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How the Chorleywood Bread Process transformed British bread

134 points by baud147258 25d ago

snthpy 23d 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 ...
giardini 23d 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.
- seszett 23d 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 23d 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.
  - Nursie 23d 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...)
    - IneffablePigeon 23d 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.
    - lbreakjai 22d 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.
      - lazylester 22d ago
        The process is more important than the ingredients.
        lbreakjai 22d ago
        I thought so too. When I started, I was obsessed with getting every variable and every step of the process just right. I measured and documented everything: The number of folds, the humidity in the room ... Then I discovered Jim Lahey's no-knead bread recipe, which gave me virtually the same results, for a grand total of 5 minutes of active work.
        ahazred8ta 20d ago
  - ninalanyon 23d 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.
- idontwantthis 23d 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 23d 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 23d ago
  It's usually less about a secret wheat variety and more about the specific flour grading (like French T65) and a strict traditional process. The long, slow fermentation allows those complex flavors to develop naturally. Combine that high hydration with a really hot, steam-injected oven, and you get the sudden expansion needed for that perfect crispy crust and open crumb...
- _zoltan_ 23d ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0U8RdRdFDU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0U8RdRdFDU do this. thank me later. (yes, it takes multiple days!). as good as when we hop over to France.
- globular-toast 23d 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.
- SoftTalker 22d 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).
riffraff 23d 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 23d 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.
  - riffraff 22d ago
    ah, that makes sense, thanks
  - tarentel 22d 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.
MathewDebugs 23d ago
[dead]
dwedge 23d 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 23d 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."
  - eru 23d ago
    Alas, Chorleywood tastes awful. At least to German taste buds.
    - cam_l 23d 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 23d 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.
  - bot403 23d ago
    Goodness thanks for taking a terrible article and getting to the point.
  - linsomniac 22d 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.
kazinator 23d 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 23d 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
boudin 23d 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 23d 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.
  - Nursie 23d 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.
  - moogly 23d 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 23d 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.
dare944 23d 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.
b800h 23d 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.
zkmon 23d 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 23d 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 22d 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 23d ago
  Are you being sarcastic?
  - djmips 23d 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 23d 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.
bgnn 23d 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.
readthenotes1 23d 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 22d 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). It's still better than slop though. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorleywood_bread_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorleywood_bread_process
onecrossbaker 23d 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.
- senkora 22d 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 22d 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%.
- 2b3a51 22d 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.
Woodi 22d ago
Dudes, pleas... Stop obsesing with 2-4% diference in gluten! English flour, Americans flour - just make dough denser and it will keep shape longer before going flat. Especially if you bake in baking pan! In pan anything keeps bread (actually pan :> ) shape! Corn, buckwheat, rice, whatever. Without pan "week gluten" make bread flat. But on the other hand week gluten flour is better for cakes makers. Without gluten and pan you can make pancakes-like bread what still is called bread in some current but ancient traditions. O, and "wheat only bread" started to be so popular (as in: be only one thing called bread) only when yeasts has been discovered and only in West Europe / North America culture. Even Germany still is using a lot of rye and Mexico is using a lot of corn... And to article subject: yea, mixing harder adds a lot of air into dough and when heated gas expands so bread "grows"... And, especially in pan, it looks "normal"... But intensive mixing also kills yeasts that create CO^2 in dough so it kills bread growth... So, yeah, you realy need that gluten so air is trapped in the dough :) Also short bread growth time kills taste... But you can faster push whatever-you-are-making to customers! And that suposedly "american" "sponge-and-dough" is just ancient and global way of making bread...

134 points by baud147258 25d 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 ...

giardini 23d 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.

seszett 23d 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 23d 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.
- Nursie 23d 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...)
  - IneffablePigeon 23d 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.
  - lbreakjai 22d 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.
    - lazylester 22d ago
      The process is more important than the ingredients.
      - lbreakjai 22d ago
        I thought so too. When I started, I was obsessed with getting every variable and every step of the process just right. I measured and documented everything: The number of folds, the humidity in the room ... Then I discovered Jim Lahey's no-knead bread recipe, which gave me virtually the same results, for a grand total of 5 minutes of active work.
      - ahazred8ta 20d ago
- ninalanyon 23d 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.
idontwantthis 23d 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 23d 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 23d ago
It's usually less about a secret wheat variety and more about the specific flour grading (like French T65) and a strict traditional process. The long, slow fermentation allows those complex flavors to develop naturally. Combine that high hydration with a really hot, steam-injected oven, and you get the sudden expansion needed for that perfect crispy crust and open crumb...
_zoltan_ 23d ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0U8RdRdFDU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n0U8RdRdFDU do this. thank me later. (yes, it takes multiple days!). as good as when we hop over to France.
globular-toast 23d 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.
SoftTalker 22d 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).

riffraff 23d 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 23d 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.
- riffraff 22d ago
  ah, that makes sense, thanks
- tarentel 22d 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.

MathewDebugs 23d ago

[dead]

dwedge 23d 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 23d 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."
- eru 23d ago
  Alas, Chorleywood tastes awful. At least to German taste buds.
  - cam_l 23d 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 23d 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.
- bot403 23d ago
  Goodness thanks for taking a terrible article and getting to the point.
- linsomniac 22d 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.

kazinator 23d 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 23d 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

boudin 23d 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 23d 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.
- Nursie 23d 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.
- moogly 23d 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 23d 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.

dare944 23d 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.

b800h 23d 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.

zkmon 23d 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 23d 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 22d 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 23d ago
Are you being sarcastic?
- djmips 23d 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 23d 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.

bgnn 23d 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.

readthenotes1 23d 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 22d 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). It's still better than slop though. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorleywood_bread_process https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorleywood_bread_process

onecrossbaker 23d 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.

senkora 22d 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 22d 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%.
2b3a51 22d 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.

Woodi 22d ago

Dudes, pleas... Stop obsesing with 2-4% diference in gluten! English flour, Americans flour - just make dough denser and it will keep shape longer before going flat. Especially if you bake in baking pan! In pan anything keeps bread (actually pan :> ) shape! Corn, buckwheat, rice, whatever. Without pan "week gluten" make bread flat. But on the other hand week gluten flour is better for cakes makers. Without gluten and pan you can make pancakes-like bread what still is called bread in some current but ancient traditions. O, and "wheat only bread" started to be so popular (as in: be only one thing called bread) only when yeasts has been discovered and only in West Europe / North America culture. Even Germany still is using a lot of rye and Mexico is using a lot of corn... And to article subject: yea, mixing harder adds a lot of air into dough and when heated gas expands so bread "grows"... And, especially in pan, it looks "normal"... But intensive mixing also kills yeasts that create CO^2 in dough so it kills bread growth... So, yeah, you realy need that gluten so air is trapped in the dough :) Also short bread growth time kills taste... But you can faster push whatever-you-are-making to customers! And that suposedly "american" "sponge-and-dough" is just ancient and global way of making bread...