Real Bread in schools

The Campaign calls for Real Bread to be given its rightful place in our schools - both in the classroom and by putting Real Bread on the Menu.

Between 2009 and 2013, more than 10,000 children in over 120 schools in England learned to bake Real Bread thanks to the Campaign's Lessons in Loaf™ and Bake Your Lawn initiaitives.

The guides are still available.

 Many hands make loaf work

• Real Bread is Food For Life!
• Bread making workshops for teachers
• Lessons in Loaf
• Bakers: teaching in a local school
• Chefs Adopt a School
• Keep Kids Cooking
• Sister projects

Elsewhere on our site:

• Bake Your Lawn
• Lessons in Loaf feedback
• Real Bread on the Menu
• Bread in the School Food Regulations
• Case studies of schools putting Real Bread on the Menu
• Contract opportunities
• The Children's Food Campaign on school food

Lessons in Loaf tradmarked

In January 2016 Sustain, the charity that runs the Real Bread Campaign, tradmarked Lessons in Loaf.

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 will now gain ten points towards the silver and gold Catering Mark.

This is great news for caterers and even better news for their customers who’ll be able to choose and enjoy delicious Real Bread! We hope to see thousands of Food for Life Catering Mark holders going further than once a week by serving Real Bread with every meal and making improvements beyond simply kicking the additive habit.

Read all about Real Bread in the Food for Life Catering Mark at: www.sacert.org/catering/standards

Bread making workshops for teachers

As part of our work to encourage more schools to add Lessons in Loaf™ to their timetables, from July 2009 to June 2013 the Real Bread Campaign organised a series of bread making workshops around the UK.

Led by some of the most well-respected bakers and educators in the country, these were fantastic opportunities for teachers to gain skills and inspiration to pass on to their pupils. Each class covered basic Real Bread dough making by hand, accompanied by advice on different ways to fit bread making into the school day,as well as suggestions for follow-on lessons.

Forthcoming workshops

As the funding for this strand of work ended in June 2013, we have no workshops for school teachers planned but please see:

• our list of Real Bread classes.
• our Together We Rise project

Past workshops

London, Tuesday 15 January 2013

Hosted by Sainsbury's at their test kitchen in support of the Real Bread Campaign’s Lessons in Loaf™ initiative, five teachers attended this workshop. They learned how to make a basic Real Bread dough using just flour (50/50 white and wholemeal flour), water, fresh yeast and a little salt. From this they shaped rolls, small loaves and flatbreads, as well as making bases for fresh vegetable pizzas.

Photos from the workshop: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Some feedback from the teachers:

'I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed the course yesterday.  I learnt loads and am looking forward to getting to grips with bread making in Year 5 and trying to fit it into my home economics club after school. A great idea which was just right after a long day at school.'

'Once again - thanks for helping to organise such a brilliant workshop - I think that I know now what I've been doing wrong and feel much confident.'

London 25 January 2012

In support of the Real Bread Campaign, on Wednesday 25 January Katie Caldesi ran a half day workshop at her Marylebone cookery school La Cucina Caldesi to help sixteen school teachers run Real Bread making classes in their own schools. 

A cookery book author and well-known face to viewers of BBC TV shows including Saturday Kitchen and MasterChef, Katie the session at her cookery school’s purpose-built training kitchen. The teachers learned to make a basic Real Bread dough, plus healthy pizza. 

For pictures from the workshop, click here.

Lessons in Loaf

Lessons in Loaf is a trademark of Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming.

It is the Real Bread Campaign’s scheme of tianing and guidance to encourage people who can bake bread to share this valuable life skill with children in schools.

By 2013, we'd received confirmation that more than 10,000 children at over 120 schools had learned to bake Real Bread thanks to our work. As our guides have been downloaded more than 1500 times, the figure is likely to be much higher.

We thank all of the Real Bread bakers, cookery teachers and other bread makers who have given up their time to run these lessons in local schools in the name of the Campaign.

