This week is Real Bread Week a worthwhile campaign which celebrates additive-free loaves and the people who make them! As well as encouraging us to support our local real bread bakeries, the initiative calls for us to roll up our sleeves and get baking Real Bread at home too...
Homemade, “real” bread has played an important role in the BeeBee journey. Did you know that bread baking was one of the principle catalysts behind Kath making her own beeswax wraps?
Kath started baking sourdough at home for her young family, but she struggled to find an effective storage solution which kept her loaf fresh for longer than half a day. As I’m sure you’ve experienced at home too, plastic bags helped to accelerate the mould growth, and bread bins were great for a day or two. There had to be an alternative!
Kath researched how we used to store food before the invention of plastic (a time really did exist!) and she discovered beeswax coated cloth which had the promise of keeping bread fresh. Et voilà, after much experimenting, some ripped up unused bed sheets and an extremely sticky kitchen floor later, we have the very early days of BeeBee Wraps! Oh and the result? Bread which stays fresh for 5 days or more!
Why is Real Bread important to us?
Real Bread is better for us, better for our communities and better for the planet.
Conventional bread baking known as the ‘Chorleywood’ method uses up to 18 different enzymes to speed up production. Incredibly this cuts down the creation of a loaf from 24 hours to only 3.
A longer proving time, as with real bread, enhances the bread's flavour and develops a robust gluten matrix for a truly exquisite loaf. All this, plus it supports our local bakeries and the ingredients tend to be locally sourced and organic. Now that’s using your loaf! .
Find out more about Real Bread Week and how you can support the campaign here. Watch how to keep your real bread fresh with a Bread Wrap below.
