Bread, A Staple Of Life?

Over the last few years I’ve been making my own bread. I’ve made bread on and off for many years when it was a novelty activity. After moving to France, and as much as I love baguette, I really missed granary bread. It is possible to buy it here as a speciality loaf but it is a minimum of four times more expensive than the baguette so I always baulked at buying it.

I, as I’m sure a lot of other people too, have noticed that bread today doesn’t react the way it used to. If you buy a pre-packaged sandwich loaf I will still be moist and soft 2 or more weeks down the line. A baguette, or bread from my youth, could be used to hammer in nails after a couple of days!

So what’s changed? Manufacturers will tell you that they’ve introduced an additive to reduce waste by prolonging the shelf life of the bread and making sure you, the consumer, are better off by not wasting so much, and we are completely taken in by it thinking they have our best interests at heart. We are so easily deceived.

I was horrified to discover that a chemical extracted from chicken feathers or human hair is what is used to keep the bread moist. OK, I will admit it’s not the feathers or hair that is added but having seen in exposes the conditions chickens are often kept in and the poverty that drives people to sell their hair, even processed feathers or hair are not a welcome addition in my bread.

Added to that is the Chorleywood process used to produce the bread. Again, hailed because it is fast and can be mechanised and therefore good for us as it means cheaper bread. However, it put people out of work, (without a salary even ‘cheap’ bread can be expensive), and wheat with a lower protein level can be used which to my way of thinking means it is less balanced nutritionally. It also requires more yeast and other ‘aids’ to help the rising to happen in the shorter time and I think it’s hardly unsurprising that Candida overgrowth is now reported as an epidemic. And I am not alone in this belief that the staple of life is now less than healthy.

So, I now make my own bread most of the time, as described in the following post:-