We've not quite rounded up the first quarter of 2024 and already we've celebrated the Scottish Festival of Real Bread, cheered at the Scottish Bread Championship, seen the release of Bake Your Lawn, a fantastic new book from the Real Bread Campaign to get children growing and baking, and the opening of a major Scottish Government consultation on becoming a Good Food Nation. Could this be the year we see real change in our nation's eating habits, perhaps with the People's Bread reclaiming its place on our dinner tables?

Read more about all these activities below, as well as an opportunity to get involved in our People's Plant Breeding programme, the latest from the STB mill, and how our Soil to Slice project has inspired the creation of a community-based bread supply in Edinburgh.

Scottish Festival of Real Bread

Our second ever Scottish Festival of Real Bread took place at Bowhouse in Fife last month on a stunning blue-skied day. Thank you to everyone (we believe over 1,000 of you!) who came along and supported it, we hope lots of activity will be borne of the inspirational events - to bake, to support those who do, to champion regenerative agriculture and the kind of fairer, more nourishing food system that will make Real Bread accessible to all.

There are so many people to thank for making the day such a success, starting with our stalwart team of volunteers; Bea Vyas and STB trustee Alison Ramcharran who gave demos; Bosse Dahlgren for the heritage grains stall; Milli Abrams who spent the day sharing her bread machine recipes and advice; Projects Coordinator Lyndsey Cochrane who did so much behind the scenes; the panel who spoke at the lively Public Diners presentation and debate; Bowhouse for their ongoing support and Event Manager Catherine Devereux of Charlie Delta Events who went far above and beyond to ensure the smooth running of the day.

Thank you too to Chris Young, Real Bread Campaign co-ordinator, who both presented the Scottish Bread Championship awards and took an album of fantastic photos which give a flavour of the day.

Did you make it to the Scottish Festival of Real Bread this year? We hope that you enjoyed the event. We would be very grateful for your feedback so that we can make next year's festival even better, please take two minutes to fill in our very short form.

Would you like to be part of next year's Festival? Get in touch to let us know, we'll start planning it soon!

Scottish Bread Championship

Since its launch in 2017, the Scottish Bread Championship has become a truly joyful and inspiring celebration of the highest standards of breadmaking. The effort that so many put in to baking and submitting their loaves is an uplifting testament to the commitment to Real Bread found in so many kitchens around the country.

The Championship awards ceremony is now one of the highlights of the SFRB, but before we come to the full list of results, we must also shine a spotlight on the heroic energy and efforts of the woman who makes it all happen, Wendy Barrie of Scottish Food Guide. We are full of admiration and gratitude to her for this feat of organisation, it is a highlight of the baking year.

Many thanks also to this year's judging panel. They give up at least a day to the task, and there were a record number of entrants this year - you can see by the list of awards given what a sizeable (if enjoyable) job judging is!

Congratulations to all this year's winners, especially Supreme Champion Station House Bakery for their Spelt Sourdough (above left), and Reserve Champion Wild Hearth Bakery for their Tortano (Potato Crown, above right).

You can read Wendy's on-the-day summary of the Championship here, and the full list of awards here.

