Real Bread Week 17-25 February
It’s time to roll up your sleeves, or dig out an unloved bread machine, or head to your local, indie bakery for the 15th annual, international Real Bread Week!
What is Real Bread Week?
Created and run since 2010 by the Real Bread Campaign, #RealBreadWeek (17-25 February 2024) encourages people around the globe to:
· BAKE Real Bread
· BUY Real Bread
· BOOST the Real Bread Campaign
The Real Bread Campaign website is where to find free recipes, as well as places to buy additive-free bread from more than 600 bakeries that have added their details to the Real Bread Map. The map also includes places to learn to make Real Bread. While out shopping people can look for The Real Bread Loaf Mark.
The Campaign invites everyone organising public Real Bread Week classes, events, tastings, fundraisers and other activities to add details to the Real Bread calendar, while schools, nurseries, care homes and community groups help many more people to join the fun.
As well as celebrating making Real Bread by hand, Real Bread Week 2024 echoes its origins by inspiring people to dust off and use an underemployed bread machine, or pass it on to someone who will.
In 2023, #RealBreadWeek generated over 4000 posts from more than 40 countries on Instagram alone.
The Real Bread Campaign is run by food and farming charity Sustain. Ways that everyone can help to boost the charity’s work include joining the Campaign, making a doughnation, and buying Real Bread books and other gifts.
Full details of all this and more can be found at www.realbreadcampaign.org
Real food
Real Bread is a delicious, nutritious, additive-free timeless original. With questions and concerns gathering around ultra-processed food (UPF), for many people the idea of the much-wasted Chorleywood Process loaf is staling. With a heritage dating back perhaps as far as around 14,400 years, Real Bread has a bright future as the crust you can trust.
Real Bread For All
The Real Bread Campaign continues to encourage business owners to run schemes that bridge the gap between what it costs a financially-sustainable small bakery to put Real Bread on its shelves, and what people in their local communities living on tighter budgets can realistically afford.
The rise of the machines
Mixing, kneading and shaping dough by hand takes very little of your time and many people find the process therapeutic. Others discover that the answer to taking control of the food they do (and the additives they don’t) eat – and perhaps feed to their families – is a bread machine.
According to research carried out in 2023 for independent not-for-profit organisation Recycle Your Electricals, there might be around 1.4 million bread makers 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 a charity shop or a reputable dealer.
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.
