It’s Lammas, so ready, bready, dough!

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

On and around August 1st the Real Bread Campaign is helping people across the United Kingdom to celebrate Real Bread by baking or buying delicious Local Loaves for Lammas.

This is the fourth year in which the Campaign has rallied Britain’s Real Bread champions around this ancient harvest festival to help more people discover or rediscover the joys of local loaves.

As a mere 13% of us make Real Bread at home¹, this Lammas the Campaign is focusing on encouraging more people to roll up their sleeves and get baking, preferably with locally-produced flour. To get them started, Campaign co-founder Andrew Whitley of Bread Matters has created a special recipe for a Lammas loaf. People can find this and more Real Bread recipes at www.realbreadcampaign.org

Andrew said: ‘The word Lammas might be old, but locally-baked Real Bread is the future! Every week, we hear from more and more people who have turned their backs on bland, additive-laced industrial loaves from distant factories in favour of flavoursome all-natural bread from local bakeries or their own ovens.’

• Local loaf lovers can also visit the Campaign website to find details of:

• Lammas events, activities and offers run by Real Bread bakers and traditional mills

• Real Bread making classes and courses

• Local places to buy Real Bread

The Real Bread Loaf Mark. Want Real Bread? Then look for The Loaf Mark, the at-a-glance assurance from a baker that a loaf is what the Campaign calls Real Bread.

• Independent flour millers

• Competitions to win bread making classes, books and more

Part of Sustain: the alliance for better food and farming, and funded by the Big Lottery Fund’s Local Food programme, the Real Bread Campaign champions locally-produced, 100% additive-free loaves, and finds ways to make bread better for us, better for our communities and better for the planet. Membership of the Real Bread Campaign is open to everyone who cares about the state of bread in Britain.

Taking its name from the Old English word for loaf mass, a traditional Lammas highlight was eating bread baked with grain from the year’s first harvest.

Key current initiatives from the Real Bread Campaign:

• 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, local places to buy Real Bread.

• 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.

• Real Bread on The Menu: the Campaign’s scheme encouraging more public sector institutions (including schools, care homes and hospitals) and food access projects (e.g. co-operative buying groups, community

• cafes, box schemes) around Britain to offer Real Bread.

• Knead to Know: the Real Bread starter: the guide to starting a Real Bread enterprise in your local community. Available as a PDF download.

Local Food has been developed by a consortium of 15 national environmental organisations, and is managed on their behalf by the Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts (RSWT). Supported by the Big Lottery Fund's Changing Spaces programme, Local Food has distributed grants to a variety of food related projects to make locally grown food more accessible. www.localfoodgrants.org

The Royal Society of Wildlife Trusts (RSWT) is a registered charity, incorporated by Royal Charter, to promote conservation and manage environmental programmes throughout the whole of the UK. It has established management systems for holding and distributing funds totalling more than £20 million annually to environmental projects across the UK.

The Big Lottery Fund’s Changing Spaces programme was launched in November 2005 to help communities enjoy and improve their local environments. The programme funds a range of activities from local food schemes and farmers markets, to education projects teaching people about the local environment.

The Big Lottery Fund, the largest of the National Lottery good cause distributors, has been rolling out £2 million in Lottery good cause money every 24 hours to health, education, environment and charitable causes across the UK. www.biglotteryfund.org.uk.

The Sheepdrove Trust also provides generous annual funding to the Campaign.

The Campaign further relies upon membership fees and public donations to continue its work leading the rise of Real Bread in Britain.

Very few things are better than real bread; bread that is made with “real” flour and not with stuff that is “enhanced” with this and that (mostly chemicals) and it is not difficult to make your own bread at home.

Unless you buy from a local artisan baker who uses “pure” flour then even from a bakery your loaf may have the same chemical ingredients as the sponge stuff you buy in the supermarket. Flour improver is listed in many bakeries as an ingredient and, at times, also preservatives. What for?

I invested in a bread machine – and it was but a small investment as it was one from Lidl – and I have never looked back since and not bought a loaf of bread since either.

However, I have to say that I no longer bake the bread in the machine but just use it for kneading and the proving process and then transfer the dough into a loaf tin and bake it in the oven. Much better result. And real bread from which I know that it has no chemicals in it, just flour, even though the latter is store bought. The ingredient list does state, however, only flour and no other things.

If one would really want to go all the way then either locally milled flour and even real yeast would be the way to go, but the simpler way of buying the flour and the yeast also results in great tasting and nutritious bread. Give it a try!

© 2012

1ICM online poll of 2038 British adults aged 18+, conducted 16 – 17 May 2012 for May Gurney.

