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A Word from BakerBob
 After a few years on the market, our Corn & Seed bread has definitely won a few hearts and taste buds. The new look bag is due out before the end of August featuring our pink colour, pohutakawa stamens, and a particular native bird. Question for a prize - which native bird is this?
After many trials to to test the longevity of packaging, and some valuable feed back from you consumers, we have decided to keep the bread as a ‘fresh to store product’. That is, in a standard bread bag that is re-closeable, re-useable, and recyclable.
More Organic! We are now using Organic Wholegrain Corn Meal grown by Kiwi Organics in Tologa Bay - making the Corn & Seed over 70% organic. That's great for the planet, and replacing the polenta (outer husk only) means higher nutritional value for you.
Congratulations to this month's winners
Andrew Malcolm with his prizeSustainable Home and Garden Show - a delighted winner of our hamper Andrew Malcom (pictured left).
Winners of the $250 Product Hamper for Allergy Today AT2 promotion is Jean or auntyjay of Christchurch.
Winners of the $250 Product Hamper for Coeliac Link CL2 promotion is Margot.
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Seasonal Vegetable
Florence fennelOver the last few year market gardeners have been diverisfying their winter crops, and it is now possible to get a wider range of winter vegetables. You no longer have to spend the winter eating potatoes, carrots, broccoli, silver beet...
Florence fennel is now more widely available. It's a type of clumping fennel that has bulb a lot like celery. The Italians and Spanish use it in their cooking - it has a spicy flavour like celery but different. It's in season at the moment and is delicious.
When buying it, you're primarily interested in the bulb, not the stalks. It should be tight and greenish white. For cooking, trim the feathery fronds and hollow stalks - use them for seasoning or discard. Trim off the hard bottom and cut vertical slices through the bulb.
Try it out in this recipe
Fennel Baked with Stock and Parmesan
8 small - medium bulbs
4 tbl butter
salt and freshly ground pepper to taste
2 cups of stock - chicken or vegetable is probably best
1/2 - 1 cup of Parmesan cheese
1/2 - 1 cup of Purebread crumbs
Preheat the oven to 200 degrees Celsius. Bring a pot of water to boil with salt in it. Place the fennel halves in the pot and cook until nearly tender, about 10 minutes. Remove and plunge into a bowl of cold water. Remove and drain.
Slice the fennel thinly. Use some of the butter to grease the inside of a smallish baking dish. Place the fennel in the dish, sprinkle with salt and pepper, and pour in the stock. Top the fennel and with the remaining butter and sprinkle generously with the Parmesan, and breadcrumbs.
Bake undisturbed until most of the stock is absorbed and the dish is nicely browned, about 30 minutes.
Serves 4
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News of Our Black Stick Star
Anna in action Anna Thorpe was recently selected for the Black Sticks. She played her first test match at the beginning of July against Argentina. It was, she says "a fantastic experience."
She now have three caps to her name, and has just been picked for the team to play the Oceania Cup in Invercargill this month (August).
To find out more about Anna and her progress with the Black Caps, read a recent interview on our blog.
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Money Saving Tips
Granola bag nurseryPurebread is not only a great bread, it comes in a strong reusable bag. So let's reuse it.
Use it for wrapping your lunch, storing seeds you have collected, freezing the overflow of vegetable from the garden, and all the myriad of things that plastic bags are useful for. These bags will handle multiple re-use.
We are also proud to announce that we are supporting The Trees For Survival school programme. TFS promotes the planting of trees and shrubs in our communities, and is a partnership between schools, businesses, councils, and landowners.
With a new run of Granola bags, we will donate 25 cents to the programme for every Granola bag returned to us or a participating TFS school. The bags will be used to grow and nurture young seedlings.
After seeing some stunning native trees planted out from our initial trials last year, we are very excited to be part of this great initiative.
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Did You Know?
Good news - the National government have called a halt to plans to fortify commercial breads with the addition of folic acid. Opinions are divided over the benefits and/or risks of adding folic acid to bread and as a result, it has been decided to postpone any decision about it until more research can be done.
A lack of folic acid in the diet of pregnant women can result in birth defects such as spina bifida, so naturally this has formed a strong side to the debate. On the other side of the argument is a cited increase in colon cancer in countries that add folic acid to bread - England and the United States.
Thankfully organic bread was exempt. Read some of our blog posts on the subject and catch up with the debate.
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Product Showcase
 Have you tried our Ginger Date Cake from 4Ever Free? Moist, fruity, delicious - and gluten-free.
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Gluten Free News
Stanford University School of Medicine in the US are in the process of testing a food allergy vaccine. Trials have been carried out on dogs with peanut, milk, and wheat allergies. The vaccine has made the dogs up to 100 times less likely to develop an allergic reaction.
Ten weeks after the dogs were vaccinated, significantly greater amounts of the allergen had to be given to generate an allergic reaction. One peanut allergic dog with a tolerance of 0.5 peanut was given 57 peanuts without any reaction.
This is the first time that an allergy vaccine of any kind has been tried on anything other than mice, however Allergy UK has cautioned people not to get too excited as animal studies do not always translate well to human beings. It will proably be several years yet before human trials take place.
So while the creation of a food allergy vaccine is not just around the corner for humans, ultimately when it is available it will save lives and reduce the misery of millions of food allergy sufferers - and perhaps a few dogs.
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Our Blog
Keep up with the activities of Anna Thorpe and her team, the Black Sticks, as well as the folic acid debate and much more by subscribing to our blog.
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Thought for the month
"He that prefers the beautiful to the useful in life will, undoubtedly, like children who prefer sweetmeats to bread, destroy his digestion and acquire a very fretful outlook on the world."
Friedrich Nietzche (1844-1900)
German classical scholar, philosopher and critic of culture
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That's all for this month.
Robert Glensor
Caring and sustainable Baker
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