The Real Bread Campaign’s Local Loaves for Lammas

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Over centuries of international trade, many have forgotten that wheat and other cereals are seasonal crops. Fighting as it does for a return to localised, sustainable production, the Real Bread Campaign believes it’s high time for a shared celebration of the natural and seasonal heritage of our buns, baps and bloomers.

That’s why on 1st August we are calling on bread lovers across the land to enjoy a local loaf for Lammas.

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Taking its name from the Old English for loaf mass, this ancient harvest festival’s traditional highlight is eating bread baked with autumn’s first grain. Lammas is a great opportunity for everyone to seek out and enjoy locally produced Real Bread or roll up their sleeves and get baking. It’s also a chance for kids to find out that Real Bread is an all natural food that starts its life in a field not a factory.

We reckon that it’s a fine excuse for anyone who loves Real Bread to join the festivities with their own local activities and events.

Some ideas of how you can celebrate Lammas:

• Organise a Real Bread picnic for family, friends and other members of your local community


• Fun, tasty and messy hands-on learning by breadmaking with the kids


• Dig your bread machine out of the cupboard to make a loaf or two


• If you are lucky enough to have a local bakery, suggest they bake a special Lammas loaf


• If you are a local bakery, see the above.


• Learn to make a corn dolly (the Guild of Straw Craftsmen can give you tips)


• Go morris dancing (or perhaps just watch some morris dancers and then eat proper toast)

You can share your own ideas for Lammas activities and let others know about your event on the discussion board of our Facebook group. We’ll also be re-tweeting selected events sent to us @realbread on Twitter.

Closer to the day, we’ll put a round up of events at http://www.realbreadcampaign.org/.

Thanks to The Guild of Straw Craftsmen for the image of the Staffs knot above

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