The Brockwell Bake started as an annual real baking competion and meet in Brockwell Park, Lambeth, South London in 2008. In 2009/10 we expanded our activities aimed at promoting knowledge and choice in baking in our local area to include growing heritage wheats on allotments, school and community gardens and with farmers close to London. We stone mill and bake with our wheat through out the year and at events such as the Lambeth Urban Green Fair and the Feast on the Bridge, The Mayor's Thames Festival. We also do real baking workshops with local schools. We produce a limted amount of flour and bread with grain from our partner local farmers available around South London see below.
NEWS: Heritage spring wheat seed for sowing March/April 2012
Now planning heritage Spring wheats sowings at schools and community projects for 2012. If your school or community garden would like to take part, particularly if you are located in South London, please contact us on 0207 733 3879 ASAP as seed stock is limited.
Our spring sowing heritage wheat for 2012 is almost exclusively the landrace English April Bearded (click for pics) at its most popular during the 19th Century.
Please note that this seed contains the once common corn field flower Corncockle which is now rare. If you intend to mill your wheat crop the corncockle must be removed before threshing as it is poisonous - and also hard to clean out of wheat grain as similar sized seed.
You can use the Paypal button to order 30g of seed (sufficent for 2 square metre area). Please contact for any greater quantity before paying for P&P. Any donation you can add to P&P will go towards furthering our hertiage wheat programme.
Notes for teachers on wheat sowing, growing and harvesting here (BBA version) and similiar Real Bread Campaign "Bake your lawn" info here.
NEWS: Brockwell Bake Flour and Bread now available – in limited editions!
We are now producing a limited amount of flour using grain from our partner farmers, two accredited biodynamic farms south from London, from the Duveens at Hophurst Farm near East Grinstead, W. Sussex and the Brockmans on Perry Court Farm near Canterbury. We also get grain from Luddesdown Organic Farms near Gravesend, Kent.
For the 2011/12 season we are milling a 50/50 mix of Paragon and Magister wheats. Our “Light Weald” flour is sifted to about 71% extraction which results is a light brown moderate strength bread baking flour that the customers seem to really like.
This is the freshest stone-ground flour you can get in London, never on the shelf or stall more than a week and often just a few hours from being milled. This means natural oils and enzymes are at their absolute optimum for activity and flavour.
With our freshly milled flour each week we bake 30 or so sourdough loaves in our mobile wood fired oven. Our signature loaf is the "Brixton Sour" which contains 17% of our Rye flour blended with our Weald Light wheat flour. We also do regular specials including "Potato and Rosemary", "Lilford Malt House" and wholemeal.
You can find our flour and bread at
Kennington Farmers Market on the Brockman’s stall (lots of nice vegetables there also) which is towards the Brixton Road side of the market, 9am – 3pm Saturdays.
From the Duveen’s stall (lots of very good quality organic and bio-dynamic meat) at their railway arch, 104 Druid Street SE1 2HQ behind London Bridge station, 9am – 1pm Saturdays
Brixton Cornercopia in the “Brixton Village” end of Brixton market (lots of lovely home produced things in jars as well as top locally sourced ingredients beautifully prepared by chef Ian, lunch served Wednesday to Sunday and supper Thursday to Saturday). Our Brixton Sour bread is normally on the menu at weekends
For orders over 5 Kilos you can pay £1.50 per kilo with free delivery if you live within North Lambeth and Southwark south to the bottom of Brixton Hill! Phone 0207 733 3879 to order.
Bread baking recipes and calculator now available HERE
French lessons from organization "Réseau Semences Paysannes"
archive of images from the work of the French organization, Réseau Semences Paysannes kindly made available to us by Elise Demeulenaere, researcher at Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
BBA expedition Bretagne - late July 2011
Visit in July 2011 by BBA members Andy Forbes and Vincent Talleu to the Breton village of Laurenan to check out the mills made by Samuel Poilâne of type "à meule de pierre type Astrié" to see whether right mill for BBA. Samuel with his partner Valérie Poilâne-Tabart also bake bread for the neighborhood every week as well as supplying organic veggie boxes. Lovely to also to meet again after their London trip their three very lively lovely sons Ismaël, Jason and Perig Poilâne-Tabart.
