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onecrossbaker 12 hours ago [-]
Caught me at the right time.
I've been baking on and off for twenty years, but it's only recently I've started to consider what I'm working with in any detail.
I'm absolutely aware of the difference between British and imported wheat. Results are very much improved and work is made easier by using very strong Canadian flour, but supporting British business (I'm a Londoner) add complexity to the choice.
I buy flour made from British wheat, but it requires extra effort to achieve an almost-as-good result as when working with imported flour.
This difference is particularly interesting for me. The industry that provides my current career (I'm a CG artist) is undergoing significant changes. I look to the future and a contemplate a possible change of career.
Do I buy Canadian flour and deliver a product that people expect? Do I sacrifice a little of the result, at least while I learn how to work more effectively with British flour, in order to be able to promote myself as a small business supporting UK enterprise.
Decisions, decisions.
What an odd morning on HN.
ipsum2 46 minutes ago [-]
You can buy pure gluten powder (sold as "vital wheat gluten") and add it to get the equivalent of the Canadian flour.
senkora 2 hours ago [-]
A mixed strategy of say 75% British / 25% Canadian wheat could be an interesting point to explore.
Then, you would get 75% of the local support benefit while having a potentially better product.
(ratios theoretical; you know more than me!)
mandevil 1 hours ago [-]
According to the artickle, even the Chorleywood technique requires some Canadian wheat- it's just that with the mixers they can get it down to 15%.
RobotToaster 1 hours ago [-]
Any reason you can't just add whatever is missing from the British flour?
2b3a51 2 hours ago [-]
Amateur bread baker here.
Ships three times a week from Halifax docked at Birkenhead's grain elevator. The flour was then transferred to the mill over the road. British wheat flour (refined) at that point in history (60s) could not get to more than about 9% protein, not really enough to raise a loaf.
Common Market (? 1975) and we have tariffs &c so British wheat gets some serious cross-breeding attention. And now you can get home grown strong white flour above 11.5g. I think there was a similar story with Sugar cane and beet. The old Spillers mill is now flats, and the grain elevator was demolished decades ago.
But, yes, a few of the ships still come and yes you can get Canadian flour at 14 to 15%. One local artisan baker uses French flour as a matter of principle. Others don't specify the source. I'd say develop your recipes and go for it.
b800h 14 hours ago [-]
Great article, but it's not telling the whole story.
Since the Chorleywood Bread Process, British agriculture - selective breeding - has bred strains of wheat which reach high protein levels in the British environment. So the Chorleywood process these days is about using the less-good British wheat for cheap supermarket bread.
"Strong" flour that you can buy in shops is now mostly British as well.
boudin 14 hours ago [-]
This article makes it sound like a good thing, but bread made using the Chorleywood process is considered as ultra-processed food and studies shows that it can contribute to IBS.
IMO This invention has been bad for the UK, causing real bread to become an expensive, and hard to find in some places, specialty.
bogdan 14 hours ago [-]
Brits will pop up like snails in the rain to defend this god awful bread. They'll explain to you for the 15th time that it was a necessity back in the day, or how it's cheaper or faster to make or whatever reason they come up with in the moment. Fellow Brits, we know this, it's ok, it's 2026 the ration times are over. It's time to move on or accept reality.
dofm 1 hours ago [-]
Right, but that is because it essentially was a necessity. Its fortification also aided in the developmental health of generations of children. Snark about it all you like; it was valuable.
People in fact don't eat dull white sliced bread in anything like the quantity they did. The majority of bread sold might be like that but we just eat less bread full stop.
But first, when you say "this godawful bread", what exactly do you mean? Chorleywood is a process, not an outcome. It's not just the template pre-sliced white/wholemeal/brown loaf thing from the three big brands. Quite a lot of bread you might think is not Chorleywood essentially is.
Go to even a larger French supermarket and buy a baguette, and that will very likely be a Chorleywood-based process. Much in-store-bakery bread is a modified Chorleywood process (if it is not, it is another similarly "ultra-processed" method, apparently called Activated Dough Development).
Most supermarket "sourdough type" bread, even some quite expensive stuff, is a modified Chorleywood process. Most ciabatta are.
I don't really eat "cut loaf" bread anymore for quite immediate health reasons — it invariably causes acid reflux and then skin irritation, so I gave it up a long time back. But I do still eat the odd part-baked bread roll and even some of those are Chorleywood process.
There is a good chance that if you're in a posh café you're still eating a Chorleywood-type bread. Because it is a way of making bread at scale; it is not a single product outcome.
So before you snark again at those inferior Brits who still like a sliced loaf every now and then, be sure you understand what you're snarking at?
One of the effects of the strike was that white sliced was in short supply and mangled people ended up with weird granary loaves etc as they were all that was left in the shelves. They liked them.
And from that day granary and seeded breads became a lot more popular over the bland spongy white sliced stuff.
