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Bread Making Competition

After the huge success of the first Cranbrook Flour Show in 2010 we repeated the event on Sunday 15th May 2011. This is a Fun Competition for all Home Breadmakers to show what "Real Bread" is all about. It doesn’t matter whether you bake using a Bread Machine or by hand there is an entry class to suit you, including a specific Class for Children of 12 years and under. The classes were as follows: Class 1: Top Class Union Mill Loaf Class 2: Machine Made Wheat White Bread Class 3: Hand Made Wheat White Bread Class 4: Machine Made Wheat Brown Bread Class 5: Hand Made Wheat Brown Bread Class 6: 12 year olds and under Hand Made Novelty Shaped Loaf Class 7: Seeded, Fruited or Flavoured Bread The Cranbrook Flour Show was organized by us in conjunction with National Mills Weekend and their joint promotion with the Real Bread Campaign to encourage us all to eat Real Bread. What's "Real Bread"? The only essential ingredients of bread are: Flour, Water, Yeast (cultured or naturally occurring - optional), and Salt. Additional ingredients are great as long as they are natural (e.g. seeds, nuts, cheese, herbs, oils, fats and dried fruits) and contain no artificial additives. What "Real Bread" isn't The making of "Real Bread" doesn’t involve the use of any processing aids, artificial additives, flour 'improvers', dough conditioners, preservatives, chemical leavening or, well, artificial anything. Here are just some of the other things that you might find in industrial bread: E481 (sodium stearyl-2-lactylate), E472e (mono- and diacetyl-tartaric acid esters of mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids), E920 (l-cysteine), E282 (calcium propionate), E220 (potassium sorbate), E300 (ascorbic acid), E260 (acetic acid) soya flour, vegetable fat and dextrose. What’s more, industrial bread could also include substances such as phospholipase, fungal alpha amylase, transglutaminase, xylanase, maltogenic amylase, hemicellulase, oxidase, peptidase and protease - all legally, but the manufacturer wouldn’t have to declare them on the label. 2010 RESULTS Forty people participated in 2010 and a total of sixty different loaves of bread of all shapes and sizes were entered. A similar number took part in 2011. Here are some pictures of the bread produced and the results of the 2010 competition:

Winner of Class 1 Top Class Union Mill Loaf Isaac Bourne and his winning entry for the Novelty Shaped Loaf (a windmill) John Priestley, a retired baker, who judged the entries An entry in the Novelty Class

Competition Class First Prize Second Prize Third Prize 1 - Using Union Mill Flour Peter Bourne Jill Hooper Nicky Thomas-Davies 2 - White Machine Made Ann Stevenson Peter Bourne Margaret Donnelly 3 - White Hand Made Jackie Bourne Jill Hooper Jean Jones 4 - Brown Machine Made J. Pantlin Nicky Thomas-Davies Alan Vaughan 5 - Brown Hand Made Nicky Thomas-Davies Margaret Donelly Peter Bourne 6 - Children 12 and under Frances Weatherly Erin Bourne Rebecca Weatherly 7 - Novelty Shapes Isaac Bourne Isobel Thomas-Davies Jackie Bourne WELL DONE, everyone. 2011 Results will appear soon.

Union Mill Stone Ground Flour You can purchase from our shop "Floury Words", a small booklet of bread and cake recipes, price 50p, as well as stone-ground flour produced in the mill. Useful Links: National Real Bread-Maker Week Home Made Bread - Recipes, Beginners Guide to baking hand made Bread at Home. Breadinfo.com - Make Home-Made Bread and Flour, Recipes, Bread Machine Reviews, Mixers, Mills, etc. Watch a video.