An enthusiastic group of Oxfordshire foodies aim to turn over a few new loaves in 2009. They are rebelling against today’s chemical-enhanced mass- produced bread. Bread created from flour milled from a mix of ancient cereal varieties grown organically in the Chilterns, will play an important role in their diet from now on.

The coalition of consumers, bakers and campaigners launched their Real Bread Campaign in Oxford, when they met late last year at The Vaults & Garden Café to discuss ways of encouraging us all to eat real bread and so challenge the giant baking companies that dominate the modern bread market. The Oxford Bread Group will be run by volunteers on a non-profit basis.

Those attending the first meeting included Andrew Whitely, the founder of the Village Bakery in Melmerby, Cumbria, and author of the book Bread Matters. After many years as a full-time artisan baker and respected food writer, he wants to spread the word and encourage us all to make our own bread, or at least buy and eat the real thing. Andrew launched the Real Bread initiative nationally, in hope that it would be taken up around the country. He sped to Oxford straight from London, having launched his Real Bread Campaign there.

Others in the new group, who also wish to rebel against the bread sold today, included Colin Tudge, biologist and author of Feeding People is Easy and John Letts, an archaeobotanist and wheat grower. They too had much to say about modern bread.

Andrew’s main argument is that most people would be horrified if they found out what was actually in their daily bread.

He said: “Bread should be the staff of life, but the label on the average loaf reads more like a recipe for a scientific experiment than the ingredients of a staple food.

Andrew pointed out that traditional dough was left to ferment for many hours in order to develop its flavour and improve its texture and nutritional qualities, but modern supermarket bread is no longer made in the traditional way.

The Oxford Bread Group’s literature points out that instead of allowing bread time to prove and develop naturally, flour used for mass-produced bread is mixed with a host of chemical additives, flour improvers and processing aids. It is also injected with air, extruded into loaf shapes and then baked to produce a facsimile of real bread.

Supermarket bread also contains chemical enzymes that are added to soften the bread and extend its shelf life.

The group accepts that we don’t all have time to make our own bread, which is why they have come up with an interesting alternative. They plan to produce and distribute loaves baked by master baker Geoff Coleman of the Cornfield Bakery, Wheatley, using a traditional, long-ferment process that allows the loaf to rise slowly and develop its flavours naturally. But that’s not all. This bread will not be baked from any old flour. They plan to use stone ground Heritage Flour milled from a mix of ancient cereal varieties grown organically in the Chilterns. The wheat varieties that go into the flour have been grown by John Letts. It has taken John more than ten years to be able to harvest enough wheat to make this a viable project.

It all began when he recovered a small amount of medieval grain remaining in the thatch while he was inspecting old roofs. He took the grains to the Gene Centre in Norwich to search for contemporary equivalents he could grow to raise more seeds. It’s been a long haul, but he has finally reached his goal.

He began with just 25 seeds from the seed bank. It proved a slow process, but he now has enough to bring in a good harvest and supply him with sufficient seeds for next year’s planting.

John explained that modern wheat varieties were genetically uniform and produced bumper crops of high-protein grain only when grown with chemical fertilisers, herbicides and fungicides, whereas the heritage grains produced a reliable and sustainable yield of high quality grain in low-input growing conditions.

He insists on having the wheat stone-ground as modern milling takes so much of the goodness out of grain that chalk, iron and B Vitamins have to be added to most flour by law, but even then many vital elements are still missing from refined flour.

Another advantage of using a blend of old varieties of wheat is that it’s genetically diverse, with between 150 and 200 types of wheat in one field compared to the mono cultures of a standard crop.

The group aims to start small, with about 75 households paying in advance to get one loaf of bread a week. They will use existing distribution networks such as vegetable box schemes and farmers’ markets to minimise distribution costs.

The Oxford Bread Group is essentially a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) scheme that will form a direct link between producers and consumers. They also hope it will create a new community of consumers who are dedicated to supporting local producers. Their plan is that it will evolve into a community enterprise, delivering bread and eventually flour and other cereal-based products to local communities through select shops, food co-ops, schools, community cafes and lunch clubs. They also want to develop an educational outreach project.

In fact they have so many exciting plans for 2009, they are convinced this is going to be a year to remember. The group plans to distribute the first of their loaves on Thursday, January 15. If you would like to join the group, you can make contact on info@oxfordlocalbread.org