I will say that whatever the failings of white sliced, I still prefer it to over-sweetened US bread.
noelwelsh 13 hours ago [-]
It's slightly depressing how much better the everyday food is just some 300kms east of London (i.e. in France). I was shocked the first time I pitched up in a random Carrefour and saw that their basic food is an essentially unobtainable level of quality in the UK.
British food has come a long way over time, though there is still that subculture the rejoices in shite, or "proper" as they call it, food.
At least we can feel superior to the US on this front, who produce the worst bread I've ever eaten.
dofm 57 minutes ago [-]
French supermarket baguettes are very often Chorleywood.
ndsipa_pomu 13 hours ago [-]
> It's slightly depressing how much better the everyday food is just some 300kms east of London (i.e. in France)
Do you mean south of London?
noelwelsh 13 hours ago [-]
Would south east do? Is further pedantry necessary?
ndsipa_pomu 10 hours ago [-]
I'll accept south-east.
I'm glad we're not describing the relationship between Greenland and Iceland as Greenland is farther east, west, north and south of Iceland.
d1ss0nanz 13 hours ago [-]
"separate taps for cold and hot water" (even in public places)
micv 2 hours ago [-]
I don't really understand this either. Mixer taps are just better, but I have separate taps in my bath tub despite the block of houses being built in the 2010s. Guess some people like the aesthetic.
funnybeam 2 hours ago [-]
Probably not in your bath, but in houses with water tanks at least one of the cold taps will be fed directly from the mains supply. If you are drinking it then you want it straight from the mains rather than from the tank in your loft that’s been sat there for a while and had all sorts of things falling into it
userbinator 47 minutes ago [-]
but in houses with water tanks
This is another big surprise to Americans, which went from no running water to high-pressure mains.
Nursie 14 hours ago [-]
The reality is that the process is used all round the world these days (as covered in the article), not just in Britain, and its done that by being fast and cheap. It's also doubtful that it's any worse for you than American supermarket breads which are pumped full of sugar, emulsified oils etc etc.
Frankly all the pre-processed, plastic-wrapped supermarket loaves can get in the bin as far as I'm concerned, I buy sourdough from the local farmers market. But that's significantly more expensive and I recognise it's a position of privilege.
14 hours ago [-]
moogly 14 hours ago [-]
Harsh but true. It's the same phenomenon as defending the BS 1363 power plug that needed an embedded fuse because their domestic postwar electrical wiring was Not Great -- to save on copper.
But we all do this with our own stanky poop.
eru 14 hours ago [-]
The plug ain't too bad actually. (And I grew up with European style plugs.)
Still a vastly better mechanical design than what they make you use in the US: they barely hold in the socket.
notahacker 24 minutes ago [-]
Yeah BS 1363 is a really weird British standard to pick on, especially in a discussion about our food standards! Well engineered to actually stay in the socket, sockets have safety shutters as well as the earthing which other standards bizarrely lived without and it's not easily confused with a myriad of similar but incompatible standards. The fuse is a non-issue in practical use, and handy if your circuit is high current and your power cord isn't.
People who prefer plugs that are fun to step on are doing electrical interfaces wrong!
hnlmorg 13 hours ago [-]
As a Brit I will tell you that not all of us like this processed shit that passes for bread.
However the plug is actually a really good piece of engineering. There’s so many subtle design features to it that can be genuinely life saving. The only drawback is the often cited problem of stepping on one, to which I say “you shouldn’t be leaving plugs on the floor anyway. And it’s still better that than having kids electrocute themselves or your house burning”
cineticdaffodil 2 hours ago [-]
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2 hours ago [-]
bryanlarsen 8 hours ago [-]
AFAICT the two processing steps that have the most impact are the super fine milling that is used to create modern flour, and the removal of the bran from the flour. Those are likely the same whether you have Chorleywood bread or homemade 4 ingredient bread.
I suspect that Chorleywood bread made with stone ground whole wheat flour is better for you than home made four ingredient white bread. (with the caveat that Chorleywood probably doesn't work with such flour).
anonzzzies 14 hours ago [-]
I cannot really think of worse bread than pret or that first picture garbage. It's just so horrible compared what I bake at home, but sure, you can keep it for 40 years and it'll still be the same. Apparently people value that over their colon health.
mweibel 14 hours ago [-]
yes, long fermentation reduces fodmaps in breads which in turn makes it better digestable (plus it just takes better).
throw-qqqqq 2 hours ago [-]
This is true, but I want to add that FODMAPs are not inherently bad for you (unless you have something like IBS), on the contrary!
Fermentable carbohydrates are prebiotics and feed your gut flora, which produces short-chain fatty acids that are healthy for you.
But yes, you also get gas from FODMAPs. And no, I am not advocating for processed foods - just wanted to comment on the FODMAP aspect.
cineticdaffodil 14 hours ago [-]
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14 hours ago [-]
Nursie 14 hours ago [-]
> This article makes it sound like a good thing
At the time, it was, it allowed the country to feed itself on (largely) its own wheat. They didn't know it could contribute to IBS, they did know there was national food security at stake. Beyond that it made cheaper, mass-produced bread more viable in a bunch of places. Historically, globally it's hard to see cheaper staple food as an entirely bad thing. Now we know the consequences perhaps it's time to rethink.
