Baking and retailing a diverse range of flour and grain

This session is for free for Better Food Traders Members. Become a member of Better Food Traders. Members of the Real Bread Campaign received a 50% discount on tickets.

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Are you curious about how to diversify the grain you work with? Want to learn more about flour, from seed selection, to farming, milling, baking and trading? Interested in local grain economies and how you can get involved as a baker, trader, or citizen?

In this 2-hour workshop, you'll learn about theory and practice of using non-commodity flour from Kimberley Bell, baker and shopkeeper at Small Food Bakery and co-founder of UK Grain Lab and Nottingham Mill Coop.

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About this session:

Kimberley will share stories and anecdotes from 12 years of establishing, running and evolving Small Food Bakery as well as experience collaborating with farmers, millers, bakers, plant breeders, artists and storytellers.

The session aims to inspire you to deepen your own baking practice to align with your own values and give you some tips on how to overcome some of the inevitable challenges of working differently and building a market for your products.The session will cover:

• The definition of ‘commodity’, why this is important in selecting ingredients. How grain and flour became commodified and the significance of this to bakers and food retailers
• The barriers to ‘decommodifying’ baking and how to work around them
• Flour 101 - Seed selection, farming, milling
• How to characterise a new flour, understand its possibilities and communicate its value to customers in baked goods or direct retail
• Some practical tips for taking part in building your local grain economy
• Share some recipes and further reading/ resources, and a challenge if you want to put some of this into practise…

There will be time for questions and discussion at the end.

This session is for:

• People working in bakeries who want to start incorporating non commodity wheats
• Microbakers who want to explore working with local flour
• Shop owners and traders who want to better understand the world of non commodity wheat and how they can participate in their local grain economy
• Anyone wanting to learn more about the theory and practice of changing our relationship with how we produce, trade and consume grain/cereals

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About your trainer

Kimberley Bell is a baker and shopkeeper at Small Food Bakery in Nottingham. She specialises in baking with sourdough breads and naturally leavened pastries. Over 12 years she has built a bakery production that centres agroecological ingredients, exploring small scale, relationship based trading as a lever for change in the food system. Kimberley also co-founded UK Grain Lab in 2017 and Nottingham Mill Coop in 2021.

About Nottingham Mill Co-op

Nottingham Mill Co-op is a community flour mill and bakery kitchen space based in Nottingham city centre. They are not-for-profit co-operative, owned and controlled by their members, who are encouraged to help shape the direction and activities of the space by participating in sociocratic governance meetings. Nottingham Mill Co-op offer services to support small-scale food producers involved in the production of grain, flour, bread and other cereal-based foods, by providing affordable and flexible access to a rentable work space, specialist equipment, skills training and business advice, and a supportive network of mentors and peers. Their mission is to raise awareness around the benefits and methods of working with local, agroecologically grown grains and flours.

About Better Food Traders

Better Food Traders (BFT) is a not-for-profit CIC that empowers and equips traders, communities, and growers to rebuild an independent, sustainable food sector. We support agroecological farming and help build routes to market that reduce the environmental impacts of food, enabling a just transition to a more climate- and nature-friendly food system.

As part of this, we support a national network of independent food traders, including veg box schemes, shops, wholesalers, bakeries, fishmongers, farmers markets and online retailers who are united by a commitment to trade UK-grown, ethically produced and organic/agroecological food