The rise of artisan bakeries in UK

The rise of artisan bakeries

This article entitled « The rise of artisan bakeries » from Sudi PIGOTT was published in “The Indepedant”. It describes the increasing trend of bristish people of eating artisan bread instead of the wrapped-sliced industrial bread. More specifically it describes the “Real Bread” campaign promoting free additives loaves and more transparency in the customers information.

Artisanal bread produced by high street retails bakeries represent only 3% of the total bread volumes sold in the UK, behind the in-store bakeries in supermarkets (17%) and the industrial-made bread for the 80% remaining. This is a small amount of the sales but it has become a real trend in the british society where artisanal bakeries are now the symbols of the gentrification of a street/town.

A problem is that the british law does not define what an “artisan baker” means or what hides between the “freshly-baked”, “with finest ingrenients”, “natural” or “traditional” terms that many bakeries display. To help the customers to find their way between these slogans, a “Real Bread campaign” has been launch by Sustain (an alliance for “better food and farming”). This campaign gives a kind of label to bakers who respect exacting criterias such as using quality flour locally milled, respect slow fermentation, use no additives, use a proper sourdough starter,…

This research of a natural additive-free bread has also generated a new trend of DIY (Do It Yourself) bakers. A lot of micro bakeries have risen, running their own business at home for a community-supported level. Some courses are even been created to explain how to make virtuous bread and this activity has created some part-time real jobs to passionate amateurs.

To conclude, this article shows that in UK, the traditions about the bread are rapidly evolving with a new research of gustative quality combined with an “ecological” reject of industrial additives in the classical white sandwich industrial bread.

In my view, I think that this new trend in UK is a very interesting one. It shows that more and more people are trying to understand what they eat from years and what additives and ingredients are really used by the biggest industrial companies of the country. It also shows that the british society is opening itself to european/french traditions.

Despite this trend is limited to a few part of the bakery business (3% only!), I hope that the Real Bread Campaign will encourage this industry to upgrade the quality of the products by better informing the consumer about the real quality of what it eats. On their web site we can read that Sustain has contacted some big supermarkets chains and highlighted the Great British fake-off. But also that one (Marks & Spencer) has