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What is ‘Real’ Bread?
Real Bread is made with natural ingredients (flour, water, salt and yeast), without chemical additives, and is proven to be a beneficial part of a healthy diet.
Most bread sold in high street bakeries and supermarkets today is churned out in large factories where profit is the main driver.
It’s made as quickly as possible using the cheapest ingredients, and artificial additives are used to compensate. High-speed mixing, high levels of yeast, extra gluten and added enzymes force the dough to rise quickly, and the finished loaves may be sprayed with chemicals to slow mould growth.
This also applies to most in-house bakeries in supermarkets, where dough is often bought in frozen or part-baked and then ‘baked off’ on site. Essentially this bread is much the same as mass-produced stuff.
Even bread sold as ‘sourdough’ is mostly just mass-produced bread with sourdough flavouring added.
A ‘factory’ loaf can be produced start to finish in less than 3 hours, whereas it takes 3 days to make Bakerman sourdough. We think it’s worth the wait!
Our bread,
real bread
Yeasts and bacteria suited to bread production are found on the surface of cereal grains, such as wheat. When wheat is made into flour and a suitable environment is provided (right temperature, added water, and more flour to ‘feed’ it) these microorganisms thrive and their populations grow.
Eventually there are enough yeast cells giving off the carbon dioxide that’s a by-product of their respiration to make bread rise. The interaction of the yeast and the natural enzymes they secrete improve the flavour, texture and aroma of the baked bread.
Genuine sourdough is known to have certain health benefits, including higher vitamin and mineral contents than other breads, and higher protein and iron levels.
We believe that artificial ingredients or agricultural chemical residues have no place in a loaf of bread! We also recognise the damage intensive farming and agricultural chemicals do to the soil. Therefore most of the flour in our products is organic, the balance being flour made from sustainable, regeneratively farmed wheat grown in the UK that uses no agrochemicals at all. This is produced by Wildfarmed growers (see https://wildfarmed.com), which you’ll have heard of if you’ve been following Jeremy Clarkson’s journey along the regenerative farming route at his farm in Wiltshire.
We also source our other ingredients from organic producers where possible, preferably local ones.
The Real Bread Campaign
The Real Bread Campaign is an initiative aimed at promoting better bread quality and supporting local bakeries in the UK. Launched in 2008, it is a project of Sustain, an alliance focused on improving food and farming practices. Read more here.
Goals and Initiatives
Encourage the production and consumption of bread made without artificial additives.
Advocate for small and micro bakeries to thrive in a competitive market.
Educate the public about the benefits of Real Bread and the importance of quality ingredients.
Bakerman is a proud supporter of The Real Bread Campaign.