Since doing the Cereal Project in 2020, I have maintained an interest in cereals, their growth and usage. More than half grown in the UK, mostly wheat, oats, and barley, are used for animal feed. In this blog, I am looking at wheat, the most important of our cereals by tonnage. Its primary contribution to our diet is as bread.
I was buying my bread mostly at the Co-op, opting for their seeded wholemeal loaf. It just looked healthier with all those seeds in it, but they kept getting stuck in my teeth. So I went for the plain wholemeal loaf. Sounds healthy enough with whole in the name. But it tasted awful, like eating paper-mache, so I looked at the label and was shocked at the list of ingredients. 19 items, I make it, though it is confusing, but around that number. In a loaf of bread, I repeat, 19 additives. See the photo for the list.
In the past few months, I have been noticing that bread has been listed in regularly bought ultra processed foods. I thought, I’m alright, I’m eating wholemeal. But obviously I am not alright, wholemeal supermarket bread contains a host of additives: emulsifiers, preservatives and various improvers. The latter term striking me as ironic as they certainly don’t improve the taste or digestibility. Perhaps the size and uniformity of the bubbles and speed of processing.
Less you think, the Co-op is an outlier in junk bread, just up the road is Lidl and here’s the list of ingredients for its Tiger Loaf:
Wheat Flour [Wheat Flour, Calcium Carbonate, Iron, Niacin, Thiamin], Water, Yeast, Rapeseed Oil, Salt, Wheat Flour, Rice Flour, Dextrose, Flour Treatment Agents (Ascorbic Acid, L-Cysteine), Emulsifiers (Mono- and Diglycerides of Fatty Acids, Mono- and Diacetyl Tartaric Acid Esters of Mono- and Diglycerides of Fatty Acids), Wholemeal Wheat Flour, Palm Oil, Preservatives (Acetic Acid, Calcium Propionate), Acidity Regulator (Sodium Hydroxide).
That’s 21 ingredients – though some are difficult to count. Anyway, much the same as the Co-op loaf. Other supermarkets (Sainsburys, Aldi, Tesco, Asda and Morrisons) are as bad. That’s because much of their bread is made by the Chorleywood Bread Process, developed in Chorleywood in 1961. It is an industrial process to speed up bread making, taking it through the steps of mixing, kneading, proofing (allowing the dough to rise), baking, cooling, slicing and wrapping. All done as quickly as possible. The faster the throughput, the cheaper the loaf.
A common cliché which I find rather rather annoying is the saying that something is ‘the best thing since sliced bread’. It is an utterly misleading epigram. The worst breads, the most ultra processed, are the ones that are bought sliced. The best loaves of bread, from artisan bakers, we buy unsliced. As a child, I would regularly cut slices from a loaf, to make a sandwich. Admittedly, some tended to be doorsteps, but it really wasn’t so arduous. After all, how many slices of bread do you eat in a day? I wasn’t waiting for the best invention.
Following my lack of desire to eat the Co-op loaf; it became a bread pudding, disguising its insipid taste with cinnamon, sugar, and raisins. I then went to Ancient Lights in Sprowston Mews and bought their standard loaf. It is unsliced. The ingredients are wholemeal flour, yeast, and water. I shall enquire next time I go in whether they add a little sugar to speed up the fermentation. The loaf is three times the price of the Co-op loaf, but so much better tasting, and without all the emulsifiers, preservatives and improvers of the supermarket breads.
It saddens me that such bread is so costly, as if you are on a tight budget then it’s the ultra processed loaf by necessity that goes in your bread bin. I don’t blame Ancient Lights for this as they have to make a living. They cannot possibly compete with the Chorleywood Baking Process, the more’s the pity. I think of William Morris, the 19th century socialist, hating the fact that only the well off could afford his wallpapers and textiles. Not quite so bad with artisan bread, but £4.50 a loaf is a stretch. Then again, consider it the price of a pint.
So let me I recommend our local bakery. Ancient Lights is just a 100 yards from the garden in Sprowston Mews, a friendly warm place, with bread for sale without emulsifiers, preservatives and improvers. And they haven’t given me a penny for saying so.
Comments 3
A correction due here. Ancient Lights make all their bread from their sourdough starter, and not from regular yeast which is a by-product of the brewing industry. But they are using yeast as the starter is fed flour which contains wild yeast. It is this which causes the dough to rise. It also contains lactic acid which gives sourdough bread its characteristic taste.
A correction due here. Ancient Lights make all their bread from their sourdough starter, and not from regular yeast which is a by-product of the brewing industry. But they are using yeast as the starter is fed flour which contains wild yeast. It is this which causes the dough to rise. It also contains lactic acid which gives sourdough bread its characteristic taste. Derek
Thanks for this very informative piece, as always. I tried Ancient Lights for the first time recently and thought it was the best bread I had ever tasted – it didn’t last long enough to find out how long a loaf will actually keep, not long I suspect without preservatives.
Ancient Lights is only open on Fridays and Saturdays I believe. A good alternative, and a bit cheaper, is the Polish shop near the Yellow Trike. Their Sunflower with sourdough only has wheat flour, water, sunflower seeds, yeast, gluten (from wheat), barley, barley malt, rye sourdough and salt