If someone mentions growing wheat, you probably think of wide expanses of fields and combine harvesters. But wheat and other cereals can be grown on a much smaller scale in a surprisingly wide range of places. The Sheffield Wheat Experiment is an intriguing project that exploits this, with hundreds of people growing relatively small amounts of wheat in their gardens, allotments or even pots. You could think of it as a distributed urban farm, using surplus land and manageable amounts of people’s time to connect them with the source of their food.
This ticks all of Loaf’s boxes and we’re going to keep a close eye on their progress with the aim of doing something similar here one day. A Stirchley Loaf made from Stirchley grain is an idea too delicious to ignore.
The Sheffield project is still quite large scale, involving many people to produce a significant amount of grain. What if you just want to grow for your own use?
Some of you with allotments may know of Charles Dowding who has become the guru of the no-dig method of growing food. Over the last year he grew 31 clumps of rye on his smallholding and in this video he takes us through the steps to turn the rye into flour for his bread. This is perfectly doable on an allotment or back garden.
Finally, here’s a photo Pete took while on a walk exploring Coventry’s ring road of some barley growing by the busy traffic. It really can grow anywhere — though you might not want to mill these grains!
Since hosting Bio Arts Birmingham this summer we’ve been coming across more artists who work with the living materials we make bread from. This week Rachel brought Santina Amato to everyone’s attention and we had to share her amazing work.
Her dough-based work begins with a durational performance where she filmed herself kneading her own weight in dough, culminating in her lying exhausted holding the dough as it rises and envelopes her. Click through for the videos.
This then led to her ongoing series, Portraits Of Women With Their Weight In Dough, where she works with women to make the dough which they then pose with over two hours. The resulting images are both absurd and profound, and the duration of time really emphasises how alive their globulous companion is.
If you come across any artists doing interesting work with dough, please let us know!
At our birthday party on Sunday we unveiled the start of our new merchandise line. Having long been envious of Eat Vietnam’s stylish garbs over the road we decided we wanted in on this game.
Building on Kerry’s impeccable branding with Molly’s gorgeous illustrations, our first t-shirt is a pastries special, featuring the core range of croissant, pain-au-chocolate and pain-au-raisin. Printed in white on a black organic cotton tee, on the back of course so it’s not obscured by your apron. Available in small, medium, large and x-large for £15.
Alongside this we’re introducing a larger, sturdier tote bag, for those who like to buy their bread in bulk. The first batch is a bold fluorescent red on a metal-grey bag and they sell for £12.
They’re available in store from Wednesday. Big thanks to Brid at Do Make Say Ink for getting them printed in record time.
We had a lovely time on Sunday at Attic so a big thanks to those of you who were able to make it. It was great to catch up with friends old and new, plotting the future while looking back at an eventful decade on Stirchley high street.
Big thanks go to Attic for hosting, Anis’s for the delicious samosas and pakoras, Holodeck for printing the cards shown above (let us know at the shop if you’d like one), and all of you for getting us to this point. Here’s to many more decades!
In putting together a slideshow of photos and scanned documents from the filing cabinet we were amazed at what’s in there and want to spend more time properly archiving it ready for our move to the new building in 2024. If you’re a local historian-type and are interested in helping, get in touch.
On September 8th 2012, Tom Baker realised his dream of opening a community bakery on Stirchley High Street. Three years after starting Loaf in his kitchen, and with investment from customers who received their interest in bread, the doors of 1421 Pershore Road were opened to the public.
We’re marking this with a few special things over the month, starting with…
Free birthday cake!
Molly is making a special birthday cake that will be given away to the first 30 customers through the door on Thursday 8th.
Treasure hunt!
Rachel’s been hiding bread vouchers around Stirchley and releasing clues on our Instagram Stories. The hunt ends on Sunday and vouchers can be redeemed for a delicious loaf.
New totes and tees!
Molly’s been hard at work on new designs and the first batch will be on sale very soon. Look out for them at the…
Party!
We’re taking over the rear of Attic Brew this Sunday afternoon for a big shindig. Founders Tom and Jane Baker will be there along with other Loaf alumni, and you’re all welcome!
