locally than if used to purchase loaves from a supplier based further afield.

Water accounts for a large percentage of bread’s weight. It stands to reason that the water transport costs (financial and environmental) of making bread at or close to the place it is eaten will be lower than if transporting this water by road over greater distances in finished loaves

Better bread bread

Beyond ditching unnecessary additives, you can choose Real Bread made with any or all of the following:

Wholemeal, or at least higher fibre flour.
Salt levels at or below the Food Standards Agency’s 1% target.
Lower levels of (or no) fat in plain bread.
No added sugar in plain bread.
Organic ingredients.
Locally produced flour.
Fairtrade ingredients in enriched breads.

Real Bread is Food for Life!

In September 2013, the Real Bread Campaign was proud to announce that its work helped to ensure that schools, hospitals and all other caterers serving Real Bread will earn points towards silver and gold Food for Life Catering Mark certification from The Soil Association.

Caterers able to show that they serve what the Campaign defines as Real Bread (simply that it was made using no so-called processing aids or any other artificial additives) at least once a week can gain points towards the silver and gold Catering Mark.

This is great news for caterers and even better news for their customers, who are able to choose and enjoy delicious Real Bread! We encourage Food for Life Catering Mark holders to above and beyond the minimum requirement by serving Real Bread with every meal and making improvements beyond simply kicking the additive habit.

Bread in the School Food Regulations

The School Food Regulations (2014) came into effect in England in January 2015.

At the time, Real Bread Campaign cooridnator Chris young said: "It's great that they recognise the importance of bread but sadly they don't guarantee all children will be eating Real Bread with every meal."

The Real Bread Campaign's main concern is that neither the Regulations or governmental guidance require Real Bread to be served, leaving children at risk of being offered additive-laden products instead.

Once this glaring oversight is rectified, our remaining concerns are that the Regulations:

Merely state that bread must be available every day, rather require it to be served with every meal.
Do not prevent caterers to charge extra for bread, creating a further barrier to all children eating it.
Require it to be served with 'no added fat or oil' but don't restrict or prohibit fat/oil being used as an ingredient.
Only steer caterers towards serving starchy foods 'made with or containing whole unprocessed grains', rather than specifically encouraging them to serve wholemeal Real Bread.

On this last point, while wholemeal bread has a legal definition, permitting only wholemeal flour to be used to make it, wholegrain has no such definition. As we reported in A Wholegrain of Truth? and subsequent news items, manufacturers can get away with using the term 'wholemeal' to market loaves with very little wholemeal flour.

You can read what the Real Bread Campaign would like the Regulations to require below.

Whole school approach

In what ways are you connecting the Real Bread children eat at lunchtime (and perhaps in their breakfast and after school club) with what they learn in and beyond the classroom?

Our Bake Your Lawn grow-a-loaf guidebook suggests Lessons in Loaf that use bread as a topic across the curriculum.

See also

A breaducation (Grow Your Own Playground / Lessons in Loaf London)
Seed to sandwich in Shaky Toon (Comrie Primary School)
Bakers’ bush (Greenside Primary School)
Class act (Adopt a School)
From seed to sourdough (Hackney School of Food)
Toast for good health (Best Food Forward at The School of Artisan Food)
Playing fields of wheat (Holy Trinity Primary Academy)

Past activity and success

During its first four years, the Campaign exceeded its target of helping to ensure that 100 public sector institutions put Real Bread on The Menu.

Our work between 2009 and 2013 also saw more than 10,000 children benefitting from our Lessons in Loaf and Bake Your Lawn projects.

Other Sustain projects that worked on issues of food in the public sector included.

Good Food for our Money: calls on government to introduce mandatory health, animal welfare, ethical and environmental standards for the food purchased with your taxes.
Good Food on the Public Plate: a London Food Board flagship project that works with London's schools, hospitals, universities and large public sector employers to help increase the amount of sustainable food used in the public sector.

Training

Between July 2009 and June 2013, the Real Bread Campaign arranged workshops to help public sector canteens and local food access / community food charities and not-for-profit projects put Real Bread on The Menu.

Led by some of the most well-respected bakers and educators in the country, these were fantastic opportunities for cooks working in such institutions, companies or organisations that don't bake their own Real Bread but which are equipped and committed to start doing so.

Each workshop comprised the whys and hows of making Real Bread available through their work, and included an introductory lesson in basic Real Bread making skills to give people confidence to get baking.

Past training events

Crumb Together: Real Bread workshop for community cafes/enterprises
A workshop on 25 June 2013 hosted by Ethical Eats, The Better Health Bakery, The Hornbeam Bakers' Collective and the Real Bread Campaign. The aim was to help community cafés, caterers and food projects to make Real Bread available to their customers, either by baking it themselves or buying from a local, independent bakery.

Real Bread for food co-ops
In March and April 2012, the Real Bread Campaign teamed up with sibling Sustain project Food Coops to run a series of regional workshops for people representing:

food buying co-operatives registered with Food Coops
other local food access / community food charities/projects.

Each workshop provided an introductory lesson in basic Real Bread making skills to give people the confidence to start baking and making Real Bread available through their projects.

Manchester 26 May 2012

Venue: Chorlton High, Chorlton
Tutor: Cracking Good Food
Time: 10am-2pm

15 April 2012, London
In support of the Campaign's work, Pilar Lopez and co. of The Hornbeam Bakers' Collective kindly arranged an exclusive session of their frequent Real Bread workshops at The Hornbeam, E17. The eight attendees included people from St. Hilda's East Community Centre, The Hive Veg Bag Scheme, Lea Court Food Family, True Food Community Co-op, Backyard Food Group, and Mind, Body & Soul.

