When Kiss Bak­ing Com­pa­ny an­nounced last Mon­day an in­crease in the price of its bread prod­ucts, peo­ple took to so­cial me­dia to voice their dis­plea­sure.

Con­sumers could not rec­on­cile this move with Na­tion­al Flour Mills (NFM) not in­creas­ing the price of the ma­jor com­mod­i­ty that goes in­to bread mak­ing; flour.

Tyler Mor­gan post­ed on Face­book:

"Min­i­mum wage $17.50.

Kiss Healthy Bal­ance 12 Grain Bread $17.00."

For­mer beef pro­duc­tion man­ag­er at Ca­roni Ltd Seer­eram Seep­er­sad wrote on Face­book: "De­mand and sup­ply de­ter­mine price! In­stead of vent­ing on Face­book, send a mes­sage. Your lo­cal bak­ery prices are low, and the bread is fresh."

Paul-Daniel Na­hous wrote on Face­book: "Bread prices did not in­crease. Kiss bread prices in­creased. Bak­ery bread, fresh, much more nu­tri­tion, cheap­er, in sup­port of small busi­ness and fam­i­lies pro­vid­ing a good prod­uct. Sup­port­ing bak­ery-style bread sup­ports you as well. Cut the dotish­ness and brand stu­pid­i­ty..."

Ronald Men­doza post­ed on Face­book: "Bake your own bread, cook your own food Google or Youtube are your friends to make any dish."

Kiss cit­ed as rea­sons for the price in­crease the hike in raw ma­te­r­i­al prices by as much as 30 per cent, and the com­pa­ny was al­so ex­pe­ri­enc­ing in­creas­es in ship­ping costs be­cause of world­wide de­mand and COVID-19.

Ac­cord­ing to the UN Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­gan­i­sa­tion's (FAO) month­ly Food Price In­dex, glob­al food prices shot up near­ly 33 per cent in Sep­tem­ber 2021, com­pared with the same pe­ri­od the year be­fore.

Hazel Brown

Brown: Al­ter­na­tives to buy­ing bread

Con­sumer ad­vo­cate Hazel Brown be­lieves that peo­ple have the pow­er to make de­ci­sions in their best in­ter­est, but that most con­sumers in T&T did not re­alise the pow­er that lay in their wal­lets and purs­es.

If a prod­uct's price is not to their lik­ing, they can boy­cott it and leave it on the shelf.

Brown said if peo­ple have a prob­lem with the price of bread, the so­lu­tion is to make your their own bread.

The found­ing mem­ber of the Net­work of NGO's of T&T for the Ad­vance­ment of Women and for­mer mem­ber of the House­wives As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (HATT) re­vealed that the is­sue of bread price hikes and food prices was not a new phe­nom­e­non and goes back to the 70s.

Brown re­vealed that dur­ing that pe­ri­od NFM held tours every week of its mill, vis­i­tors learned where the wheat came from, the process­es it went through be­fore it reached su­per­mar­ket shelves and the com­pa­ny con­tin­ues to be a very im­por­tant stake­hold­er in the price of bread.

She re­lat­ed that in those days the price of bread was con­trolled, and while peo­ple want to re­vert to that time it was im­pos­si­ble. It now rests in con­sumers tak­ing ac­tion in their own in­ter­est.

Brown rec­om­mend­ed an­oth­er op­tion was to use a bread mak­er ma­chine, re­veal­ing that in the 70s a mod­el cost US $60 and the price was now re­duced to US $50 on some mod­els.

She shared that with a bread mak­er's de­lay start timer, she can add in­gre­di­ents to the pan and set the timer so that it comes on in the night and she can wake up to the smell of fresh bread in the morn­ing.

Brown al­so called for the re­turn of com­mu­ni­ty bak­ing of bread, it was not dif­fi­cult, and was a way for women to earn some in­come.

She ex­plained that there was an oven in al­most every house­hold in T&T, so a per­son didn't have an ex­cuse for not be­ing able to make bread, even if some­one had no oven, they can still make bread on the stove­top in a pot, fry­ing pan or cast-iron skil­let.