The fun starts at 3pm with kids welcome until 6pm. We’ll then carry on until closing. Attic is on Mary Vale Road by the canal bridge on the Stirchley side.
We’re putting together a slideshow of photos from the last decade and would love to include any you might have of bread and buns you bought, a course you went on, a pop-up takeaway — anything that brings a smile!
September marks 10 years since Loaf opened on Stirchley High Street and we’re having a big party to mark the occasion. If you’ve played a part in making Loaf what it is today, whether that’s as a customer, supplier, original investor or supportive friend, we’d love to see you.
On Sunday 11th September we’re taking over the rear of Attic Brew Co on Mary Vale Road, near the railway station bridge, from 3pm until closing. Kids are welcome until 6pm.
We will be putting together a slideshow of photos and memories from the last decade, along with our plans for the decades to come. If you have any nice pics, we’d love to share them. Please upload them here or send by email.
When we decided to support the Friends of Cotteridge Park we were interested in doing three things. Firstly, we took donations through our website and at the counter. You gave a total of £576, which will go towards keeping activities in the park free to access for everyone in the community.
Secondly, we wanted to help promote the park to our few thousand customers and newsletter readers. Hopefully you’ve been inspired to go along to an event for the first time, or just use the park more often.
Thirdly — and most importantly — we wanted to encourage you to give your time.The park is run by volunteers and many hands make lighter work. To this end Dorit has written about her time working as a volunteer at The Shed. We’ve also asked Emma, chair of the Friends, to outline all the ways you might get involved.
What it means to volunteer at The Shed
Before joining Loaf, Dorit volunteered at The Shed, the café and community hub in Cotteridge Park. We asked her to talk about why she got involved and what she got out of the experience.
Having moved to Birmingham from Germany during a pandemic I barely saw any actual English people for the first six months of living here. My social life only began in April 2021 at a SwingFit session in Cotteridge Park. I‘d never seen so many English speaking people in once place and it was quite overwhelming after so many months.
I moved here with my husband in late 2020 and took online courses in the language since my English school lessons were far too long ago. But, oh dear, there are worlds between Brummie English and what I have learned!
After the SwingFit session with many lovely people, we got a tea and I saw the sign ‘Volunteers needed’. I had a brief talk with Emma about what it meant to be a volunteer and started helping for a few hours once a week.
Since I used to work in a shop back home, it seemed best for me to volunteer in The Shed, the community building where people can have a coffee, eat some cake or just sit down for a while and enjoy the park.
If working in The Shed isn‘t your thing, there are many more ways to get involved. Volunteers do gardening activities, organise the CoCoMAD festival or help at the forest school. They also need people to take care of their website, social media, marketing, help with accounts and finances … Everything helps. How about doing some laundry from the café or picking up litter? Or maybe you have some skills to share with other volunteers, like knitting.
There are always new things to try at Cotteridge Park, such as drawing, bike polo, woodcarving… All of these and much more wouldn‘t be possible without those highly engaged volunteers.
I felt like I‘ve got something back every time I worked my shifts, and the gratitude of the visitors and the other volunteers was very encouraging. I‘m sure volunteering at The Shed helped me a lot when I applied for my job at Loaf as it was my only work experience in UK.
I quickly made many new friends and was made very welcome in this new community. When my flight home to Germany was cancelled due to Covid I spent Christmas with friends I’d made at The Shed.
Now I work full time at Loaf, I haven’t have the time to volunteer as much. But my husband and I are moving closer to the park, which feels like home to me, so I hope to be able to volunteer again. It’s where I started becoming a Brummie, after all!
Watch this lovely video about The Shed and the people who volunteer there
How to volunteer your time in Cotteridge Park
by Emma Woolf, chair of the board of trustees.
Cotteridge Park has been benefiting from the love and time given by volunteers since it was saved from closure by and for the community in 1997. The volunteers are the most amazing bunch of kind and generous people without whom the park would be a much lesser place.
Whatever you are interested in, and however much (or little) time you can give, there is always a way for you to help out. Here are 10 ideas to start you off, but we’re open to all suggestions.
