The Story of Bread - Teaching Students to Bake

As a family and a business, we believe anyone can bake, and after generations of teaching and sharing baking skills, we have seen firsthand the life-changing impact this can have. We have often dreamt of what difference it could make if every child could bake a loaf of bread. And in our own small way, we have used our Cookery School to do this, working with local schools and community projects to teach baking. We used our Adopt a School scheme to work with local schools to teach whole schools to bake.

This month, we have sadly closed our Cookery School, which has meant we need to find new ways to teach. We have recently started working with the Square Food Foundation in Bristol, who for over 15 years have been making cooking accessible for people of all ages and abilities, running free and subsidised classes, a recipe kit delivery service, and food education programmes across Bristol, bringing people together to learn to cook nutritious meals from scratch. Like us, they “believe cooking is a vehicle for positive change, supporting people to develop good health, mental wellbeing, improved self-confidence, and social connectivity.”

Photo: Square Food Foundation in Culverhill School

For a number of years, the Square Food Foundation has been teaching the Story of Bread in local schools. They decided this year to make this simpler and to provide a day’s baking in local schools, taking the children on a journey from grain to loaf, with fresh churned butter to top. Last week, they delivered their first session at Culverhill School, a special school local to us who we have worked with lots before. We were able to pop down and see the third session last week. It was great to see the children so engaged and to go from being nervous to touching the sticky dough to flinging and shaping it into a nutritious loaf. All the children then get to take their fresh-baked loaf, some freshly made butter, and flour to make another loaf at home.

We are delighted to have been able to financially support the start of this exciting new project and look forward to seeing it rise and develop.