Brown be­moaned the lack of house­hold man­age­ment in many T&T fam­i­lies, es­chew­ing mak­ing lists, not check­ing food prices and bud­get­ing, which was to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent to the small­er Caribbean is­lands.

She ad­vo­cat­ed that peo­ple sup­port their lo­cal bak­eries, if they had a prob­lem with the price hike as they would most like­ly of­fer bet­ter qual­i­ty and prices in their prod­ucts.

Brown stressed that the role of small busi­ness­es in the food in­dus­try was im­per­a­tive and for con­sumer groups to band to­geth­er and or­gan­ise them­selves to deal with food chal­lenges.

Natasha Nunez

Natasha Nunez has flour in her veins

Brown beamed that her daugh­ter, Natasha Nunez had flour in her veins. Natasha's grand­fa­ther came from Venezuela in the 30s, set­tled in Rio Claro and es­tab­lished a shop and bak­ery.

Nunez's fa­ther con­tin­ued mak­ing de­li­cious bread and oth­er prod­ucts in the bak­ery. When she made the de­ci­sion to not buy bread and try bak­ing, her la­tent fam­i­ly bak­ing genes kicked in and she re­dis­cov­ered the won­der­ful ex­pe­ri­ence of bak­ing.

Brown de­scribed Nunez's bread as 'ex­cel­lent' and strong­ly rec­om­mend that peo­ple find ways to share the in­for­ma­tion to mo­ti­vate more women to bake their own bread.

Nunez, a com­mu­ni­ca­tions of­fi­cer at a state agency re­vealed that her fam­i­ly bak­ing 'bread-line' was on­ly re­vealed to her fair­ly re­cent­ly.

The co-host of a ra­dio pro­gramme with her hus­band Garth St Clair at Eye on De­pen­den­cy re­vealed that as the last of six sis­ters and three broth­ers she didn't cook be­ing the 'ba­by' in the fam­i­ly.

Nunez de­clared that bread was some­thing she loved to eat, dur­ing the pan­dem­ic she came across a recipe on the Eatah­food web­site and the host demon­strat­ed how to knead flour to make bread which sparked her in­ter­est.

She dis­closed that her sis­ter, An­gela was a chef and Suzanne, an­oth­er sib­ling, along with her oth­er sib­lings on the Nunez side of the fam­i­ly were all ex­cel­lent cooks and she was wor­ried that the culi­nary genes were not passed on to her.

Nunez re­alised that wor­ry soon dis­si­pat­ed as she gained the sat­is­fac­tion of mak­ing healthy meals that re­flect­ed her lifestyle and her hus­band's as she was a veg­e­tar­i­an for over 20 years and was grad­u­al­ly mak­ing the tran­si­tion to a ve­g­an.

As she was in her late 40s, she be­gan tweak­ing her di­et such as mak­ing whole­wheat bread and us­ing al­mond milk.

Natasha Nunez Bread Ingredients

Nunez added that since she start­ed mak­ing her own bread, she hadn't brought a com­mer­cial loaf of bread.

She said there was no com­par­i­son; com­mer­cial bread de­vel­oped mold quick­ly, the tex­ture was dif­fer­ent, it was not as tasty as home­made bread or even that of lo­cal bak­eries.

She stressed that it was im­por­tant to save some mon­ey and bak­ing your own bread is eco­nom­i­cal.

Ac­cord­ing to Nunez, the in­gre­di­ents are not that ex­pen­sive. She bakes two to three times a week, and on Sat­ur­days she makes piz­zas or cal­zones. Ital­ian breads have be­come a treat as her bread-mak­ing skills ex­pand­ed.

Giv­ing a break­down, she said that 2 kg of all-pur­pose flour last­ed two to three weeks, and the in­gre­di­ent price con­sist­ed 12 oz wheat germ $30,

900 ml veg­etable oil $21, 5 x11g box of yeast $8, 3lb brown sug­ar $16, a 1-litre al­mond milk $26, 2kg whole wheat flour $15, 2kg all-pur­pose flour $13.

Next week, Bread mak­ers save mon­ey, time