Chorleywood: Ultra-fast bread!

 

Image via VickiW

Strange how memories from early life return as you age. Short-term ones would be nice, and are actually more important, day to day, but those long-term ones from so long ago keep on thrusting themselves forward.

These days after the advent of computers, iPads, smartphones, internet, and the World Wide Web, things have changed so radically in present lives that you almost long for a break from it all.

It isn’t just those tech things that have altered life, so that it’s almost unrecognizable. It’s what has followed. 

Take bread for instance. See this loaf bought from the local supermarket 10 weeks ago? Yes, it’s stood on my counter, wrapped in its plastic bag, long enough to create blue mold on any other foodstuff you can think of.

Perfect, uniform, commercial bread slices

Image sofi5t of Pixabay

The thing is, it still looks as fresh as the day it was bought. Not only that, it feels just as fresh. I don’t plan to make a sandwich from it. But I’m completely overawed when I realize that technically, I could. When I make bread, as often as I can, I’m joining the ranks of so many others these days. These are the folks who just know from a health point of view that homemade is very much better for you. They are people who find the time in their 24 hours to make a batch of bread. It’s not that easy these days. People are struggling to afford feeding their families, or even themselves in many instances. Greedy landlords, voracious CEOs of major companies, all do their level best to ensure corporate profits remain astoundingly high, while they are also seemingly unable to think about the pain of so many folks these days. This is not the first time people have suffered from a shortage of, or inferior quality in their bread. Bakers used to grind their own flour, and they were heavy loaves, but nothing had been taken out or added in. Bread was indeed “the staff of life” and kept people healthy, with the addition of simple unprocessed foods.

Home-baked Image via VickiW

Faster isn't always an improvement...

Until the late 19th century milling flour was a slow process. But when a new commercial method was introduced in Chorleywood, England, all this changed. Suddenly mills could produce 20 tonnes of flour in an hour. This process also separated the different parts of the wheat grain, giving a lighter flour but without the health-giving bran and germ. The main part of the grain is about 90% endosperm, the starchy part.

Have you ever wondered why, if you read the list of ingredients on flour, vitamins are added? The answer is that the new and improved method of making bread in gigantic factories and supermarkets actually removes the nutrients that we expect to find in our bread. 

This coincides with the global health problems that societies face today. In an effort to replace the missing nutrients extracted with the modern bread-making methods they, plus dozens of other “improvers” and additives must be carefully weighed out and added back to the “no fermenting” time of the dough. This is by order of governments who realized health problems were escalating quickly.  

The baking that follows is quick. No messing around.

It’s very complicated, this Chorleywood high-tech machine process. Actually, more time is spent with cooling and packaging the bread than baking it. Forget about the hours of allowing yeast to slowly work its magic. That time is cut to ribbons.

After the 10 weeks that my little “whole-wheat” loaf has sat on my kitchen counter I looked at it again today. No change. Still soft, nice texture. Still brown, perfectly baked. Still smells okay. No mould to be seen. I’m wondering how long the supermarket bread is classified as being “fresh” after baking? Lots of folks buy it.

Should I do the taste test? I’m tempted, purely from a research point of view.

All good!

I did it! ¼ slice, with butter and my neighbour Jim’s strawberry jam made in October.  The bread tasted fine! It gives a whole new meaning to fresh. How would I ever know what that means now, with supermarket bread?

I didn’t get sick. I felt fine. But I have to wonder if I’d feel the same on a steady daily diet of it?

10-week-old “fresh whole-wheat” Chorleywood bread Image via VickiW

It’s not that difficult to see the possibility that profit might be the underlying cause of much illness in populations. The Chorleywood rapid bread-making process has spread throughout the world. The nutrients that once were in the grains are removed, then carefully replaced after treatment, together with dozens of additives. Swift baking follows. 

It’s always worthwhile to look at the labeling of food these days. But know that in modern, speedy baking, many of the ingredients simply don’t have to end up on those labels. 

It all started with Chorleywood…

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