> causing real bread to become an expensive, and hard to find in some places, specialty.
How do you think it has it caused real bread to become expensive? Is it not more likely that real bread is more expensive to produce and therefore people buy the cheap shit?
boudin 13 hours ago [-]
> At the time, it was, it allowed the country to feed itself on (largely) its own wheat. They didn't know it could contribute to IBS, they did know there was national food security at stake. Beyond that it made cheaper, mass-produced bread more viable in a bunch of places. Historically, globally it's hard to see cheaper staple food as an entirely bad thing.
That's just not true. It allowed to industrials using british wheat to compete against industrials using canadian wheat. Another approach could have been to protect artisan baker instead of going all in with the industrialisation of food production.
> How do you think it has it caused real bread to become expensive? Is it not more likely that real bread is more expensive to produce and therefore people buy the cheap shit?
Because bakery are seen as a specialty, and do not sell high volumes. You just have to cross the channel to see that real bread doesn't need to be that expensive and small bakers can compete with industrials.
rjsw 2 hours ago [-]
Supermarket bread in France is also industrial.
Nursie 13 hours ago [-]
> That's just not true.
It's right there in the article, in the postwar years the UK was reliant on imported Canadian and other wheats, the process allowed the UK to use its own wheat. "Artisan" bread was not a thing in the early 1960s, AFAICT at that point in time Britain had an extremely impoverished food sector.
> Because bakery are seen as a specialty, and do not sell high volumes. You just have to cross the channel to see that real bread doesn't need to be that expensive
France seems to be a bit of an outlier here AFAICT. But is 'real' bread even that expensive in the UK?
Look, you can get a 24hr sourdough loaf at Tesco for 2 quid - https://www.tesco.com/shop/en-GB/products/272914228 - or 3.75 for the 800g version. And you can tell it's not chorleywood because there's no Ascorbic acid or added oils. Real bread is available at any given supermarket if you want it.
If your real complaint is "Why don't we have France's bakery culture?" well I think that goes a lot deeper.
dwedge 14 hours ago [-]
I'm sure this was a very interesting article but after 7 paragraphs telling me that bread had changed in this one weird way, but not yet telling me how, it started feeling like marketing and I couldn't read more.
I guess I'll never find out why the bread in Europe also has holes.
JimTheMan 14 hours ago [-]
I agree, what a chore to read.
I resorted to getting chatgpt to make a summary... Which I am loathe to do:
"Chorleywood replaced long fermentation with intensive mechanical mixing, allowing Britain to turn its previously unsuitable low-protein wheat into cheap mass-produced white bread and substantially reduce its reliance on imported Canadian grain."
bot403 13 hours ago [-]
Goodness thanks for taking a terrible article and getting to the point.
linsomniac 2 hours ago [-]
... but if you buy my book with more of this, I'll send you even more to read!
I get it, sometimes it's fun to follow a story. But I also read a dozen or so paragraphs, then started scrolling, then gave up.
eru 14 hours ago [-]
Alas, Chorleywood tastes awful. At least to German taste buds.
cam_l 11 hours ago [-]
I imagine almost all other bread tastes awful to German taste buds.
And imho the British kind, especially, does not even deserve to be called by the same name.
eru 10 hours ago [-]
British food before roughly WW2 wasn't so bad actually.
The French have some decent bread, if you can live without the taste of rye for a while.
> The Chorleywood bread process allows the use of lower-protein wheats and reduces processing time,[5] the system being able to produce a loaf of bread from flour to sliced and packaged form in about three and a half hours. This is achieved through the addition of vitamin C, fat, yeast, and intense mechanical working by high-speed mixers, not feasible in a small-scale kitchen.
> The process significantly reduced fermentation time and allowed greater use of non-imported wheat, which helped reduce the price of bread.[4] According to a representative of the British Federation of Bakers, "UK bread is around the cheapest in the world."[5]
As of 2011, 80% of bread made in the United Kingdom used the process, which has also spread to other countries such as Australia, South Africa, South America, Turkey and France.
haunter 14 hours ago [-]
Reading through this page...
Does anyone know if the technique mentioned by the earlier Aerated Bread Company still exist today? Like can you buy a bread somewhere made with the technology. No yeast but using carbon dioxide? Sounds like the irish soda bread, so not fermentation by yeast but chemical leavening. But surely they are different because the irish soda bread is dense whereas the Aerated bread sounds like something more fluffy. Googling around I couldn't find a photo how did this bread look like.
tarkin2 14 hours ago [-]
I at least appreciate he was up front about advertising his book.
But, yes, after about seven paragraphs I could no longer read on, and I had completely lost any interest in his book.
