Bread and a Happy Heart

When we all know who it is in our locality who grows the grain, mills the flour and kneads the dough that becomes our daily bread, we will be better nourished – in every sense.

Andrew Whitley, Bread Matters

In May 2013, I bought Colin a gift voucher for his birthday to attend a Bread Matters breadmaking course, the rest, as they say, ‘is history’. Colin has baked bread every day since and it nourishes his soul as well as nourishing our guests. I consider it a bad (and unusual) day when the kitchen window sill isn’t filled with bowls of dough fermenting slowly and quietly or the kitchen isn’t full of the delicious smell of freshly baked bread. Colin’s daily bread has become a small but significant marker of our domestic health and well-being.

Last weekend we took another step in our journey with Bread Matters – we became part of the Scotland the Bread research. Under Andrew’s expert guidance, Colin prepared a seed bed of 50 square meters and sowed wheat and rye seed – Meteor and Swedish Spring Rye to be precise.

Andrew has this to say about the project,

Scotland grows a lot of wheat but precious little of it is used to make bread. We rely on imports and so have little control over this staple food. It turns out that the wheat varieties in today’s bread may well have less of the nutrients needed for health than in the past. Better grain and better bread can help solve our growing health problems, so we’ve started research to find more nutritious wheats, suitable for low-impact farming. And we’re passing on the skills that turn locally-grown wheat into delicious, healthy bread.

I’m privileged and proud to know that it’s Colin who grows our grain, who will mill our flour and who kneads the dough that is our daily bread.

Please read more about this important and exciting project, take a look at Scotland the Bread.