Why?
Baking and eating real, simple bread has so many benefits, from our mental health to gut health, our wallet to our planet.
Here are a few ways breaducation can benefit and even transform peoples' lives...
Meditative
Baking is simple but repetitive, it demands your full concentration using all your senses, sight, smell, sound, touch and taste. I’ve experienced first hand how mixing and shaping dough can dissipate anxiety.
Social
Bread brings us together, not only to break and share it but giving a fresh warm loaf to another person can be incredible in bridging gaps in relationships.
Joyful
Bread is joy. It’s a joy to make, experimenting with different flavours and combinations. It’s a joy to eat, especially with family. It’s a joy to give and it's a joy to teach, passing down the skills to others.
Gut Friendly
90% of the bread we eat is ultra processed, usually containing over 28 different ingredients, preservatives and additives. This can lead to indigestion, bloated and inflamed guts. Baking your own bread guarantees a loaf made with simple ingredients and proper fermentation which leads to a very happy gut.
Decisions and Relationship with Food
Eating bread you made yourself can promote mindful eating. You’re aware of the time you took to make the bread and therefore take more time to eat and appreciate it. It's a great base to build your meals around and instead of just being seen as a carb with a set of numbers on the back of it’s pack, it’s seen as something special and real, food to be celebrated. This in turn helps release serotonin, making your body happy and actually promoting a healthy digestion.
Education
Baking bread is not just a skill for Iife but it's also a skill which can support you throughout your life. We will always eat bread therefore we'll always need bakers, a profession all around the world. Once you learn how, baking can enable you to open doors and build a stable and empowering career.
Environment
In the UK alone we waste 1 MILLION slices of bread EVERYDAY! It’s seen as a cheap replaceable commodity which we can easily throw away. By baking your own bread you’ll take better care of it inventing delicious ways to use up scraps.
Wallet
On average it costs 25p in ingredients and 12p in electricity to make a loaf, that's 4 times less then a cheap white sliced loaf and almost 12 times less than a loaf from a bakery or independent shop.