This should be given as an example how marketing can actively damage your product.
I can't believe how high this is on hackernews. It feels odd.
altacc 13 hours ago [-]
This word bloat is why I can rarely read non-fiction books even if their topic is interesting. I want the summary and then option to read more detail if I want, not have to go through pages and pages of padding before getting to the interesting ideas or facts. There was interesting information in the article but the idea that it takes up a third of his book, with multiple interviews about the process is the opposite, is exactly what I'd avoid reading.
chistev 12 hours ago [-]
You're not reading the right non fiction books.
helsinkiandrew 13 hours ago [-]
You were half way there!
> The guiding principle of the Chorleywood Bread Process (I’m paraphrasing, of course) is that instead of depending for the most part on fermentation to generate all those bubbles of CO2 that later become the “cell structure” of microscopic holes in a loaf of bread, something similar could be achieved by beating that dough to within an inch of its life in a massive mechanical mixer.
It's much the same for all soft (tin) loaves sold across Europe. The exception being breads with crusts - baguettes and rolls etc. and rye bread.
zippyman55 14 hours ago [-]
I lost interest too. I could grow grain grind it, and make bread before I finished the article.
ndsipa_pomu 13 hours ago [-]
I think this is a result of click-bait titles. The title primes you to find out about the "little holes in your bread", so you start reading to find out about that and of course they leave that info to the end. It reminds me of the way so many YouTube videos will talk round and round the subject before getting to the actual point.
hyperbolablabla 14 hours ago [-]
Indeed, what an arduous read.
dbcooper 14 hours ago [-]
Absolutely. I will never waste my time with slop that doesn't get to the point. This is a lousy blog post about bread, not a great novel.
code_biologist 14 hours ago [-]
YouTube is infested with lede burying as well. I hate it.
nobodywillobsrv 14 hours ago [-]
This is the kind of writing that I assume the people who read the NYT or Atlantic enjoy.
The content is good but yes it's like there is a different class of people that really want to FEEL like they are reading. They are doing THE WORK.
riffraff 15 hours ago [-]
> More to the point, the ciabatta depends for its production on modern breadmaking techniques, chief among them high-hydration doughs. And in order to pull off high hydration doughs you need “strong” modern flours with very high gluten and protein levels. And for the most part, even in Italy, those flours have to be imported.
I think this is a bit overstating the change: 11% protein (they don't indicate a W factor but it's pretty low) is what I have in my pantry and you can absolutely bake ciabattas with it.
yxhuvud 14 hours ago [-]
Yes, but when done in industrial (or store) setting they use processes that go faster than what you use at home. Those processes needs the extra protein.
tarentel 1 hours ago [-]
That actually makes no sense. This article disputes this claim as well.
Also you can certainly make a high hydration dough with 11% protein flour but it'll probably be mediocre at best. I highly doubt it'll be worth the effort you'd need to put into it versus a higher protein flour.
riffraff 7 hours ago [-]
ah, that makes sense, thanks
dare944 14 hours ago [-]
For some reason I read this in James Burke's voice and I could swear I was teleported back to the 80's watching a hitherto unseen episode of Connections.
Interesting stuff.
giardini 15 hours ago [-]
All I want to know is why are Parisian baguettes so good? From this article I get that they are a low-gluten bread. But can that be all? I've always suspected a secret variety of wheat.
In all my life and travels I've never had bread nearly as good as the French baguette and I've always wondered why.
SoftTalker 12 minutes ago [-]
The strain of yeast, and the local water have a pretty big impact on the finished bread (in addition to the flour used, obviously).
seszett 15 hours ago [-]
French bread is just normal bread, while most other places seem to use the Chorleywood process now, which produces something different.
You can find bread as good as French bread in other places, like some Belgian bakeries but definitely not all of them, or in Vietnam and much of North Africa.
It's really just that much of the Western world seems to have moved to the Chorleywood process because it's cheaper while France has laws to prevent it.
ahf8Aithaex7Nai 14 hours ago [-]
I don't think that's the only reason. Here in Germany, you can also buy that fluffy white bread—usually wrapped in plastic—that's probably made that way. But most bread in Germany is still produced the traditional way, especially since it's often not pure wheat bread but rather rye bread or mixed-grain bread. Still, a real French baguette is unbeatable. Maybe it's the quality of the flour. But I'm sure it's mainly the very long resting time before baking. In my experience, that's also what makes pizza dough especially soft and flavorful.
ninalanyon 13 hours ago [-]
You can get soft bread in Norway that is much like the stuff that is ubiquitous in the UK but it is marketed for making toast. Most of the rest is much more interesting, and I'm sure better for you.
Nursie 14 hours ago [-]
You can buy non-chorleywood bread from bakers and from most supermarkets in the UK (look for their 'sourdough' loaves, some might even give a fermentation time)
But French bread is still particularly good somehow, there is just nothing like a fresh baguette from a baker in a small village in rural France.
