On Tuesday 11th February, we had a visit from Andy Haddon, the founder of the Big River Bakery. He came to talk to us all about bread as part of our ‘Where Does Our Food Come From?’ humanities topic.

We learned that bread is made from different grains, such as wheat or rye, and that there are only four key ingredients you need to bake bread: flour, water, yeast and salt.

As Big River is a local bakery, Andy also told us a lot about the history of baking in the North East. Did you know that there were once lots and lots of windmills in Newcastle? No, nor did we! As Andy had noted the name and logo of our school, he also told us that Roman soldiers were given a loaf of bread each day made from a grain called spelt.

Andy talked to us about a bread very particular to the North East – the stottie! Stotties are very flat, but very tasty – the reason they are so flat is all to do with the amount of air in them.

Obviously, class 5 had their own questions for Andy, ranging from ‘What’s your favourite bread?’ to ‘How do you make bread crust?’ He found it very tricky to say which bread was his favourite!

Next on the agenda is to plant some spring wheat (we learned that there is winter wheat and spring wheat, too!) and visit Big River to bake some bread of our own. We are all looking forward to it already!

Thank you, Andy!