Join The Shed volunteers — like Dorit did
Join the gardeners who meet on Tuesdays at 10 and Sundays at 10.15 (from mid September — currently on their summer break)
Help plan and run events — such as CoCoMAD or the film screenings
Help raise funds — by running events or writing funding applications
Help maintain the website and social media
Join the trustees to help with the legal and financial stuff
Share a skill — the Bike Polo, Knit and Natter, and the Art Group are run by people with skills to share
Create merchandise that could be sold to benefit the park
Help find technical and sustainable solutions to make the park a better place for people and nature
Or just pick up any litter you find when you walk round the park — litter picker and bin bags available.
We find volunteers get as much, if not more, than they give and find the experience rewarding in many ways. If this sounds like something you’d like to try, pop down to The Shed for a chat or fill in the volunteer form on the website.
We’re big fans of the Landworker’s Alliance, a union of farmers, growers, foresters and land-based workers with a mission is to improve livelihoods and create a better food and land-use system. They recently started a podcast which Neil has been enjoying.
The first three episodes don’t shy from the big issues, asking how we can transform our food systems, how to we get access to agricultural land, and investigating the grain crisis sparked by the war in Ukraine.
We’ve had an incredible response to our Free Kids Lunches programme this summer, reaching the capacity of what we can provide this week. We’re really happy we’ve been able top help feed a lot of kids, but us running out means there are more people out there who are struggling.
A society that allows people, especially children, to go hungry is not one we want to live in. Access to good food is right, not a privilege.
Thankfully it seems we’re not alone in thinking this. We’ve had over £400 in donations this week from those who were able, online, at the counter and in envelopes through the door. They came in all sizes — some small, some substantial, all of equal importance. We’re on track to cover our costs and the B30 Food Bank should expect a donation of the excess in September. Thanks to you all, and also to those to helped spread the word.
Emergency measures like this are important but long term change needs to happen. Please contact those able to make a change, starting with your MP.
During our shutdown we won’t be able to distribute lunches but we will do the final week of the holidays before school lunches are available again: 31 Aug — 2 Sep. There are a few left to reserve.
Laurie’s aim for the week is to encourage artists to consider working with biological materials and living things, and most of the participants were practicing artists, bringing a focussed but still playful inquisitiveness to the subject.
Martha introduces the yeast
We ran a short version of our bread course in the morning, giving a solid grounding in what yeast is and the ways we work with it to make bread, before letting them loose with some dough.
Over lunch we had a talk from Rosa Postlethwaite, a performance artist who has been using a sourdough starter in her work, focussing on it as a living creature and thinking about what it means to collaborate with it.
And then in the afternoon we had Günter Seyfried in our kitchen making “yeastograms” where shadows of UV light create images in yeast cultures. We went through the full process of making the agar to inoculate in Petri dishes and the next day had our living artworks. Here’s the Loaf logo:
Some photos from the day are on the BAB Lab Instagram. The festival continues at venues across Birmingham this week and we really hope it returns next year as it’s given us lots of ideas!
It will come as no surprise that we’re having to increase the price of our bread from this week. While most of the cost of a loaf of bread is our labour, other costs have increased significantly recently to the point where we need to pass some of them on.
Here are our new prices.
Old
New
White Sourdough – Large
£3.50
£3.75
White Sourdough – Small
£2.20
£2.50
Wholemeal Sourdough
£3.50
£4.00
Spelt Sourdough
£3.50
£4.00
Sourdough Tin
£3.50
£3.75
Sourdough Special
£2.50
£3.00
Rye – Large
£3.50
£3.75
Rye – Small
£2.20
£2.50
Rye Special
no change
£3.00
White Tin
£2.20
£2.50
Multigrain Tin – Large
£2.20
£2.50
Multigrain Tin – Small
£1.10
£1.20
Stirchley Loaf – Large
no change
£2.00
Stirchley Loaf – Small
no change
£1.00
Honey Oat
£2.00
£2.50
Focaccia
£2.00
£2.50
Sourdough Focaccia
£2.00
£2.50
Baguette
no change
£2.00
Sourdough Baguette
£2.00
£2.50
Fruit Loaf
no change
£3.50
Bloomer
no change
£2.20
Ciabatta
no change
£2.00
Naturally we thought a lot about what to increase and by how much. What follows is a glimpse into that process.
