Your chance to connect with inspiring Real Bread bakers and business owners.
The Real Bread Campaign and Roots to Work invite you to join current and future Real Bread professionals on Tuesday 20 February 2024 for a business networking evening (6-9pm) at Today Bread in Walthamstow.
Whether you’re starting or developing as a professional Real Bread baker, or aspire to owning a bakery, you’ll have the chance to hear from – and chat with – flour arrangers already doing so.
The event will also be an opportunity for old hands to talk with each other about current challenges and opportunities, pick each other’s brains, nod knowingly about how hard it is to find staff, grit teeth about rising costs and so on…all with people whose eyes light up (rather than glaze over) when you start banging on about bread. Again.
Roots to Real Bread is being run as part of Real Bread Week.
The evening starts with a host’s welcome and introduction to Today Bread from owner Alexandre Bettler. This will be followed by short talks by:
Sareta Puri, of Sustain's good food jobs website Roots to Work, and Real Bread Campaign coordinator Chris Young, will also outline some of the work the charity does in support of small businesses.
The floor will then open for anyone to ask questions or share their own thoughts/experience, before everyone gets on with nibbling and nattering for the rest of the evening.
As the event is all about sharing, Today Bread will provide something light to eat (probably soup) and everyone is invited to BYO Real Bread for others to try.
Advance booking is essential - link at top and bottom of this page.
We don't want cost to be a barrier to anyone joining the party, so tickets are priced on a sliding scale. Please pay what you can as we need to pay our speakers and cover other costs from ticket sales. Any surplus will go to the charity Sustain to help it keep running the Real Bread Campaign.
Alexandre Bettler arrived from Switzerland in 2002 to do a master’s degree in communication, art and design at the London Royal College of Art, then opened a graphic design studio with two friends. After working as a designer for more than 15 years, Alex decided to realise his dream of running a bakery and a space for events based around food and friendship. The project began in his Clapton flat as a microbakery, delivering freshly-made Real Bread to local cafés and restaurants. The business grew until the space became too tight so, after two years of looking, he found premises in Walthamstow to make his dream come true by opening Today Bread in 2016. Alex continues to run workshops around the world. As well as baking, Alex shares how to use bread as a tool for communication and therefore how to make companions, from the Latin cum panis – with bread.
Leo Maxlhaieie
Locked down in January 2021, Leo started sharing his Mozambican-inspired Real Bread with his neighbours in Sevenoaks, Kent. News (and the aroma) travelled fast and Leo The Baker quickly became inundated with requests and orders. After 9 months, Leo quit his day job to run his microbakery fulltime. In early 2022, Leo successfully crowdfunded equipment for his new commercial bakehouse to scale up production of baguettes, sourdough loaves, cinnamon buns and more. @leo.thebaker
Jackie McKinson Founder and head baker of Aries Bakehouse at the heart of her local community in Brixton. Jackie started a cake making business from home in around 2001, at first supplying events before setting up a market school. In 2015, she moved her microbakery to a converted garage before relocating to a retail park. In 2019, Jackie moved back to where she had grown up, opening the bakery on the street where her mum ran a sweetshop in the 1980s. Using and selling many ingredients from local and other small producers, the bakery’s range includes sourdough breads, challah on a Friday, and jerk chicken sausage rolls. @brixtonpastrychef @ariesbakehouse
Eddy Sleiman is the founder and head baker at Ed Baker microbakery in Hither Green, London. Eddy has always had the passion for heritage food. His travels tend to be food-destination-centric as research to help him deliver unique culinary experiences. Eddy founded Ed Baker during the lockdowns of 2020, having decided to leave his old trade as chartered marketer and pursue his passion for good food. @iamedbaker
While everyone is welcome, this networking event is geared towards people who make their living from Real Bread, or are considering doing so, such as current and would-be:
Sustain / the Real Bread Campaign works to nurture a more diverse and inclusive community. This includes running events at which everyone feels safe and respected. We will not tolerate any kind of discrimination. Please be considerate of other people’s points of view and avoid using offensive language or inappropriate cultural references.
If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to email event organiser Chris Young.
Key to this get-together is bringing people together in the same room, which the Real Bread Campaign hasn’t done enough of in recent years.
Though this particular event won’t be streamed or recorded, previous online events are still available to watch and we hope to do more in future.
Do you run a Real Bread bakery, small mill, cooking/baking school, or grow grain somewhere in the UK? Fancy inviting a load of fellow Real Bread fanatics and other grainiacs round to your gaff?
Drop Chris at the Real Bread Campaign a line to discuss how we might be able to work with you to organise a Real Bread get-together. In particular, we’d love to work with people who can host events in Northern Ireland, Scotland, Wales and other places outside London.
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