Soil to Slice network visit to Granton Garden Bakery and Lauriston Farm By Project Coordinator Lyndsay Cochrane  At the beginning of March, members of our Soil to Slice network gathered in Edinburgh to learn how the project inspired the creation of a community-based bread supply in the city, as well as its plans for expansion.  Baker Mahala welcomed us to Granton Garden Bakery and told us the story of their progression from growing Scotland The Bread’s Rouge d’Ecosse wheat on street corners to setting up a pay-as-you-can community bakery serving up nutritious Real Bread for local people. While enjoying a sample of these delicious loaves, the groups shared experiences and aspirations for their own local projects and the different ways that they are sharing bread with those around them. We had just enough time to buy up the last of the bakery’s bread and buns before heading to nearby Lauriston Farm. Run by Edinburgh Agroecology Coop, this project is partnering with Granton Community Gardeners to scale up the amount of local grains grown for use in the bakery, with exciting plans to develop a local grain chain. Lisa took us on a tour around the farm, highlighting the varied projects that have found a home there and their approaches to ensuring that everyone can access the growing spaces and food produced. Research assistant Annie explained the concept of a ‘zero carbon loaf’ being examined as part of the partnership between the bakery and farm, and we all admired the outdoor kitchen and bread oven being built using techniques that Lisa learnt in Thailand. Despite the dreich weather it was an inspiring day learning about not only the movement happening in this corner of Edinburgh, but also within the diverse communities represented from all across Scotland! Many thanks to the team at Granton Garden Bakery and Lauriston Farm for hosting this visit, and to Scottish Community Alliance and Scottish Communities Climate Action Network for the ‘Community Learning Exchange’ funding which made this possible.

It’s time to Bake Your Lawn!

The Real Bread Campaign's grow-a-loaf guidebook is now out: grab your copy/copies now exclusively from the Real Bread Campaign website, where you can also have a look through a PDF sampler.

The Campaign has written it to help you guide children in taking a handful of wheat and heading off together on a seed-to-sandwich adventure by growing your own Real Bread.

Last year our Soil to Slice citizen science wheat growing project helped Limekilns Primary School bake their lawn. The school has teamed up with Charlestown, Limekilns and Pattismuir Nature Conservation Group to set up a beautiful community garden. The children decided to grow winter wheat along with their vegetables, and in January the p7 class got a taster of the final process. Alongside a lesson about the large-scale grain system, they each hand-threshed some grain, used their muscle power to mill it into flour then mixed up a couple of wholemeal flatbreads. These were enjoyed together in class, with many pupils saying they would definitely make them again at home.

If you would like to give children a similar insight into where their bread comes from and how it should be made, the Real Bread Campaign has written this book to help teachers, (grand)parents, guardians and other youngster-wranglers guide them in hands-on, soil-to-slice journeys of discovery. Starting with just a dozen-or-so grams of wheat seeds and a square metre of earth, together you’ll see how Real Bread starts in a field, not a factory.

Miller's Diary

By Clément Boucherit

At the very beginning of February, Bowhouse hosted a RHET day for local school children: a day when they come to learn a bit more about the food and farming businesses in their area. I really liked talking to them about what we do at the mill but I think what they enjoyed the most was when I asked them to all step onto our big platform scales to compare the weight of their class to the weight of a big bin of grain!

I enjoyed talking about what we do again during the Scottish Festival of Real Bread at the end of February, during two grain store and mill tours. The Festival came and went quickly but this time, the mill team was ready! We managed to produce flour (and to bag it!) in the week leading to the festival so that we had enough to sell during the festival. We did well as you didn’t disappoint: the same amount of flour was sold as last year! A big thank you to the volunteers who staffed Scotland The Bread stall and to all visitors who came on the day!

In other news, as of 15/03/2024 we are officially organic again: our organic certification has been renewed by SOPA (Scottish Organic Producers Association) for another year! And finally, a recent deep dive into the management accounts and the quantity of grain purchased and used, coordinated by Martin our Treasurer, has made us realise how much is lost in terms of weight along the whole process from the moment the grain arrives at the mill to the finished product: bags of flour or grain. Most of it is water that’s lost during milling but we also lose weight during the cleaning/polishing of grain, the auger bleeds and mills bleeds, the coarser particles of bran that won’t be milled and the inevitable spills (of grain and of flour). Apart from the water, the rest of the “waste” is not really lost as all the grain that goes in bleeds ends up in the large bin outside Bowhouse, along with food and vegetable scraps from other businesses and is then fed to Balcaskie’s pigs. We used to sell the bags of bran for composting or as a growing medium for maggots or worms (for animal feed), but at the moment the number of bran bags at the mill is slowly building up…any takers?