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Bread is everyday, but the system behind it is anything but simple. Why and when did bread become centred on a narrow range of wheat varieties, long supply chains, and uniformity - and what have we traded away in nutrition, resilience, and farmer livelihoods to make it cheap and consistent?
Ben MacKinnon, founder of E5 Bakehouse, has built his baking practice around organic grains, heritage wheats, and on-site milling - connecting flavour and craft directly to farming and biodiversity.
Lindsay Wright is a cook, miller, teacher and baker, and co-owner of Silva Kitchen & Bakery - one of several enterprises based at Wakelyns Agroforestry in Suffolk. Wakelyns is internationally recognised for its pioneering work in organic agroforestry, integrating trees, crops, and research to create resilient farming systems that support biodiversity, soil health, and farmer livelihoods. Wright’s baking and cooking practice is embedded within this model, using genetically diverse YQ grain developed and grown at Wakelyns alongside other UK-grown and milled grains, and working within short food chains that reconnect bread-making to ecology and local grain economies.
Together, MacKinnon and Wright explore:
- the business model of modern bread
- why sourdough alone is not a cure-all
- how grain diversity could improve both nutrition and farming resilience
- what it really means to localise food systems without romanticising the past
