Jam Tomorrow

We are taking part in a bread revolution.

Recently we spent three incredibly inspirational days in Melmerby,
Cumbria with baker Andrew Whitley and six other people from all over the
country interested in finding a way to bring real bread back into their
community. Some ideas revolved around a wood fired community hearth
where anyone could bake, some thought of teaming up with schools, some
considered volunteering, others needed to earn a living.

The traditional model of a bakery shop is often not viable anymore and
that is why we have had such excited responses to our model of Community
Supported Baking. And it's you, dear buyers and subscribers, who are
leading the revolution!

Andrew Whitley set up the Village Bakery in the 70's during a similar
wave of environmental and financial anxiety. He studied Russian in
Moscow and consequently worked there for the BBC, a background which
doesn't instantly make you think of baking, but he describes himself as
an idealist who felt compelled to take action. He brought rye bread to
the masses by supplying supermarkets and health food shops all over
Britain. The Village Bakery goes on, but Whitley has turned his energy
to The Real Bread Campaign, a venture that aims to support the return of
small bakeries and real bread to people's immediate reach.

We, as two people from the community, decided to start baking and see
how people would receive it. We are interested to see what else will
develop around bread in the Colne Valley, how people will get involved,
where this takes us. Who will bring in their grandmother's unbeatable
recipe, whose glut of apples we will be baking with, what can we do with
schools? With everything else that's going on with Transition Towns and
Renaissance Market Towns, it looks like Marsden is onto a good one.