Full Disclosure Statement: The GREEN (LIVING) REVIEW received no compensation for any component of this article.

Swap wholewheat bread for white bread

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

The year 2010 was the first year that Americans have spent more on wholewheat bread than they have on processed white bread. About time too. I have no records of how things are in Britain but the Real Bread Campaign, as far as I know, is rather busy.

If anything to go by watching the bread isles of the supermarkets and people's shopping carts the great majority of bread is still white sponge garbage that, for some unknown reason, is referred to as bread.

On the other hand, the sales of bread flour is going rather well, from what I have seen, and thus one could surmise that home baking of real bread is going on in many homes.

Get on this bandwagon to reap the benefits of more fiber, protein, vitamins, minerals and healthy fats. Just make sure that any “wholegrain” product has “wholewheat flour” listed as its first ingredient and, as always, be mindful of added sugars and preservatives in the ingredients list. Also, beware of flour enhancers, thus named, in store bought wholewheat bread. Flour enhancer is an additive to make it last longer, etc. You don't need it, especially not when you make your own.

One fun way to add more whole wheat to your diet – and save some cash – is by making your own bread at home.

If you don't want to spend time kneading the dough, and al that, get a bread makers, a bread machine. The bread it nearly as good as oven baked and it also does last at least a week when being used; not that it will ever last that long.

Many years ago I used to make bread at home the old-fashioned way by kneading the dough by hand, letting it rise, kneading it again, etc., and, because of lack of time, I went to buying, though still wholemeal and wholegrain bread from bakeries and from the bakery sections in supermarkets.

The I decided, because it was rather cheap, to get a bread maker, a bread machine, from Lidl here in the UK when they had it on offer for less than the equivalent of $45 and it was a big tin machine. As far as I am concerned this was the best investment I have ever made, or at least one of the best.

The machine is in use at least twice during the week with me and the bread, after a little trial and error, is great and I would dread to have to go back to store-bought bread, even if it were wholegrain or multi-grain bread.

Once you try it, you too will never want to go back to store-bought breads – and your whole house will smell delicious during the process, and not just when the baking happens.

Go on, make the switch to real bread, you won't regret it.

© 2011

National Real Bread Maker Week

by Michael Smith (Veshengro)

May 1st to May 9th, 2010 is National Real Bread Maker Week in Britain. So why not get involved and get baking your own bread?

There are an estimated 10 million unused bread machines in British homes. They are languishing in kitchen cupboards, storage boxes, larders, and other such places, unloved and often never even used ones. Is you home to one of them?

If so, the first ever National Real Bread Maker Week is the time to dig it out and use it to bake Real Bread or pass it on to someone who will.

A bread machine allows anyone who might not otherwise bake at home to seize control and make genuinely fresh, genuinely good value Real Bread with ingredients of their choice.

I have only recently acquired a bread machine from Lidl's, the discount store company from Germany, found in many places now, thankfully, in Britain too.

Instead of paying nigh on £100 as some makers charge this machine was not even £30 and I would not want to ever be without one now again.

Years ago I used to bake my own bread – had more time and more space in the kitchen then – doing everything by hand and then baking the bread in the oven. Due to lack of time and space I gave that up and used to buy bread at bakeries, on the high street and instore at Sainsbury's but it was not really the way I liked my bread.

Then, when the opportunity arose and Lidl had a machine at such a great price I jumped to it and it is just great. You do start on a bit of a learning curve because the rates given in the manual, for instance, may not always be 100% for the flour you may be using.

I have found that, for instance, the quantity for the powdered yeast (the only type suitable for the machines) of 3/4 of a packet, is not enough to allow the bread made with 500g of flour (mixture of stoneground wholemeal and wholegrain) to rise enough and the amount of water of 350ml is just a tad too much.

You will have to employ a little trial and error, for all machines are different, but my rule of thumb is about 500g of flour (measured in this case in a Lidl large Bockwurst glass jar), the requirement is 340ml water, a tsp of salt and same of sugar, and 1 sachet of yeast, plus a chunk of butter. Don't use margarine as it will not work the same. You can use some olive oil though; a couple of table spoons full.

The bread machine allows me to put all the ingredients in, turn the machine on and then – basically – forget about the bread until the signal sounds telling me that is is done; a little over 3 1/2 hours later. This allows me to get on with what I want and need to do while at the same time creating some great tasting bread that is not full of flour improver and other chemicals, such as preservatives.

True, bread made in this way dos not keep as long as does some store bought bread but then again, it will not have a chance either. Everyone just will want to eat it and you will have to bake some more.

However, in a bread bin, using some food keeper bags from Lakeland, the bread will remain good for several days; by the end of which you will have finished it anyway.

© 2010