A couple of weeks back The Real Bread Campaign advertised a baking event in London with a list of the speakers taking part. They posted this on the Micro Bakery Connection Facebook Group.
Never having hidden my low opinion of the Campaign I replied “Funny, my name doesn’t seem to appear on the speakers list …” a facetious remark that caused an unexpectedly powerful reaction from the Campaign Co ordinator, Chris Young.
(Chris has accused me of making personal attacks on him but, as I have pointed out, The Real Bread Campaign is Chris Young – he’s the organisation’s sole employee, and has been since its’ inception, so any criticism of the Campaign is going to seem like a personal attack.)
The vast majority of members of the Micro Bakery Connection have no connection to the UK, so I said I would shift the debate to my blog where I could explain to Chris what he calls “my negativity” towards the Campaign.
A little background. On 05 November 2000 I did a two day baking course with Andrew Whitley at the Village Bakery, Melmerby. The following year he asked me to moderate an internet baking forum he was setting up. The funny thing was, no one told me the moderator’s role was to keep order: I thought it was to provoke discussion. The consequent arguments meant the forum broke up in disarray within a few months.
Heading towards the mid-noughties, Dan Lepard’s forum was the place to be for lively discussion and baking experimentation.
In 2007 I organised a weekend baking event, Bethesdabakin’, in the North Wales village where we live. This drew on people from Dan’s forum and brought together bakers of all abilities and experience from the UK., USA, Australia, Denmark and was done on the basis of shared costs. This event has been repeated, in different locations for over a decade.
Towards the end of 2007 I set up my home-based, sourdough microbakery – something pretty much unheard of in those days.
A year later, November 2008, the Real Bread Campaign was launched by Andrew Whitley and Sustain, the alliance for better food and farming. Andrew Whitley had published Bread Matters, “the state of modern bread and a definitive guide to baking your own”. The Campaign was basically launched to promote the book and his ideas for improving commercial bread quality. Nothing wrong with the aims but setting up an organisation to promote a single baker and his ideas was pretty divisive in the growing world of serious bread bakers..
Four months later, Chris Young, a non-baker, was appointed Co ordinator, the Campaign’s only employee, a position he has held for coming on 15 years.
The first major problem from my point of view was calling itself The Real Bread Campaign. How can someone monopolize the term “Real Bread”? How can anyone describe their bread as real bread without associating themselves with the Campaign?
Chris has denied it is their trademark but, in effect, it is. He makes frequent reference to “Real Bread Bakers” as though this makes them somehow superior to serious bakers who are not members.
They started, without consulting producers, to define Real Bread. They had a scoring system under which my sourdough bread using organic bread flour and long fermentation scored less than a yeasted loaf made with non-organic stone ground flour. Then they started to sell Real Bread stickers to bakers. They developed a map of Real Bread bakers in the UK – no checks, you just had to declare yourself a Real Baker.
I had a brief flirtation with the Campaign. Never actually joined – couldn’t get through their security system! Had my details put on the map, wrote an article about my microbakery for their journal. I wrote and self-published one of the first UK books concentrating exclusively on the whole sourdough process, starter production and maintenance + a variety of bread formulas to show the flexibility of this method of baking. I asked if the title could be included in the booklist on Campaign’s website. “We can’t include everything” was the response. So much for promoting small bakers.
I was hoping for a democratic organisation run by its members. When I asked about their Working Party, I was I told membership was by appointment, and, there and then was invited to become a member. So much for a selection process.
Then there was the issue of the Real Bread Ambassadors. The Campaign started to signup the highest profile bakers who could be persuaded to support the organisation – I’m sure that if an award ceremony with a red carpet could have been arranged Chris would have been there in his tux. This included one baker who styled himself, not just an artisan baker, but an eco-artisan baker. He assured me that his “eco-vibe is no greenwash”. How we laughed …
My suggestion was that, if they had to go for this type of elitist approach, they should at least include some of the ordinary, hard-working, innovative bakers who were emerging at the time.
We had good friends with a young daughter who was born with a condition requiring 24 hour care and was unlikely to live into her teens. Their solution to providing this level of care between the two of them was to build a bakery attached to their isolated, off-grid house. Not only that, they chose the harder route of building and baking in a large Alan Scott wood burning masonry oven.
To my mind I couldn’t think of a more inspiring baker to represent the Real Bread Campaign, but when I suggested it I was told he didn’t portray the right image for the Campaign. What can you say …
For the first three years the Campaign was very upbeat and confident – they didn’t seem to believe that their funding could dry up but it did. So they decided to go for charitable status but (I think I’m right in saying) this was a time when the regulations were being tightened so that organisations had to demonstrate they were working with those alienated from society – the poor, dispossessed, out of education, unemployed, homeless, disabled, offenders, etc. And, do you know, all of a sudden they had the plans and expertise to take on this type of work. This despite the fact there were organisations and individuals experienced and already working in these fields. My friends combining baking with the care of their daughter and I, with experience of setting up a bakery for offenders, were among those who were less than impressed.
Despite their efforts to meet the Charity Commission’s requirements (and Chris’s frequent references to “our charitable work”), their website seems to say that since 2013 the only funding they have received has been from membership fees, sales and do(ugh)nations. Presumably this means that funding applications have been rejected.
Which brings us to the puns and the alliteration. We’ve just done “doughnation”; most people wouldn’t have a clue about “sourfaux” and it’s one of the reasons why Guardian reporters, who should be natural allies, are not slow in mocking any mention of sourdough.
