The latest season of the Great British Bake-Off is dominating the bread news at the moment, with a new gang of characters to discover and some horribly tricky challenges to overcome. This week, bread week, saw Amelia leave. At the same time, in Zimbabwe, bakeries have just pushed up the price of bread by 39% after the country’s government increased the cost of wheat by about the same amount. Some predict a simple loaf will cost $30 dollars by the end of 2019. But what else has been going on in the world of bread recently? Here’s the news.

The joy of cheeseboarding

For some of us, the highlight of every great meal is the cheese board at the end. No wonder ‘cheeseboarding’ is such a popular trend. Cheese-what, we hear you ask…? Cheeseboarding is a fresh way to truly enjoy cheese, served with bread rather than crackers. And what a difference it makes. Hard, chilly crackers are all very well, but it’s hard to beat a selection of beautiful artisan breads, each with its own distinctive scent, flavour and texture.

When brown bread was slammed as a ‘fad’

Thanks to The Guardian for an old story dating back to 1927, reporting on an American medical expert, Dr Bostock Hill, and his feelings about brown bread. At the time there was a long-running campaign taking place to persuade more people to eat brown bread rather than white, because of the health benefits, but Dr Hill disagreed. As the article said, Dr Hill ‘had not a word to say against brown bread in certain conditions, but he did not want to eat it, he did not think the public wanted to eat it, and the experience of millions of workers was a better test than any the laboratory could provide.’

Bahrain does the decent thing

Following similar announcements by Kuwait, Bahrain’s government has announced that their most important staple food – bread – will be produced with a lot less salt in future. Within three years the country’s breads will contain 0.5%, a maximum of 5g per loaf. They’re also determined to cut right back on the trans-fats and oils currently used to bake the nation’s loaves.

Aussie Woolworths and Tribe Brewery join the trend for bread beer

The trend for beer made from waste bread continues, this time popping up Down Under in Australia. Apparently Tribe Breweries is joining the Aussie supermarket giant Woolworths to create a limited edition pale ale made using 350kgs of unsold bread. The beer has been aptly named ‘Loafer’.

A percentage of the profits will go to Feed Appeal, which supports local charities delivering food relief to communities and people in need. The bread Tribe used was diverted from landfill and the resulting beer represents the country’s first ‘circular economy’ beer.

Over 300 loaves dumped in Thamesmead Lake

Thamesmead is an enormous housing estate on former marshland between Woolwich and Erith, roughly the same latitude as Westminster. Volunteers recently had to fish out hundreds of mouldy loaves from a lake there, still wrapped in plastic, and the incident had been reported to the The Environment Agency. Luckily the packaging featured a name, but the name can’t be released because there’s an investigation going on. Officials also have the registration number of a van they suspect was involved, so the culprit won’t be at large for long.

Local food movement takes off in New England

Provenance matters. Currently most of the bread eaten by New Englanders is made with flour from industrial Midwestern farms. But not for much longer. The State’s farmers, millers and chefs are rallying to recreate the old regional ‘grain economy’ they used to enjoy. In a report by WBUR, one local baker highlighted how mass production mills strip most of the flavour, fat and nutrients from their grains, and have ‘messed with it so much — just to grow faster, grow taller, grow thicker, make more money.’, that it’s ‘nothing like it used to be.’ He’d much rather mill flour himself, so ‘I know where this came from. I know the farmer. I know the person that milled it’. We can relate to that!

Is your mouth watering yet? If so, why not ask us for a free box of artisan bread samples for you to test for yourself? It’s so good that once you’ve tried it, you won’t want to sell anything else to your foodservice customers.