Bakers Blog
Bread: The facts
- Bread remains one of Britain’s favourite foods, with 99% of households buying bread – or the equivalent of nearly 12 million loaves are sold each day.
- The British market for retail bakery products is growing at 2% per annum, although this rises to 5% for artisanal products. Annual sales across the industry have risen to £6.5 billion.
- Each year 99 bread products are purchased per household. Men eat bread more frequently than women: 44% of men eat bread twice a day compared with 25% of women.
- White bread accounts for 76% of the bread sold in the British Isles.
- Large bakeries, which produce wrapped and sliced bread, account for 80% of British bread production. In store bakeries produce about 17% of bread, with the remainder accounted for by high street bakeries. Bread is wrapped and sliced for convenience, for keeping qualities and value for money.
- Otto Frederick Rohwedder invented the first slice-and-wrap bread machine in 1928. He sold his pre-sliced, wrapped bread in a bakery at Battle Creek, Michigan. By 1933 80% of all bread sold in the US was sliced and wrapped and the phrase ‘the best thing since sliced bread’ was coined. Sliced bread was first introduced into Britain in the 1930s.
- The record for the longest loaf of bread is 1,211.6 m, which was baked in Vagos, Portugal, during the town's Bread and Bakers’ Party on 10 July 2005. It took almost 60 hours to make. The record for the longest baguette is 122m, which was baked in Milan, Italy, in 2015.
Bakers Blog
Gallette des Rois
The French bakers, especially in Northern France, end their Christmas celebrations on the weekend of the 12th Night, the 6th January, celebrating the visit of the three Kings to Christ in Bethlehem, by baking the Galette des Rois, which translates into the King’s griddle cake.We have made our own version this year. We hope you will try it and enjoy it – please let us know what you think.
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