It’s all go as usual in our wonderful world of tasty artisan breads. Here’s the latest news.

Aussie cockroach bread nightmare!

According to the Daily Mail, one Australian dad had a terrible shock when he found a ‘large’ cockroach in a loaf of bread from the manufacturing giant Coles, which he bought at a Melbourne supermarket. If you really want to, you can see a picture of the creature here. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6999257/Horrified-father-claims-cockroach-Coles-bread.html

May Day at Brixton Windmill – Bread and beer go down a treat

The Mayday celebration of local producers in Brixton was due to be an amazing event, and now there are photos to prove just how popular a combination bread, beer, sunshine and live music can be! You can see wonderful photos of people having a marvellous time here, http://www.brixtonbuzz.com/2019/05/in-photos-brixton-windmill-beer-and-bread-festival-bank-holiday-monday-6th-may-2019/ with beer from the Brixton Brewery, Canopy Brewery, London Beer Lab and the Bullfinch Brewery, plus bread from a plethora of local artisan bakeries including The Old Post Office Bakery, Moji Coker and F. Mondays café.

Modern bread wheat is older than we thought

We use wheat to make bread… but we had no idea that the modern wheat breeds we use today are at least ten thousand years old. Scientists in the USA have just finished mapping the wheat’s entire genome, and it has revealed modern wheat’s breeding history.

Studying the sheer genetic diversity of wheat varieties has already shown us the type of cereals our ancestors cultivated, as well as the genetic and physical origins of today’s wheat. Now the study, called WHEALBI, reveals how, as the human population grows and the climate steadily changes, some food resources could become very rare in future. It shows very clearly that we’ll face a tricky plant breeding challenge to improve the yield of all sorts of food crops, including wheats.

Scientists analysed the genomes of 480 wheat varieties including wild grasses, ancient grains and modern wheats with huge yields. And it looks like the kind of bread wheat we recognise today – modern strains – originated around 10,000 years ago in Turkey, a clever cross between durum wheat and a wild grass called Aegilops tauschii. Fascinatingly, we can observe proof of the emergence and expansion of the EU in today’s wheat, once cultivated in Central Europe abut now grown throughout the region.

Now scientists are getting familiar with the genetic diversity of wheat and becoming familiar with its key characteristics for breeding, it’ll be easier to create future varieties that are just as productive, if not more so, in the face of climate change. At the same time many people are worried about genetic engineering, seeing GM foods as ‘Frankenfoods’. It’s an incredibly unhelpful attitude since GM foods are not that different from the foods humans have interbred and played with for thousands of years. GM merely brings about the process of change faster.

Cheap bread for Ramadan in Turkey

People who live in Istanbul will be able to buy traditional bread during the religious month of Ramadan for just 1 Lira, a few pennies in British money. It matters because food prices in Turkey have rocketed more than a third recently thanks to the currency crisis that peaked in August and sent inflation soaring. Bread is a staple food in Turkey, the tasty Ramazan Pidesi is an essential flatbread served throughout the period, and the bread company Istanbul Halk Ekmek A.Ş., Anadolu has decided to keep prices low, a decision supported by officials in the city.

Is your mouth watering yet?

If your mouth isn’t watering yet it will be… when you test-drive a collection of artisan bread samples made by us with love and dedication. Just ask and we’ll send you a nice, generous box full to enjoy.