So there's something else going on there IMHO. Specifically with baguettes.
(I wish I could find a good baguette here in Western Australia, most of them are utter trash. As are most of the croissants, though I was able to find a specialist baker for those so not all is lost...)
lbreakjai 1 hours ago [-]
I learned to bake when I lived in London, because the average bread was simply awful. It's surprisingly easy to get something as good at home, as long as you have a decent dutch oven.
It really makes me wonder what else is going on everywhere else, because it really comes down to just flour, water, salt, and yeast.
IneffablePigeon 13 hours ago [-]
It is mostly the freshness. There is a reason it all comes from small local bakeries - it has to be made that morning. Even by the afternoon it will not be as good.
do this. thank me later. (yes, it takes multiple days!). as good as when we hop over to France.
globular-toast 13 hours ago [-]
Long, slow fermentation using cultured yeast and a special Viennese style steam oven are essential for baguettes. They traditionally use soft French flour, but I'm not sure it makes the difference. The downside of baguettes is they don't last more than a day, but that's ok in France because there's a boulangerie on every corner. Baguettes are not homemade bread. Brioche is homemade and just as wonderful and far better than the garbage Brits/Americans make and call brioche for their burger buns.
The first thing I noticed travelling to France as a Brit is everything you eat is delicious. This has changed a bit now; they have McDonald's in France now. But 30 years ago it was mostly true. You could buy a sandwich from a railway station and it would be the best sandwich of your life. It took me a while to realise why. The British and American way to prepare food is to take any old crap but use just one or two strong flavours like bacon, cheese, pickle etc and let it carry the whole thing. The French way (and even more so Italian for that matter) is to take a handful of already delicious ingredients and combine them into something greater than their parts. French sandwiches taste good because the bread tastes good, the butter tastes good, the ham tastes good, and the cheese tastes good. That's the secret.
idontwantthis 14 hours ago [-]
I don’t know how common it is in France, but you can ferment a baguette for 3 days and it makes a big difference.
boudin 14 hours ago [-]
Long fermentation with little sourdough is making a come back in France (e.g the Respectus Panis thing) but I would think it's harder to apply to baguettes for professional bakers looking at how many they churn a day. That would be a lot of proofing bread to store.
MathewDebugs 14 hours ago [-]
[flagged]
bgnn 13 hours ago [-]
I guess, this explains why British and American breads taste awful. I know it's subjective, but this is how most people feel in contonental Europe.
snthpy 15 hours ago [-]
I was hoping this would be about a new way to augur the events of the day from my morning toast to ensemble with the tea leaves at the bottom of my morning cuppa, alas ...
zkmon 14 hours ago [-]
>> You realise the extent to which the world around is sometime quite precariously perched on these supply chains.
As s child, I lived in a world where there were no supply chains, no marketing and no advertising. Profit-based business was seen a mean thing to do.
City living and desire for goods from far away lands - created supply chains which dictate how people should live, in a precariously dependent way such that they can't make their needed things on their own and they can't have them made them locally. What a progress.
Gigachad 14 hours ago [-]
Unless you lived thousands of years ago, there was a supply chain. For bread there was a farmer, a miller, and a baker. That's a supply chain. And they were even more profit hungry back then, adulterating the flour with fillers to save money.
zkmon 8 hours ago [-]
You assume that everyone eats bread, like most westerners do.
The rural families a few decades ago in most Asian countries did not need millers, bakers or any other salesmen.
eru 14 hours ago [-]
Are you being sarcastic?
djmips 13 hours ago [-]
They are not being sarcastic. My grandparents lived in a place like this - the old ways have been forgotten by most but in my family you only have to go back two generations before it's all pretty much living off the land...
ButlerianJihad 14 hours ago [-]
I've got a few pet peeves about bread and American food service. Bread is spongy, and it's designed to sop up liquids and sauces. But when you're served bread in a restaurant, or incorporate a recipe at home, there is seldom time enough, or sauce enough, to soak sufficiently into the bread.
If you get a burger on a thick brioche bun, or a sub sandwich, and the kitchen has just five minutes ago dabbed on mayo, mustard, and ketchup, there are still inches of bread to chew through. They've also sprinkled on dried flakes of basil or oregano, without sufficient moisture or time to rehydrate them. Or a dinner roll from a basket, piping hot, and the customer puts on butter, moments before eating. The bun becomes an obstacle, rather than a vehicle for the ingredients.
It's understandable that the industry has cut back on the amount of condiments or fats that are applied to bread, but if I finish a plate of pasta and there is no sauce left, what good is that slice of garlic bread? It's the same with rice, and frozen meals: your food, fats, and sauce are laid over a bed of cooked rice, and it would take hours to properly soak in and marry the flavors. If there is a menu choice, I often opt for flatbread, or tortillas, and I feel better that way.
