Breadshare Community Bakery
PRODUCER: Breadshare Community Bakery, Edinburgh
PRODUCT: Rustic Rye Bread
REGION: Scotland
CATEGORY: From the Earth (Artisan)
WHAT THEY DO
Breadshare Community Bakery is a non-profit community enterprise based in Portobello, Edinburgh, and dedicated to providing everyone with access to great bread.
All Breadshare products have been certified organic by the Scottish Organic Producers Organisation (SOPA), and reflect the values of the Real Bread campaign, meaning they are free from artificial additives, preservatives and made without processing aids. This bread is nutritious, containing natural organically produced ingredients that are lower in petrochemical residues, and has a salt content of less than 1 per cent.
While all ingredients used are fully traceable, Breadshare’s long-term goal is to produce bread using only Scottish produce and contribute to the development of a strong local food system. As part of an initiative to restore local flour milling to Scotland, Breadshare’s Rustic Rye Loaf contains 30 per cent wheat flour milled just ten miles from the bakery in East Lothian.
Sustainability is also key. The bakery operates a zero-waste policy, processing its food waste through social enterprise Changeworks and supporting groups such as the Wilson Memorial Food Bank. Old bread is sold cheaply on Sundays or turned into higher value products. Breadshare also promotes organically produced foods as less damaging to the environment.
Established in 2012 with a team of just three, Breadshare Community Bakery now has a café and employs 17 local people. Following the Social Enterprise Code of Practice’s principle that “economic activity should work for the common good”, the bakery hope to boost local employment further, and hold monthly events to allow the wider community to learn about bread-making and the nutritional values of bread.
WHAT THE JUDGES SAID
The judging team in Scotland praised this “lovely loaf” as a very good example of sourdough, commenting on its “good crust and crumb” and “nice acidity”
VISIT THE WEBSITE: breadshare.co.uk