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Real Bread Returns to Bowhouse!
Scottish Festival of Real Bread Returns to Bowhouse on 28 February: Help Something Good Grow
The Scottish Festival of Real Bread returns to Bowhouse on Saturday 28 February, celebrating its fourth year as a national gathering for bakers, farmers, food producers and bread lovers from across Scotland.
A programme of familiar favourites and one-off events promises a vibrant, hands-on and family-friendly day centred on Real Bread, Scottish-grown grains and sustainable food culture. The Festival aims to inspire attendees to rethink their relationship with bread towards locally baked, home-made, and sustainably sourced options. Through hands-on learning, meaningful connections, and shared enthusiasm, we empower bakers of all levels to develop their skills, deepen their understanding, and become part of a growing movement.
The Festival is organised by Fife-based food justice charity Scotland The Bread and Scottish Food Guide, and made possible thanks to the generous support of lead sponsor the Edinburgh Bakers Trust, alongside Bowhouse, whose backing enables the event to keep its place as a key date in Scotland’s food calendar.
A major highlight for 2026 is a special joint programme event with Nourish Scotland: Public Diners meets The People’s Bread. This event will explore the Public Diners campaign and its vision for better public food, with nourishing bread taking centre stage. It will include a shared lunch and presentation (advance booking recommended), and include an exhibition that will also be open to non-ticket holders, ensuring wider access to the discussion.
The People’s Bread is a community standard for nourishing Real Bread that meets the needs of the times. It is bread made with organic Scottish grain. It is well-fermented, nutritious, affordable and accessible. Festival visitors can break this bread with a fellow citizen, share reactions and, perhaps, get a sense that this is the ‘staff of life’ to which we all have a right.
Visitors will have the opportunity to take guided tours of Scotland The Bread’s unique mill, where diverse organic grains are transformed into flour using innovative cyclone technology. These tours offer a rare behind-the-scenes look at small-scale, values-led grain processing in action. For younger visitors, learning becomes lively with The Big Thrash, an energetic, interactive grain-threshing activity that brings the origins of bread vividly to life.
Children can also take part in sourdough flatbread workshops, gaining hands-on experience with mixing, shaping and tasting sourdough, while in the kids’ corner there will be grain crafts and a sensory grain pit to engage touch, sound and sight as children explore different grains, their textures and aromas.
New this year will be the Bread Sangsters, a singing workshop bringing together bread enthusiasts and those who enjoy singing to learn some short easy-to-learn songs to share with everyone at the Festival and hopefully get everyone humming the praises of Real Bread on their way home.
The Festival market will feature a wide range of food and drink stalls, from hot food ready to eat on the day to a carefully curated selection of grain-related producers and, of course, an impressive array of some of Scotland’s finest loaves. Throughout the day there will be free bread-making demonstrations, alongside ticketed cyanotype workshops for those interested in creative, grain-inspired processes.
An annual centrepiece of the Festival is the prize-giving for the Scottish Bread Championship. Entry is now open for the prestigious competition, with an entry deadline of Thursday 20 February. Judging will take place on Friday 27 February, with results announced during the Festival itself. The Championship continues to be sponsored by Scotland The Bread, The Edinburgh Bakers Trust, and the Scottish Food Guide.
The Scottish Festival of Real Bread is a celebration of craft, community and change, connecting people with where bread begins and the values behind it. Further programme details and ticket information will be released very soon.
For more information about the Festival and Scotland The Bread’s work, visit scotlandthebread.org.
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