I'm starting to suspect that this has increased widespread aversion to eating bread, and perhaps some percentage of gluten intolerance is sponge intolerance: people are tired of chewing dry bread, and the bread is not perceived as a key nutritional part of the meal, and it can no longer serve a purpose in sopping up juice and sauces, so we've constructed a plausible reason to demand alternatives.
kazinator 14 hours ago [-]
I read about the Chorleywood Bread Process in a book out of the library at a time when I was making a bunch of bread: it was the year 1993.
I was quite appalled by what I learned.
The basic idea is that we introduce air into the dough mechanically, which reduces how much time the yeast has to do. It's worked down to the energy: you have to put in so many kWh or joules of work into so many kilograms of dough to get a certain result.
This process is what gives rise (ha ha) to that spongy, tasteless, highly compressible substance that is not recognizable as bread if you're from the other side of the Channel.
The whole idea is to make the largest-looking bread possible using the smallest amount of solid material, in the least amount of time: i.e. not my bread values.
gib444 14 hours ago [-]
> The whole idea is to make the largest-looking bread possible using the smallest amount of solid material, in the least amount of time
Good old post-WW2 poverty thinking that never went away because profit
readthenotes1 12 hours ago [-]
It's as if the author, having come across a fairly interesting topic, decided to see how poorly hen could write about it.
People complain a lot about AI written articles, but is this any better? I don't think so, I don't care who authors it but I don't want discursions and distractions.
noir_lord 3 hours ago [-]
Some blog posts could have just been a link to the related wikipedia page[1] and some are just clearly a re-written version of that (goes for "content" on YT from some of the better known history ones).
I've been baking on and off for twenty years, but it's only recently I've started to consider what I'm working with in any detail.
I'm absolutely aware of the difference between British and imported wheat. Results are very much improved and work is made easier by using very strong Canadian flour, but supporting British business (I'm a Londoner) add complexity to the choice.
I buy flour made from British wheat, but it requires extra effort to achieve an almost-as-good result as when working with imported flour.
This difference is particularly interesting for me. The industry that provides my current career (I'm a CG artist) is undergoing significant changes. I look to the future and a contemplate a possible change of career.
Do I buy Canadian flour and deliver a product that people expect? Do I sacrifice a little of the result, at least while I learn how to work more effectively with British flour, in order to be able to promote myself as a small business supporting UK enterprise.
Decisions, decisions.
What an odd morning on HN.
Then, you would get 75% of the local support benefit while having a potentially better product.
(ratios theoretical; you know more than me!)
Ships three times a week from Halifax docked at Birkenhead's grain elevator. The flour was then transferred to the mill over the road. British wheat flour (refined) at that point in history (60s) could not get to more than about 9% protein, not really enough to raise a loaf.
Common Market (? 1975) and we have tariffs &c so British wheat gets some serious cross-breeding attention. And now you can get home grown strong white flour above 11.5g. I think there was a similar story with Sugar cane and beet. The old Spillers mill is now flats, and the grain elevator was demolished decades ago.
But, yes, a few of the ships still come and yes you can get Canadian flour at 14 to 15%. One local artisan baker uses French flour as a matter of principle. Others don't specify the source. I'd say develop your recipes and go for it.
Since the Chorleywood Bread Process, British agriculture - selective breeding - has bred strains of wheat which reach high protein levels in the British environment. So the Chorleywood process these days is about using the less-good British wheat for cheap supermarket bread.
"Strong" flour that you can buy in shops is now mostly British as well.
People in fact don't eat dull white sliced bread in anything like the quantity they did. The majority of bread sold might be like that but we just eat less bread full stop.
But first, when you say "this godawful bread", what exactly do you mean? Chorleywood is a process, not an outcome. It's not just the template pre-sliced white/wholemeal/brown loaf thing from the three big brands. Quite a lot of bread you might think is not Chorleywood essentially is.
Go to even a larger French supermarket and buy a baguette, and that will very likely be a Chorleywood-based process. Much in-store-bakery bread is a modified Chorleywood process (if it is not, it is another similarly "ultra-processed" method, apparently called Activated Dough Development).
Most supermarket "sourdough type" bread, even some quite expensive stuff, is a modified Chorleywood process. Most ciabatta are.
I don't really eat "cut loaf" bread anymore for quite immediate health reasons — it invariably causes acid reflux and then skin irritation, so I gave it up a long time back. But I do still eat the odd part-baked bread roll and even some of those are Chorleywood process.
There is a good chance that if you're in a posh café you're still eating a Chorleywood-type bread. Because it is a way of making bread at scale; it is not a single product outcome.
So before you snark again at those inferior Brits who still like a sliced loaf every now and then, be sure you understand what you're snarking at?
One of the effects of the strike was that white sliced was in short supply and mangled people ended up with weird granary loaves etc as they were all that was left in the shelves. They liked them.
And from that day granary and seeded breads became a lot more popular over the bland spongy white sliced stuff.
I will say that whatever the failings of white sliced, I still prefer it to over-sweetened US bread.