We also made very interesting visit to the peasant farmer/bakers Julie and Florian on their "Ferme de Carafray" and their heritage wheat trials.
Wheat Harvest - 10/8/10
Pics by RAA plotholder Elkin Atwell as we try late night to finish harvest on plot 35 and 36 before the start of a wet August 2010.
Spring Wheat, South London, 2010
Sowings around South London on school, community gardens and allotments during March 2010 including 16 heritage wheats (early cultivars and may be a few landraces) from the John Innes Centre’s BBSRC Small Grain Cereal Collections.
Winter wheat, London 2009/10
Winter planting around South London on allotments, community gardens, school gardens and a bit of guerilla planting
Trip to John Innes Centre 28/7/10
Trip to inspect heritage wheat trials in the John Innes Centre’s fields near Norwich as guest of Mike Ambrose, curator of the BBSRC Small Grain Cereal Collections
Tivissa, Oct. 2009, oven firing and wheat planting
After a long wait, since the oven was uncovered and dome rebuilt in 1998, finally manage to get a new oven door together and make pizza and bake decent bread in Gary and Adrian’s oven 9th October 2009. Plus dig over the huerta behind the lower caseta and a patch of the meanie (fennel) field and do a first sowing of the Letts Winter mix of traditional UK wheat.
oven and mill, Pyrenees, France
a few pics showing baker/mill set up in Pyrnees. We believe the mill/bakery supplied bread to about five local villages so quite big by local standards. Oven was of the ’gueulard’ design.
Traditional wheat from Madeira provided to Brockwell Bake by Rosendale allotment holder Antonio Luis
During the 2009/10 and 2010/11 seasons we sowed wheat in the Lambeth and Southwark area including samples of early cultivar and UK landraces of spring wheat from the BBSRC - Small Grain Cereal Collections at the following locations.
Community Gardens and Farms, Hyde Farm Community Garden SW12,
Arden House, Lambeth Walk SE11 5QH, Community Garden Mayow Park Sydenham SE26, Brookwood House Council Estate Community Garden, Southwark SE1, Guinness Trust Estate Allotments Brixton SW9, The Onion Shed @ Roots and Shoots SE11 6DN, Brockwell Park Community Greenhouses SE24 9BJ, Vauxhall City Farm (with local Primary School) SE11 5HS, Cowley Estate Farm SW9 6LZ, Sutton Community Farm SM6 0SH, Myatt's Fields Park Project Group SE5, Oasis Children’s Nature Garden SW8 4ER, Chiswick House Walled Garden W4 2RP, Burges Salmon LLP BS2 0ZX, Tooting Community Garden SW16, Surrey Docks City Farm SE16 5ET, Edible Bus Stop, Landor Rd. SW9 9NU, Slade Gardens Adventure Playground SW9 0AB
Schools and Colleges, Rosendale Primary School SE21 8LR, Friars Primary Foundation School SE1 0RF, Walnut Tree Walk Primary School SE11 6DS, Reay Primary School SW9 0EN, Streatham and Clapham High School SW16 1AW, Hackney Community College N1 6HQ, Sprouting 56 - Camberwell School of Arts SE5 8UF, Prior Weston Primary School EC1Y 8JA, The Elmgreen School (Secondary) SE27 9BZ, Brindishe Lee Primary School SE12 8NA, Buckland Primary School TW18 1NB, Heswall Primary School CH60 7SD, Tower Bridge Primary School SE1 2AE, St Johns Angell Town CofE Primary School SW9 7HH, St Michael Steiner School Wandsworth SW18 5ST
We have also delivered a programme of three wheat and baking workshops to Key Stage 2 at four of these schools, Rosendale Primary School, Walnut Tree Walk Primary, Reay Primary School and Friars Primary School.
In addition we supply heritage wheat seed for school and community sowing projects to community groups and schools outside of London across the UK.
We are now producing a limited amount of flour using grain from our partner farmers, two accredited biodynamic farms south from London, from the Duveens at 
For the 2011/12 season we are milling a 50/50 mix of Paragon and Magister wheats. Our “Light Weald” flour is sifted to about 71% extraction which results is a light brown moderate strength bread baking flour that the customers seem to really like.