Sourdough September? There’d have been a serious problem if there was no month beginning with “S”. They are so proud that it’s been running for ten years. So what? The year or so of Covid lockdown probably led to more people experimenting with sourdough baking than years of the Campaign’s annual bash. Interestingly enough, in the early days, the Campaign was very wary about pushing sourdough because most bakers didn’t have a clue about it and were very challenged by the whole idea.
Which brings us to the main event. The fundamental purpose of the Campaign is to see that laws, regulations and definitions are changed so that people can see exactly what they are buying. So full ingredient lists should be on labels, descriptions such as “sourdough” be legally defined, terms like “freshly baked” clarified..
After 15 years campaigning, virtually nothing has been accomplished on this front. Five years ago, after a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority, Pret a Manger was forced to remove the word “natural” from it’s advertising and packaging. Recently the supermarket Lidl had to withdraw the description “sourdough” from one of its’ products but it wouldn’t have needed an organisation like the Real Bread Campaign to achieve this – anyone can make a complaint to Trading Standards if a description is false.
Now the government has made it clear that it has no intention of taking forward proposals for an Honest Crust Act.
And, Chris, what do you think you were doing reviewing supermarket sourdoughs for a Sunday redtop? Don’t you know that sourdough is more than the sum of its’ ingredients?
The PArtisan Baker 
Your blog post fell below Google’s radar when it was published, so didn’t appear on our daily alerts for mentions of the Real Bread Campaign.
Thanks for taking the time to explain your objections. Rather than address every one of them, I’ll try to limit myself to correcting your factual errors and clarifying some of the points you appear to have misunderstood.
The Campaign was indeed co-founded by the food and farming charity Sustain and the baker Andrew Whitley though not, as you incorrectly state, to promote Andrew and his book. With the involvement and support of hundreds of professional bakers (and many thousands of other Real Bread lovers), we work to promote all Real Bread and all people who make it, while challenging obstacles to their rise.
We established a definition of Real Bread (denoted by the capitalisation) and anyone who agrees with it is very welcome to use it. Some use it with reference to the Campaign (including those who sign up to The Real Bread Loaf Mark scheme, and/or joining our network as paying supporters, and/or add their details to our free map), others do so without.
We use the term ‘Real Bread bakers’ simply to refer to people who make bread without additives. The notion that ‘this makes them somehow superior to serious bakers who are not members’ are your words, not ours.
Our definition of Real Bread was created as the result of a number of public meetings in 2007 and 2008, and consultation of bakers, millers, activists etc. We have never had a ‘scoring system’ as you claim. Our map initially allowed bakers to note if their Real Bread was made from stoneground flour, by a longer fermentation process etc. We later removed this as the list of factors people suggested we should add got unworkably long, so we kept our simple definition and leave each baker to promote the other factors that are important to them.
Rather than a membership organisation, with an AGM etc. the Campaign is a Sustain project. You can read about the governance of Sustain and its projects here: http://www.sustainweb.org/about/sustains_sustainability_policies
To avoid confusion, we say that people who sign up to our free mailing list, follow us on social media, or add their details to our map are our friends. Within this wider network we have supporters (rather than members) in recognition of them making an annual payment that supports our charity’s work.
We chose five ‘ordinary, hard-working, innovative bakers’ to be our original, official Campaign ambassadors. Specifically they were Real Bread bakers who also had some level of with public profile, which we asked them to use to help raise awareness of the issues we were addressing and of our work. We frequently review what we are working to achieve and how we do so. This has led to reviews of the role of Campaign ambassador and the application process: http://www.sustainweb.org/news/jun24-want-to-be-a-real-bread-campaign-ambassador
As noted above, the Campaign was co-founded – and has always been run – by a charity. We knew from the start that our initial grant funding would only last five years and so set up our supporter scheme as part of our plan to make the Campaign financially sustainable beyond this.
In line with our mission of finding ways to make bread better for us, better for our communities and better for the planet, we have indeed worked in support of people of a range of backgrounds and identities, some of whom face greater challenges in life than most of us. We do this in consultation and collaboration with the people and with organisations who support them. Our aim is promoting such initiatives and helping to share knowledge and skills that will result in more of the great work to be done around the UK and beyond.
Your past suggestion (and implication here) that we compete with small, local organisations for charitable funding is untrue. As a national-level organization, we look at funding available to organisations working at a national-level. In many cases, grants are for projects that involve a national organization working with partners, so actually help small, local organisations to secure funding – sometimes making charity funding available to those without charitable status.
Indeed, anyone can submit complaints to consumer protection bodies (and then pursue them for many months) about ‘bread’ labelling and marketing that misleads shoppers and undermine honest bakers. In practice, very few do, so we/I help to fill this void. Like you say, in some cases we have been successful. You’re welcome.
As you note, previous governments have chosen not to adopt most of our Honest Crust Act proposals to update composition, labelling and marketing standards to improve protection for shoppers and small bakers. We hope to make better progress with the new government.
On your final point, I did not give a subjective ‘review’ of supermarket loaves. I was asked to comment on whether or not the products were genuine sourdough bread or what we call sourfaux. Had I not taken this free opportunity of a national newspaper helping to raise awareness of the issues and our charity’s work, I wouldn’t be doing my job properly. For the record, yes, I know what sourdough is. http://www.sustainweb.org/realbread/sourdough