British food has come a long way over time, though there is still that subculture the rejoices in shite, or "proper" as they call it, food.
At least we can feel superior to the US on this front, who produce the worst bread I've ever eaten.
Do you mean south of London?
I'm glad we're not describing the relationship between Greenland and Iceland as Greenland is farther east, west, north and south of Iceland.
This is another big surprise to Americans, which went from no running water to high-pressure mains.
Frankly all the pre-processed, plastic-wrapped supermarket loaves can get in the bin as far as I'm concerned, I buy sourdough from the local farmers market. But that's significantly more expensive and I recognise it's a position of privilege.
But we all do this with our own stanky poop.
Still a vastly better mechanical design than what they make you use in the US: they barely hold in the socket.
People who prefer plugs that are fun to step on are doing electrical interfaces wrong!
However the plug is actually a really good piece of engineering. There’s so many subtle design features to it that can be genuinely life saving. The only drawback is the often cited problem of stepping on one, to which I say “you shouldn’t be leaving plugs on the floor anyway. And it’s still better that than having kids electrocute themselves or your house burning”
I suspect that Chorleywood bread made with stone ground whole wheat flour is better for you than home made four ingredient white bread. (with the caveat that Chorleywood probably doesn't work with such flour).
Fermentable carbohydrates are prebiotics and feed your gut flora, which produces short-chain fatty acids that are healthy for you.
But yes, you also get gas from FODMAPs. And no, I am not advocating for processed foods - just wanted to comment on the FODMAP aspect.
At the time, it was, it allowed the country to feed itself on (largely) its own wheat. They didn't know it could contribute to IBS, they did know there was national food security at stake. Beyond that it made cheaper, mass-produced bread more viable in a bunch of places. Historically, globally it's hard to see cheaper staple food as an entirely bad thing. Now we know the consequences perhaps it's time to rethink.
> causing real bread to become an expensive, and hard to find in some places, specialty.
How do you think it has it caused real bread to become expensive? Is it not more likely that real bread is more expensive to produce and therefore people buy the cheap shit?
That's just not true. It allowed to industrials using british wheat to compete against industrials using canadian wheat. Another approach could have been to protect artisan baker instead of going all in with the industrialisation of food production.
> How do you think it has it caused real bread to become expensive? Is it not more likely that real bread is more expensive to produce and therefore people buy the cheap shit?
Because bakery are seen as a specialty, and do not sell high volumes. You just have to cross the channel to see that real bread doesn't need to be that expensive and small bakers can compete with industrials.
It's right there in the article, in the postwar years the UK was reliant on imported Canadian and other wheats, the process allowed the UK to use its own wheat. "Artisan" bread was not a thing in the early 1960s, AFAICT at that point in time Britain had an extremely impoverished food sector.
> Because bakery are seen as a specialty, and do not sell high volumes. You just have to cross the channel to see that real bread doesn't need to be that expensive
France seems to be a bit of an outlier here AFAICT. But is 'real' bread even that expensive in the UK?
Look, you can get a 24hr sourdough loaf at Tesco for 2 quid - https://www.tesco.com/shop/en-GB/products/272914228 - or 3.75 for the 800g version. And you can tell it's not chorleywood because there's no Ascorbic acid or added oils. Real bread is available at any given supermarket if you want it.
If your real complaint is "Why don't we have France's bakery culture?" well I think that goes a lot deeper.
I guess I'll never find out why the bread in Europe also has holes.
I resorted to getting chatgpt to make a summary... Which I am loathe to do:
"Chorleywood replaced long fermentation with intensive mechanical mixing, allowing Britain to turn its previously unsuitable low-protein wheat into cheap mass-produced white bread and substantially reduce its reliance on imported Canadian grain."
I get it, sometimes it's fun to follow a story. But I also read a dozen or so paragraphs, then started scrolling, then gave up.
And imho the British kind, especially, does not even deserve to be called by the same name.
The French have some decent bread, if you can live without the taste of rye for a while.
> The Chorleywood bread process allows the use of lower-protein wheats and reduces processing time,[5] the system being able to produce a loaf of bread from flour to sliced and packaged form in about three and a half hours. This is achieved through the addition of vitamin C, fat, yeast, and intense mechanical working by high-speed mixers, not feasible in a small-scale kitchen.
> The process significantly reduced fermentation time and allowed greater use of non-imported wheat, which helped reduce the price of bread.[4] According to a representative of the British Federation of Bakers, "UK bread is around the cheapest in the world."[5]
As of 2011, 80% of bread made in the United Kingdom used the process, which has also spread to other countries such as Australia, South Africa, South America, Turkey and France.
Does anyone know if the technique mentioned by the earlier Aerated Bread Company still exist today? Like can you buy a bread somewhere made with the technology. No yeast but using carbon dioxide? Sounds like the irish soda bread, so not fermentation by yeast but chemical leavening. But surely they are different because the irish soda bread is dense whereas the Aerated bread sounds like something more fluffy. Googling around I couldn't find a photo how did this bread look like.