Guide

The accompanying guide goes beyond the fun and practical life skill of baking, containing lesson plans, recipes, information and ideas to help teachers get children at Key Stage 2 thinking and asking questions about the food they eat, where it comes from and how it is made.

• What
• Contents

See also

• What teachers, pupils and bakers are saying about Lessons in Loaf

Download the free teacher's handbook

 

What

This national scheme works to support Real Bread bakers pass bread making skills on to the next generation in local primary schools.

Where the Campaign has found a professional Real Bread baker volunteering to teach a bread making class, it contacts schools that are local to the bakery to pass on this offer.  In addition, the handbook includes advice to help teachers run Lessons in Loaf without the aid of a professional baker.

Click here for details of the dozens of schools and bakeries that have participated so far.

Contents include

Funding
Responsibilities to be agreed between the school and baker
Criminal Records Bureau checks
Working space
Timings
Example lesson plans
Ingredients
Equipment
Suggested core lessons
Core Lessons
Lesson 1: What is Real Bread? (basic)
Lesson 2: The essential ingredients of Real Bread (Basic)
Lesson 3: Health and safety in the kitchen
Lesson 4: Making Real Bread
Lesson 5: What did we learn?
Further Lessons in Loaf
Lesson 6: How are different loaves made?
Lesson 7: More about flour
Lesson 8: Bread and health
Lesson 9: Real Breads of Britain
Lesson 10: Special Real Breads from around the world
Experiments
Gluten washing experiment
Yeast balloons
Indoor wheat growing
Yeast farming
Further suggestions for curriculum links
Worksheets
Useful books and links

Bakers: teaching in a local school

If you are a professional baker and would like to teach children in a local school how to bake Real Bread, please email realbread [at] sustainweb.org and we'll help you to find a school.

If you in touch with a school already, are planning a lessons already and would like some ideas that could help you and the teacher, please email us and we will send you a copy of our Lessons in Loaf guide.

Click here for details of the dozens of schools and bakeries that have participated so far.

Chefs Adopt a School

October 2011

'Chefs Adopt a School has included bread making within its programme in support of the Real Bread Campaign since 2010. Chefs Adopt a School firmly believes in the holistic teaching of food and cookery and bread making is an excellent way to teach children about food from field to fork. Chefs Adopt a School’s Executive Chef, Idris Caldora MCA, devised a recipe and method that works within the CAAS timetable, not to mention timeframe. The Chefs Adopt a School resource pack was updated to include the bread recipe Idris uses, which is laid out in such a way as to encourage teachers, children and parents to be able to make bread at home. To date, bread making sessions have taken place with over 2000 children at twenty schools.

Chefs Adopt a School is the educational charity run by the Academy of Culinary Arts, which provides experiential education for school children delivered by trained professional chefs. The chefs teach children about food: where it comes from, how to cook it, why we need it and its impact on the environment. They instil knowledge and understanding about health, nutrition, hygiene, cooking skills and the enjoyment of food. Chefs Adopt a School has been established for 21 years and currently reaches over 21,000 schoolchildren each year.'

Click here for details of the schools in which CAAS have taught breadmaking so far.

Find out more at the CAAS website and by following @ChefsAdoptaSch on twitter.

Keep Kids Cooking

Our sister project The Children's Food Campaign is working hard to keep cooking lessons on the school curriculum.

The coalition Government is conducting a review of the National Curriculum. This could result in the current requirement for secondary school children to receive at least some classes in basic cooking skills (such as baking Real Bread) could be lost. Without basic cooking skills, people are forced to rely on processed ready meals or fast food, which is often unhealthy.

The Real Bread Campaign supports Keep Kids Cooking, alongside celebrity chefs including Jamie Oliver, Raymond Blanc, Ainsley Harriott and Gary Rhodes, and respected medical organisations such as the British Medical Association.

Click here to read more about this issue and how you can take action.

Sister projects

In addtion to the Real Bread Campaign, Sustain runs several projects that work on issues of food in the public sector.

• 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.
• The Children's Food Campaign:  fights for good food and real food education in every school; protection for children from junk food marketing; and clear food labelling that everyone, including children, can understand.
• 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.