How to Celebrate Real Bread Week with your Family
Real Bread Week is running from 19th to 27th February in 2022 and we have a Bumper Guide of How to Celebrate Real Bread Week with your Family
What is Real Bread Week?
Real Bread Week is the annual, international celebration of additive-free loaves and the people who make them.
Real Bread Week started in 2010 and its main aims are to encourage and help people to buy real bread from local, independent bakeries as well as bake their own real bread at home
Why is it Important to Support your Local Baker?
By ditching the additive-laden loaf habit and supporting your local real bread baker you and your family could reap real benefits.
Small, independent, locally owned bakeries help support more jobs for people in your local community. Bakers are a skilled job and it keeps more money circulating in our local economy, helping to keep your high streets alive.
Some also suggest that by keeping our Local baker in business it can provide our communities with some great social benefits, such as providing a place for older people to go to see a friendly face and have a chat and reduce the possibly of them becoming isolated.
Additionally, your local baker can offer training and employment opportunities for people facing many challenges.
Why is it Important for Children to Make their Own Bread?
Whether at home with the family or at school, nursery or clubs it’s important for children to learn and experience making Real Bread as they can avoid eating unnecessary artificial additives, that are in the industrial loaves of bread in supermarkets, providing them with a heathier food choice.
Also let’s not forget its loads of fun for the kids to make their own bread and might even tempt them to try something new or choose wholemeal over white bread.
What Exactly is Real Bread?
Real Bread means it has nothing to hide. It is made with only simple, natural ingredients and has no processing aids or artificial additives.
Additives not used in Real Bread making include things like baking powder and other chemical like ascorbic acid, xanthan gum, added enzymes or any other so-called processing aids.
Our Super Easy and Yummy Bread Recipe
We often make bread with the kids and thought we would share this Super Easy and Yummy Bread Recipe with you, so you can too
You won’t need a fancy bread maker, all you will need equipment wise is a large mixing bowl, weighting scales, loaf tin, clean tea towel, cooling rack, and oven
Ingredients we use:
- 600g strong bread flour, either white or wholemeal which ever you prefer
- 400g hand warm water
- 2tsp olive oil
- 2tsp salt
- 1 ¼ tsp dried active yeast – not yeast that says instant, easy bake, fast acting etc.
Method we use:
- Dissolve the yeast in the warm water and then add the salt to the water to dissolve as well
- Put the flour in the bowl, pour in the olive oil and then pour in the warm water which has the dissolved yeast and salt in and mix it all together, we just use our hands to mix it. It will feel a bit sticky to start which is fine.
- Take it out the bowl and place on a hard surface and knead it, stretch it, pull it all for around 10 minutes. Then very lightly rub some olive oil to the inside of the bowl and place the dough back in the bowl, cover with the tea towel and let sit for and hour. You don’t need to be super strong to knead the dough and this is a stage that our kids love to be apart of.
- This proving stage will allow the dough to rise and double in size.
- Now we are a fan of double proving, so after the hour we knead the dough again for at least 5 minutes and then we place it into the load tin. You can lightly oil the tin, or we tend to line the tin with grease proof paper. We then cover this tin with the tea towel and let it sit at room temperature for another 40 minutes.
- Before placing into the oven, you need to get a sharp knife and place cross marks in the top of the loaf, and you can sprinkle with some flour and even add some seeds to the top f you wish.
- Place the tin in an oven that’s been pre-heated to 220°C / 200°C Fan and bake it for 25 – 30 minutes.
- We tend to leave the bread in the tin for a few minutes before taking it out and placing it on a cooling rack.
We are by no means expert bakers but do love this recipe and find it Super Easy to make with the kids and actually works out cheaper for us than buying bread from the supermarket.
Bread Activities for the Kids
Just for fun we have put together some little activities for the kids you can download some colouring sheets, wordsearch and a map that where the kids can learn what type of bread comes from what country.
For Fun with the Kids you can Download your very own Bread Fun Pack by Clicking Here
The Charity Behind Real Bread Week
You can find out more about the Real Bread Week and how you can help the Charity by visiting their website here
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