But, yes, after about seven paragraphs I could no longer read on, and I had completely lost any interest in his book.
This should be given as an example how marketing can actively damage your product.
I can't believe how high this is on hackernews. It feels odd.
> The guiding principle of the Chorleywood Bread Process (I’m paraphrasing, of course) is that instead of depending for the most part on fermentation to generate all those bubbles of CO2 that later become the “cell structure” of microscopic holes in a loaf of bread, something similar could be achieved by beating that dough to within an inch of its life in a massive mechanical mixer.
It's much the same for all soft (tin) loaves sold across Europe. The exception being breads with crusts - baguettes and rolls etc. and rye bread.
The content is good but yes it's like there is a different class of people that really want to FEEL like they are reading. They are doing THE WORK.
I think this is a bit overstating the change: 11% protein (they don't indicate a W factor but it's pretty low) is what I have in my pantry and you can absolutely bake ciabattas with it.
Also you can certainly make a high hydration dough with 11% protein flour but it'll probably be mediocre at best. I highly doubt it'll be worth the effort you'd need to put into it versus a higher protein flour.
Interesting stuff.
In all my life and travels I've never had bread nearly as good as the French baguette and I've always wondered why.
You can find bread as good as French bread in other places, like some Belgian bakeries but definitely not all of them, or in Vietnam and much of North Africa.
It's really just that much of the Western world seems to have moved to the Chorleywood process because it's cheaper while France has laws to prevent it.
But French bread is still particularly good somehow, there is just nothing like a fresh baguette from a baker in a small village in rural France.
So there's something else going on there IMHO. Specifically with baguettes.
(I wish I could find a good baguette here in Western Australia, most of them are utter trash. As are most of the croissants, though I was able to find a specialist baker for those so not all is lost...)
It really makes me wonder what else is going on everywhere else, because it really comes down to just flour, water, salt, and yeast.
do this. thank me later. (yes, it takes multiple days!). as good as when we hop over to France.
The first thing I noticed travelling to France as a Brit is everything you eat is delicious. This has changed a bit now; they have McDonald's in France now. But 30 years ago it was mostly true. You could buy a sandwich from a railway station and it would be the best sandwich of your life. It took me a while to realise why. The British and American way to prepare food is to take any old crap but use just one or two strong flavours like bacon, cheese, pickle etc and let it carry the whole thing. The French way (and even more so Italian for that matter) is to take a handful of already delicious ingredients and combine them into something greater than their parts. French sandwiches taste good because the bread tastes good, the butter tastes good, the ham tastes good, and the cheese tastes good. That's the secret.
As s child, I lived in a world where there were no supply chains, no marketing and no advertising. Profit-based business was seen a mean thing to do.
City living and desire for goods from far away lands - created supply chains which dictate how people should live, in a precariously dependent way such that they can't make their needed things on their own and they can't have them made them locally. What a progress.
The rural families a few decades ago in most Asian countries did not need millers, bakers or any other salesmen.
If you get a burger on a thick brioche bun, or a sub sandwich, and the kitchen has just five minutes ago dabbed on mayo, mustard, and ketchup, there are still inches of bread to chew through. They've also sprinkled on dried flakes of basil or oregano, without sufficient moisture or time to rehydrate them. Or a dinner roll from a basket, piping hot, and the customer puts on butter, moments before eating. The bun becomes an obstacle, rather than a vehicle for the ingredients.
It's understandable that the industry has cut back on the amount of condiments or fats that are applied to bread, but if I finish a plate of pasta and there is no sauce left, what good is that slice of garlic bread? It's the same with rice, and frozen meals: your food, fats, and sauce are laid over a bed of cooked rice, and it would take hours to properly soak in and marry the flavors. If there is a menu choice, I often opt for flatbread, or tortillas, and I feel better that way.
I'm starting to suspect that this has increased widespread aversion to eating bread, and perhaps some percentage of gluten intolerance is sponge intolerance: people are tired of chewing dry bread, and the bread is not perceived as a key nutritional part of the meal, and it can no longer serve a purpose in sopping up juice and sauces, so we've constructed a plausible reason to demand alternatives.
I was quite appalled by what I learned.
The basic idea is that we introduce air into the dough mechanically, which reduces how much time the yeast has to do. It's worked down to the energy: you have to put in so many kWh or joules of work into so many kilograms of dough to get a certain result.
This process is what gives rise (ha ha) to that spongy, tasteless, highly compressible substance that is not recognizable as bread if you're from the other side of the Channel.
The whole idea is to make the largest-looking bread possible using the smallest amount of solid material, in the least amount of time: i.e. not my bread values.
Good old post-WW2 poverty thinking that never went away because profit
People complain a lot about AI written articles, but is this any better? I don't think so, I don't care who authors it but I don't want discursions and distractions.
It's still better than slop though.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorleywood_bread_process