Bread battle

2011-06-07 17:51:20

7 June 2011 Last updated at 08:24 Share this page Delicious Digg Facebook reddit StumbleUpon Twitter Email Print Chorleywood: The bread that changed Britain   Continue reading the main story In today's Magazine The cult of lawn The end of the Asbo era Living with a Nazi name Why are fountain pen sales rising?

For the past 50 years, a British food stuff has spread across the world to Australia, South Africa, South America, Turkey and even to supermarket shelves in France. But is the long life, plastic wrapped, sandwich loaf that was first created in Chorleywood a design classic or a crime against bread, asks David Sillito.

More than 80% of all loaves in Britain are now made the Chorleywood way.

Even the fresh crusty bread baked at your local supermarket is probably made the Chorleywood way.

The work of the scientists at the Chorleywood Flour Milling and Bakery Research Association laboratories in 1961 led to a new way of producing bread, making the average loaf in Britain 40% softer, reducing its cost and more than doubling its life.

The move was good for British farmers growing low-protein wheat

What is more, each slice was uniform.

For its supporters, it was the innovation that pushed bread into the modern era.

"It is a process we invented and we should be very proud of it," says Gordon Polson, of the British Federation of Bakers. "UK bread is around the cheapest in the world."

The bread scientist, Stan Cauvain, who worked with the original inventors and has written the definitive work on the Chorleywood Process says they knew from the beginning they had changed baking forever.

"The inventors knew they were on to something special and it would have far reaching consequences."

Its origins lay in the late 1950s and the need to try to find a way for small bakers to compete with new industrial bakeries. The light brown "national loaf" during the long years of rationing had, for many consumers, outstayed its welcome. Soft, springy, white bread - that did not go stale quickly - was what the public wanted.

Continue reading the main story 'Best food value in Britain'

"Already, thanks to the Chorleywood process, nearly half the wheat in our bread is British. The industry's current development programme could bring about a situation where British bread is made from an even higher proportion of British wheat - thus making the British loaf even better value for money in relation to world bread prices."

From a 1975 advertisement in The Times, issued by the Flour Advisory Bureau

The research bakers at Chorleywood discovered that by adding hard fats, extra yeast and a number of chemicals and then mixing at high speed you got a dough that was ready to bake in a fraction of the time it normally took.

It allowed bread to be made easily and economically with low protein British wheat.

But with industrial bakers quickly adopting the process, rather than helping small bakeries, the research at Chorleywood helped put thousands of them out of business.

But for some bread lovers, particularly the "artisan bread movement" anything Chorleywood is simply not real bread.

"This stuff is like cotton wool," says Paul Barker, who himself used to work as an industrial baker and sold the emulsifiers, enzymes and other chemicals used in modern baking.

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