There are plans to create the UK’s first ‘peasant bakery’ near St Davids in Pembrokeshire.
The bakery, named Torth y Tir, which is Welsh for ‘Loaf of the land’, calls itself a community-supported peasant bakery.
It said this means it “farms, mills and bakes wood-fired, handmade sourdough bread and pizzas”.
The bakery began two years ago when founder Rupert Dunn began baking 35 loaves a week for the local community. This year the project grew an acre of wheat by hand, with the help of the local community.
Torth y Tir farms and mills heritage grains before turning its flour into baked goods. It is currently aiming to fundraise £6,000, which will be match-funded, in order to develop the project.
It has also worked with more than 200 young people, teaching them about the environmental impacts of farming and bread production.
The group is now hoping to develop a bakery near St Davids, where they would bake bread for the local community and offer workshops.
The fundraising would allow it to rent more land and a barn, and cover increased farming costs.
It also wants to buy and restore small-scale grain-cleaning equipment and grain storage, as well as cover the initial planning costs for the Treginnis Farm project.
Dunn said: “These are big plans, but we think this is the direction food production should be moving in. We can create a model which is a much more soulful, sustainable solution, creating a livelihood that people can really enjoy and feel nourished by and producing our bread with the involvement of the whole community and sharing our learning."
This would be the UK’s first Boulanger Paysanne, a model that is well-established in France.
He added: “Whereas bread had become something that is problematic to our health, we want to restore it to something that’s actually good for us and good for our communities.”
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