One of the key issues in the world of Real Bread is how to keep it affordable. We believe that good bread is worth paying a fair price for and that factory bread is only cheap because the true costs are hidden. But it is also vitally important that real bread is within reach of as many people as possible.
Last month Molly and Rach went to London for the Real Bread For All conference, looking at how small, local bakeries like Loaf can make Real Bread affordable and accessible for people on lower incomes. On the other hand bakeries have be economically sustainable and ensure that neither people or their products are undervalued.
There were no easy answers but they came back buzzing with ideas, one of which we’re planning to roll out over the next few months. And it was a good reminder that we’re already doing something to keep bread affordable…
Our Stirchley Loaf is an unassuming loaf of bread but it’s very important to us. It’s a simple, yeasted loaf made with a blend of white, wholemeal and rye flour with grated potato added for softness. Because there’s no tin involved we can mix, shape and bake it with the minimum of work and keep the cost down as much as possible. It’s not a lesser bread, but it is much more accessible.
We made the decision a while back that we will always charge £1 for a small and £2 for a large Stirchley, and that the ingredients will not change in quantity or quality. No shrinkflation here. As costs increase the Stirchley will be subsidised to keep it at this price as long as possible.
Meanwhile the majority of our other breads are going up. Some price variations are based on ingredients and there are a couple of overdue corrections, but it’s fairly equitable across the board. This mostly reflects our electricity bill which is more than doubling this year, and given that’s what powers the oven there’s not much we can do about it! (Other than continue to fight for systemic global socioeconomic change, of course.)
Thank you for continuing to buy our bread and keep us trading. As our prices are forced to increase we will continue to work to make Real Bread as affordable and accessible as we can, with your support.
The response to our free kids lunches programme has been great. From a standing start we’ve given away loads of packed lunches to people who need them — no questions asked.
And then, without prompting, some of you asked if you could send us money to cover the costs, which led to some quite emotional scenes on the Loaf group chat. So we’re making it official.
Our fundraising for the summer holidays will go towards the material costs of the packed lunches. We will provide the labour and logistics. Any surplus will go to the B30 Food Bank.
If you are able (and please don’t feel bad if you are not), you can make a donation on the website or at the counter with your purchase.
During the summer holidays, to help cover the shortfall of free lunches while the schools are closed, we are giving away children’s packed lunches to anyone who needs them, no questions asked, and no purchase necessary.
They are available Wednesday, Thursday and Friday afternoons during opening hours.
Included in the bag will be: 1 x Cheddar or Jam Roll 1 x Pack of Pom Bears 1 x Piece of Fruit 1 x Chocolate Chip Cookie 1 x Cawston Press Juice Carton
Lunches will be available
July 27-29
Aug 3-5
Aug 10-12
(Loaf closed Aug 17-26)
Aug 31 – Sep 2
These lunches are not a promotional offer or anything like that. They are intended for families that rely on free school meals which are not available in the school holidays.
A couple of videos came our way this week which we thought you might be interested in.
How The US Ruined Bread by Johnny Harris is extremely YouTubey in style, all fast-cuts and hyperkinetic memes, comparing standard US supermarket bread with the boulangeries of Paris. An unfair comparison, you might say, but in doing so he tells the story of how bread in the States got to be so bad and why that matters. He also has the most enjoyable one-minute explanation of How Bread Works starting at 4:24
While Harris is talking about the US, he could easily be talking about the UK and our cursed Chorleywood system. His talking points are essentially those of the Real Bread Campaign, of which we are enthusiastic supporters, so seeing them in this style was somewhat jarring, but not in a bad way. Maybe the campaign could take some notes!
Co-operation Calderdale is a survey of the businesses and organisations in the borough of Calderdale, West Yorkshire, that run as co-operatives. Their video couldn’t be more different in its style, but also not in a bad way, just different.
Of particular note is a visit to the Suma warehouse, from where our wholesale orders are dispatched every fortnight.
The focus on the history of co-operatives in 19th-century Calderdale reflecting on the surprising number of them in operation today reminded us of Stirchley. As you may know, Stirchley has a long history of co-operative societies starting with TASCOS in 1875, and we’re delighted to be continuing that tradition. Maybe we’ll make a video like this one day.
