Mannablog - Food In South Devon

Sunday March 11th and Spring is definitely here.  We woke this morning to beautiful blue skies, Dartmouth basking in full morning sun across the river and a real smell of springlike freshness in the air.  What else can one do on such a great day except celebrate the arrival of Spring, so some hot cross buns for breakfast, a wonderful walk on our beautiful coast and get the barbecue lit to cook some lamb for supper; all toppped off by watching England beat France at rugby in the afternoon.

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Over the past five decades we have seen 95% of the craft bakers of Britain fall by the wayside as we have been seduced by the siren of cheap, industrial bread. This is a national tragedy and brings shame on us all, especially when we compare ourselves to the rest of Europe where, for now, craft bakeries still thrive.  However, there is light on the horizon. Increasingly we seem to be starting to realise that cost is not the only measure by which we should judge our daily bread.   We may also want to take into account nutrition, digestibility and, heavens forbid I should even harbour such thoughts, flavour.

Bread in its simplest form contains four ingredients, wheat flour, water, salt and yeast. Anyone can make a tasty, nutritious loaf at home using just those ingredients. So why does industrial bread contain soya flour, vinegar, dextrose, wheat protein, vegetable fat, emulsifiers, anti-fungal agents, enzymes and other ingredients that sound like they would be more at home in a laboratory than in a bakery? The answer is not simple. Supermarkets compete to bring down the cost of one of our most staple foods; the large industrial bakers compete to win the supermarkets business, and we, the consumer, accept without question that we are getting value for money and that the industrial bread revolution is doing us all a favour.  Consequently the baking of bread becomes all about efficiency of production, lowest cost of ingredients, and the longest shelf life possible; and the result is a bland, puffy, soggy compound which doesn’t agree with us and which we have lost our love for, leading to an overall decrease in bread consumption despite its unprecendented cheapness. (more…)