Bakery brand receives funding for healthy bread production

Healthy baked goods brand Modern Baker has received a £763,000 grant from Innovate UK to lead a two-year research and development project into improving the nutritional quality of bread. The company will use fermented sourdough to produce healthier loaves on a mass-market scale. The research will focus on one of 2017’s leading health and wellness trends, gut health.

By partnering with Newcastle University’s Cell and Molecular Biosciences department, Modern Baker will use a Model Gut System, a lab version of the human digestive system, to test the value of a given food on gut health. An academic paper will be published on their findings in 2019.

The funding award has also teamed Modern Baker up with the UK’s leading food research technology agency, Campden BRI.

Leo Campbell, Modern Baker co-founder, says, “This funding is the best validation our business could ever have. Having access to some of the world’s leading food and medical research facilities in gut health will help us make the breakthrough the demonised baking sector badly needs – the ability to move away from unhealthy fast carbs, to slow carb baking.

“At Modern Baker, we are intent on bringing better baking to Britain, by debunking the myth that bread and gluten are necessarily bad for your health – and that healthy bread and cakes can also taste superb.”

According to Modern Baker, all of its recipes and processes are optimised for gut health. The brand’s healthy breads are handmade using natural slow-fermenting sourdough methods and organic, stoneground flours – containing both prebiotics and probiotics.

Modern Baker’s sourdough starter cultures contain the lactobacilli bacteria that create bakes with lower glycemic indexes, which are said to be easier to digest and less likely to trigger food intolerances. All Modern Baker products are vegetarian and consist of a variety of gluten-free, dairy-free or suitable for vegan options.

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