The Two Best Bs – Bread and Beer at Fountains Abbey

This weekend and next, we’re onsite for a fab new festival – Bread and Beer at Fountains Abbey.  A collaboration between Leeds Indie Food and the National Trust, it’s bound to be a belter.

This National Trust-run site is beautiful. Originally the site of a monastery, both bread and beer as fundamental Fountains Abbey foodstuffs are a natural fit. The monks who lived here produced wheat, oats and barley, which they ground in the onsite mill. This provided them with the fundamentals for two essentials – bread and beer.

Beer may now be seen as more of an indulgence, but it’s a mega-crucial part of British history. Beer made unsafe, unpalatable water safe to drink. These low ABV brews were just the only way to stay hydrated, so ale would’ve been drunk with every meal. Bread, similarly, was about survival.

That’s why Fountains Abbey is the perfect spot for this Bread & Beer fest! It’s both a nod to the abbey’s heritage, and a celebration of the important role both bread and beer play in modern Yorkshire. You can learn a little about the history of the mill whilst you’re here – it’s one of only a handful of still-surviving monastic mills in Europe.

Check out Bread and Beer at Fountains Abbey this weekend, 15th-16th, for Father’s Day (you know that’s going to make dad smile!), or come down on the 22nd-23rd.

Bread and Beer at Fountains Abbey: The Suppliers

• Bad Seed Brewery – this Malton brewery was started by a couple of enthusiastic home brewers, who’ve been professionally brewing since 2013. One of their hand-crafted, mouthwatering beers tastes like rhubarb crumble. Sold.
• Sela Bar Pizza Bus – this tour bus will be pulling in to serve up hand-pulled pizza including our fave, the truffle mushroom.
• Luigi Street Food – Italian delicacies like home-made pasta. Yum.
• Doh Hut – British Street Food of the Year Award 2018 – winning doughnuts

Family fun – there will be games in the apple orchard, and a chance to make dough with Cafe 164.

The Bread & Beer event is free entry, but the usual National Trust admission charge for Fountains Abbey is applicable (free entry for National Trust members – bring your card!)