Knead to Know inspires Britain’s new breed of Real Bread bakers
By Michael Smith (Veshengro)
In just six months since the publication of Knead to Know, over 600 people have turned to the Real Bread Campaign’s book to learn how to make a difference.
People who’ve taken inspiration from Knead to Know to start baking Real Bread for their local communities include:
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Ravi Muniandy in Suffolk baking around 100 loaves a week to supply a Country Market and two independent shops locally.
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‘Chef on a Bike’ Dave Foster of Stocksbridge, Sheffield has twenty regular customers, forty who buy less regularly, and has baked for two country fairs and several other events.
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Mark Woods in the West Midlands has also started a bread club, baking around thirty five loaves twice a week for subscribers.
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Michael Gopfert in Merseyside, who is now baking forty loaves at a time, and has taken on a helper, resulting in many gains for the local community.
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Peter Barabas in south Manchester, who reported that Knead to Know gave him the confidence and the knowledge to start a small scale, subscription-based home bakery.
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Abi Tomlins and friends in Bournemouth are also just starting out, reporting that they’re running a Community Supported Bakery trial called ‘the baker's dozen’ from a suburban flat, where they’re baking twelve loaves of Real Bread a week to deliver to twelve households over a twelve week period.
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Gary Mercer in Surrey has also taken the first step towards starting a bakery, selling his wares at a local school fayre as part of his market research.
Chris Young of the Campaign said: “It’s so exciting to see our book helping to give so many people the confidence to take the first steps towards success in baking Real Bread for their local communities.
Trailblazers in this new wave The Handmade Bakery in Slaithwaite and the E5 Bakehouse in Hackney both started in domestic kitchens and now bake thousands of loaves of Real Bread a week. We now look forward to seeing each of this latest batch of bakers develop in a way that suits them.”
Knead to know is still available from www.realbreadcampaign.org at £10 for Campaign members, and £15 to everyone else.
The Real Bread Campaign is Part of Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming, and is funded by the Big Lottery Fund’s Local Food programme. The Campaign champions loaves produced as locally as possible without the use of artificial additives, and finds ways to make bread better for us, better for our communities and better for the planet.
Knead to Know is is also available from: bakerybits.co.uk; The Bertinet Kitchen, Bath; Books for Cooks, London; Bread Matters, nr. Edinburgh; Denver Windmill, Norfolk; dovesfarm.co.uk; The Eden Project, Cornwall; Loaf Community Bakery, nr Birmingham; Love Loaves, nr. Oxford; The School of Artisan Food, Nottinghamshire; and Virtuous Bread, London.
Current initiatives from the Real Bread Campaign also include:
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The Real Bread Finder: the only online directory dedicated to helping people find where to buy Real Bread locally. Free for bakers to add, and people to search for, places to buy Real Bread locally.
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Lessons in Loaf: A FREE download for teachers on planning hands-on Real Bread making sessions for any age, plus lesson plans to tie the topic of bread in with a range of curriculum subjects at Key Stage 2.
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Real Bread on the Menu: details of workshops to help public sector institutions (such as schools, care homes and hospitals) and food access projects (e.g. co-operative buying groups, community cafes, box schemes) around Britain get baking Real Bread in-house.
I must say that, while I may not be selling the bread that I make at home (as yet), since I got a Bread Machine about a year ago (or is it longer already?) I have not bought a single shop loaf, not even from a “normal” bakery.
When making my own bread there is no flour improver in the flour and who knows what else. It is just the flour, in my case of a mixed bread, rye and wholewheat, yeast, sugar, salt, water and olive oil.
The claim that some people make that bread made at home and especially in a bread maker (bread machine) does not last long is not true. The bread that I make in my machine has, so far, never gone moldy as yet and neither does it go really stale.
If I can help it I will never buy a loaf from a store again unless I know how it was baked, by who and which what kind of ingredients.
© 2011
