How the Chorleywood Bread Process transformed British bread

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.

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.

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.

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.

> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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 ...

>> 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.

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.

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.

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.

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