Producing the humble slice
Updated on 20 April 2009
What's in a loaf? Flour, water, yeast and a touch of salt. But what about xylanase, transglutaminase, hemicellulase, phospholipase and fungal alpha-amylase, writes Felicity Spector.
Sounds tasty, huh?
But commercial bread manufacturers are chucking enzymes like these into their bread without declaring anything on the label.
Worryingly, according to the newly-launched Real Bread Campaign, some of them are known allergens and others come from animal or GM origin, even a pig's pancreas.
The campaign's written an open letter to the Federation of Bakers urging them to call on their members, which together produce 80 per cent of the nation's bread, to ban artificial additives and processing aids altogether.
Failing that, they want proper labelling so consumers at least know what they're buying and can make a proper choice.
Commercial bread manufacturers are chucking enzymes like these into their bread without declaring anything on the label.
Andrew Whitley, a former BBC journalist turned breadmaker and author of Bread Matters, says when people discover what's in their daily crust they're horrified.
"Bread should be the staff of life," he says, "but the label on the average loaf reads more like the recipe for a scientific experiment than the ingredients of our staple food."
He points out that many of the problems began in the 1960s, when a mass production method called the Chorleywood bread process was adopted, using a mix of chemicals and high energy mixing ingredients to bang out a load of while sliced as quickly as possible.
New high-yielding varieties of yeasts, designed to work with modern pesticides, have fewer minerals and vitamins than older, traditional varieties.
Whitley adds fermenting the dough slowly - 6 hours, say, rather than 30 minutes - allows beneficial bacteria to develop and makes the bread far more nutritious and easier to digest. And that could be an answer for all those who are intolerant to wheat.
Next month the environmental group Sustain are using the Real Food Festival to launch an interactive map showing people where to find authentic bakers in their area, and to expose what's going on with industrially-produced loaves.
There'll be a petition to the big bakers and even special warning stickers to plaster all over processed breads on the supermarket shelves.
According to Whitley, around 5 million of us have breadmakers languishing at the back of the cupboard. Dust them off, he says, and "take control of what goes into your daily bread and prompt the big bakers to clean up their act." And get a nice, sustainable lunch into the bargain.