Pilar said 'It was brilliant. We had a great time and people were very engaged and baked beautiful loaves and rolls and good pizza.'

Martine of Mind, Body and Soul said: 'The class at Hornbeam was excellent and cleared up a lot of the problems I'd been having (as the cook here said 'it's bread you could kill with'), basically too much extra flour, fear of wet hands and not getting it out of the tin and turning it over to cook through. The best for me though was being in the presence of Pilar - an inspired soul. Thanks again for all you're doing.'

30 March 2012, Durham
Seven people from Come Dine at Ours, Durham Food Co-op, Fruitful Durham, Alington House Community Café and Transition Durham/Durham Local Food Group came along to this Food Coops Real Bread workshop hosted by St. Antony's Priory, and run by 'The Bread Lady' Lesley Suddes.

28 March 2012, Bristol
Hosted by Square Food Foundation, the second of our workshops funded by Sustain's Food Coops project was attended by five people from Lockleaze Larder, Weston-super-Mare Food Buying Group, Fishponds Co-op and Food For All Co-operative. You can see pictures from the event on the Food Coops facebook page.

17 March 2012, Sheffield
Hosted by Regather and run by Chris Baldwin from Cat Lane Bakery, this was the first of a run of Real Bread workshops funded by Sustain's Food Coops project.

In all, ten people from the food-buying co-operatives Regather, Chesterfield Food Hub and HebVeg learned Real Bread making skills. You can see Chris Baldwin's pictures from the workshop here.

12 March 2012, London
Real Bread Campaign member Vincent Talleu of Aston's Organic Bakery passed on Real Bread skills to five members of the charity Food Cycle.

Feedback:

"I just wanted to extend our thanks for yesterday. Everyone really enjoyed themselves and I must say that the bread we made was absolutely lovely! Please pass our thanks on to Vincent the Master Baker! He was amazing and such a great instructor."

"Likewise, thanks very much to both of you for coming down to the cafe, it was really enjoyable, informative and felt like a very professional operation. I look forward to making some tasty bread in the coming weeks :)"

You can see photos here.

9 March 2011, London
Our first Real Bread public sector bread making workshop a great success. Generously hosted by Greenwich Co-operative Development Agency, Paul Rhodes of the eponymous artisan bakery and his head baker Yann Legallais kindly gave up their day to pass bread making skills on to thirteen would-be bakers from public sector kitchens. Attendees included primary school caterers, council catering managers, university chefs, and food access project caterers. The morning consisted of learning about sourdough starters, making tin loaves, pizza dough, and whole wheat batards. After a lunch of delicious pizza made by the attendees themselves, the afternoon continued with rolling and shaping skills as well as various finishing techniques. At the end of the day, Tracey Simmons from Pabulum Catering discussed how her organisation already bakes Real Bread in all of its school kitchens and what kind of time, labour, and cost considerations are involved in implementing Real Bread making.

Feedback from some of the participants:

"I was chuffed to take home my well risen crusty loaf! Thanks for the experience."

"The hands on making of loaves and being able to tap into the knowledge of Paul and Jan were highlights. Format worked well; it was good to have access to master bakers and to be able to eat the bread for lunch. Thank you!"

"Brilliant! Packed with much more than I thought, very thorough, great quality teaching. I feel more confident about baking bread. Very inspiring; I can't wait to bake my first loaf. I will pass info I've learned onto my co-bakers."

"Great, informative introduction to breadmaking. Venue is a smashing location for the purpose."

"The venue was ideal for a practical workshop. The demonstrations were great and I liked the opportunity to have a go at bread making with the assistance from an expert bread maker on hand. The workshop has given me the confidence to pass on the knowledge I gained."

Pictures from the day.

Bron Wolfe's blog on the day.

15 December 2010, Shipton Mill, Gloucestershire
As part of our community and public sector work, we secured up to twelve places on baking classes over two days with master baker Clive Mellum of Campaign member Shipton Mill in Gloucestershire. One project, Family Kitchen in Islington,

December 2010, Talgarth, Powys
Thanks to Peter Cook of SC Price and Sons in Ludlow for sharing some of his experience with the gang at Talgarth Mill in Powys. In conjunction with restoring the town’s watermill, the group are also planning to start a Community Supported Bakery.

Update - The Bakers' Table at Talgarth Mill opened in August 2011.

September 2009 - late 2010, Bedale, Yorkshire
The Campaign project officer provided producers at Keo Films information and introductions to Real Bread experts during the production of what became BBC2's The Big Bread Experiment. Campaign members involved included Duncan Glendinning and Patrick Ryan of The Thoughtful Bread Company as the fledgling bakery's main guides, plus Dan McTiernan of The Handmade Bakery and Andrew Whitley of Bread Matters. Update Bread...Actually! opended in June 2010.

Panary supported the Campaign's mission by offering public sector cooks a generous 30% discount on selected courses.

Case studies

Public sector
We have published case studies of good work being done in schools, universities, prisons and hospitals.

If you would like us to add your own examples of good practice when it comes to the bread you serve in a public sector institution, please email realbread [at]sustainweb.org

Food access
We have also published details of people who are tackling issues of food access by setting up their own microbakeries, often baking in the own homes. You can read their stories here and here.

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