You may find this interesting.
Or scary!
My wife bakes our bread each weekend by hand, several loaves.
The only ingredients she uses are natural:
High quality flour; yeast, water, salt.
If she’s making bread for toast she will add small amounts of milk and sugar - helps it brown better.
There’s absolutely no preservatives in it so we freeze a couple of them and use during the week as required.
She’s being doing it for at least 10 years and on the first occasion that she made it, it came out a slightly grey colour. If you want it that ‘artificial’ white colour you have to use flour that has been
bleached!
Here’s an extract from one of her bread making books, the detail of which I suspect most are oblivious to:
‘Some would say that 1961 was a bad year for bread, it was the year that the Chorley Wood process came in.
The process ‘revolutionised’ the baking industry.
This high speed mechanical mixing process allowed the fermentation time to be drastically reduced and meant that
lower protein British wheats could be used in place of the more expensive (and better!) North American imports.
Various
chemical ‘improvers’ and
anti fungal agents are necessary ingredients as are certain
hydrogenated or fractionated hard fats.
This is high output, low labour production, designed to maximise efficiency and profit at the expense of the consumer.
Mass produced bread is almost undoubtedly worse for you.
Apart from the
dubious additives and fats it contains, the short fermentation makes the wheat harder to digest.
Some believe this processing method is partly to blame for a sharp increase in gluten intolerance and allergies.
The mass production of bread entails the use of
genetically modified yeasts which means that
fermentation and rotting takes place in your body. This can cause microbial flora and traumas of the lining of the gastrointestinal tract!
Enzymes are modern baking’s big secret. A loop hole classifies them as processing aids which
need not be declared on the ingredients label. Additives on the other hand must be listed. Not surprisingly most people have no idea their bread contains added enzymes. These enzymes are a protein which speeds up a metabolic reaction and are
extracted from plant, animal, fungal and bacterial sources.
A whole host of enzymes are used in baking, their status as processing aids is based on the
assumption that they are used up in the production process and therefore ‘not really’ present in the final product. This is a deception which allows the food industry to manipulate what we eat without telling us!
In their own trade literature, enzyme manufacturers extoll the ‘thermal-stability’ of this or that product; in other words it’s ability to have a
lasting effect on the baked bread!
Enjoy yer sarnies!