Here we are, back under lockdown, and it’s starting to feel familiar. All over the world bakeries are helping people out by donating bread, sharing bread, baking affordable bread, and giving bread away. It makes you proud to be a baker.

Once again we’ve gathered another collection of curious bread-led goodies for you, telling stories about bread and bakery around the world. Here they are. We hope you’re staying safe and well.

Bread set to replace collagen scaffolds

Thanks to New Scientist magazine for grossing us out so beautifully! A team of scientists is experimenting with bread as an alternative ‘scaffold’ to collagen, which is currently used to grow living cells in laboratories. The new technology could eventually be used to grow lab meat for human consumption, as well as various fleshy bits and bobs for transplantation into and onto humans. Using bread as a scaffold instead of collagen could drive down the cost of medical treatments and finally make lab-grown meat a reality. It’s also less grisly, since traditional collagen scaffolds usually come from animals or cadavers. Urgh.

Introducing Mexico’s Kings’ Day bread

It happens every year. On January 6th King’s Day bread is served in homes all over Mexico. Kings’ Day is the date Christians believe the Three Wise Men found the baby Jesus. The bread, Rosca de reyes, has an ancient history. It can be traced back to the fourth century, to the Roman festival of Saturnalia, which celebrated the winter solstice. The bread they celebrated with was circular, packed with figs, dates and honey, and it eventually turned up in 14th century France before making its way to Spain. When the Spanish invaded South America, they took the tradition with them.

Banana bread is dead – a warm welcome to custard tarts

Lockdown baking trends… it’s a thing. A big thing. Did you know banana bread, the biggest lockdown baking trend of 2020, is fading back in popularity, making room for a new trend? Custard tarts are, apparently, the new rock ‘n’ roll, closely followed by delights like M&M fudge and ice cream cake. Millions of us will be making them over the coming months. Happy baking!

Turkish company provides cheap and healthy’ bread to Istanbul

Turkey has been struggling economically for years thanks to exchange rates, inflation and unemployment, and the pandemic is making things worse. Now Istanbul has introduced mobile bread buffets to meet a strong demand for affordable bread, and they’re seeing long queues forming. The company concerned, Istanbul Halk Ekmek, says living conditions have become a lot more difficult thanks to Covid, and ‘cheap and healthy bread’ is in huge demand. So far 40 mobile buffets have been deployed in 26 districts cross the city.

Lebanon’s bread misery continues

Lebanon’s Economy Ministry has re-set the price of a 900g loaf at 2,250 Lebanese pounds thanks to a sharp hike in global wheat prices. The price rise has come about because a donation of flour from Iraq, which has kept the country going since November 2020, has now run out. The high exchange rate of the US dollar against the Lebanese pound isn’t helping matters. The price will only be reduced if the dollar exchange rate improves, the price of flour drops, or the Lebanese pound improves, having lost more than 80% of its value since October 2019.

The great British food parcel scandal

It’s sad to see some struggling families being sent food parcels containing stale bread, and others containing just four slices of bread to cover ten lunches. As the world’s 6th richest economy, surely we can do better than this.

Bored? Be amazed by this!

We can only conclude that humanity is very, very bored. Otherwise why would a simple video of a nurse sealing a bread bag ‘in just seconds without using a clip’ go viral? Apparently the nurse’s bread bag sealing antics have ‘wowed the internet’.

Another story reveals the considerable global consternation and angst caused by a slice of bread that was – wait for it – twice the usual width. A photo of the skinny rectangular slice of white bread, angrily labelled ‘long bread’ by many, many offended bread lovers, recently went viral with more than 600,000 likes and over 70,000 retweets and quotes.

Loved by the foodservice sector

Everything we make is baked with skill, care, and love. No wonder our gorgeous artisan breads are so popular with our good friends in the foodservice sector. If you’d like to test our wares for yourself, we’ll be glad to send you a generous box of free goodies to taste. In the meantime, stay safe.