This year, fermentalists will go online to share their sourdough knowledge and get consumers involved, while maintaining current health protection measures.
Among the highlights is a sourdough Breadchat on September 2 at 8pm BST via Zoom with Bread Campaign ambassadors Dilly Boase, Danielle Ellis, Sonya Hundal and Ameena Nur.
Other events include a raft of online classes and workshops from bakeries across the UK, recipes, social media invites and giveaways.
Real Bread Campaign coordinator Chris Young said, “Sourdough isn’t a look, taste or style. Any bread that can be made with baker’s yeast can be made using a sourdough starter, and then some. We’re encouraging people who’ve only tasted one type of loaf sold as sourdough to try others from a Real Bread bakery, supporting an amazing local business in the process, or to bake their own at home.”
Sourfaux
On the business side, the Real Bread Campaign continues its decade-long lobby for a legal definition of sourdough and mandatory full ingredient labelling for all loaves as part of its Honest Crust Act to avoid shoppers being misled.
The Campaign also works to help protect authentic sourdough bakers from unfair competition by companies using the word to market products manufactured using additives and baker’s yeast.
It launched the Real Bread Loaf Mark in 2011 as a visual aid for shoppers looking for genuine sourdough bread. To use the Mark, bakers commit to leavening bread only using a live sourdough starter culture.
“With no legal definition of sourdough in the UK and elsewhere, people are at the mercy of industrial loaf fabricators, multiple retailers and even some smaller operators, choosing to use the word disingenuously or downright misleadingly,” added Young.
“The Sourdough Loaf Mark is a stopgap symbol to support Real Bread bakers, and for shoppers seeking a simple solution to shunning sourfaux for any and all reasons they do so.”
