Why I shouldn't buy bread from supermarkets

[farmerbarleymow]

palaver

Great word - haven't seen that used for years

 

[Roadkill]

And I don't like the weirdly shaped loaves that breadmakers make - oblong loaves like that are just not normal

That's my one minor grumble about my breadmaker. The bread's too big to fit in the toaster!

 

[Idaho]

That's my one minor grumble about my breadmaker. The bread's too big to fit in the toaster!

If the bread is fresh - why toast it?

I knew a dutchman once who found the english obsession with toasting bread hilarious. "oh my god! It's raw!" he would chuckle to himself.


Palaver means to conference, have an extended discussion or debate over something.

 

[Mrs Miggins]

Great word - haven't seen that used for years

I thang-u!

And I do agree that handmade bread is better...I think if I coud learn to do it properly, I might do it more often. When I've tried and the results have been horrible, it feels like it's such a lot of effort and then it hasn't worked which is off-putting.

It would be good to learn because then I think I'd probably use the breadmaker in the week when I come home from work and slam it all it and make bread by hand when I have, say, a Sunday afternoon to spare.

 

[Mrs Miggins]

Palaver means to conference, have an extended discussion or debate over something.

It means "a bloody great faff" to me

 

[Pilgrim]

It means "a bloody great faff" to me

Mrs Miggins, I would have thought, as owner of the pie shop, you would be well used to bread-related shenanigans.

 

[Mrs Miggins]

Mrs Miggins, I would have thought, as owner of the pie shop, you would be well used to bread-related shenanigans.

ahhh now....pastry....I can do!!

 

[PacificOcean]

Life is far to short to be faffing about making your own bread.

Bread in Supermarkets is a loss leader, so surely making your own costs more buying all the ingredents?

 

[aqua]

farmer, you have too much time on your hands matey

 

[farmerbarleymow]

I thang-u!

And I do agree that handmade bread is better...I think if I coud learn to do it properly, I might do it more often. When I've tried and the results have been horrible, it feels like it's such a lot of effort and then it hasn't worked which is off-putting.

It would be good to learn because then I think I'd probably use the breadmaker in the week when I come home from work and slam it all it and make bread by hand when I have, say, a Sunday afternoon to spare.

Like any baking, you always have to accept that sometimes things won't work - just one of those things isn't it? I've lost count how many loaves of bread/cakes etc I've chucked in the bin because they didn't work as planned - but bread is more forgiving than cakes in my experience - it might be a bit flatter than normal, but still edible. It upsets me more when I make a mess of an expensive cake recipe - too often sadly.

I think the key to hand made bread is the ingredients - the flour has to be right (I think you might get more leeway with this in a breadmaker?), preferably sifted, and the yeast is obviously important - I've found that it is better to use the little red tins of granulated yeast which once opened you have to store in the fridge rather than the little foil pouches which you add dry. The stuff I mean is made by Allisons I think, and you have to mix it with warm liquid and sugar to activate it - it seems to work better than the easy-blend stuff.

I usually use olive oil for the fat, and unrefined sugar for the sugar in the recipe. The resulting mix should not be too wet or too dry - pliable but a bit sticky at the same time if that makes sense.

Obviously the important thing in hand-made bread is the kneading - you can't really avoid this! Could it be that you are not kneading the dough properly when you have tried making bread before? The technique I've used is one I've just developed over the years, and it seems to work well enough - the way I do it is to slap the dough onto a lightly-floured surface in a roughly circular shaped blob, then push the far end of the dough away from you with the heel of one hand, and fold over the near side of the dough on top of it, spin it round a bit, and repeat until your arms fall off! You should end up with a very smooth, elastic dough, with air bubbles visible inside it.

I think that is how I do - it is surprisingly difficult to picture the kneading process without a lump of dough in front of me!

I'll stop rambling now

 

[farmerbarleymow]

farmer, you have too much time on your hands matey

Not as such - more that I am billy no mates and don't get out enough

I'll make someone a perfect housewife one of these days

 

[Roadkill]

Life is far to short to be faffing about making your own bread.

Bread in Supermarkets is a loss leader, so surely making your own costs more buying all the ingredents?

I work out that each loaf from my breadmaker costs about 80p, assuming I use half-decent flour. If I buy really shit flour that can come down to less than 40. That doesn't compare so badly with the price of a sliced loaf from my local 'convenience store,' although obviously the major supermarkets are much cheaper. However, I think it's worth it, because the bread tastes so much better.

Besides, with a breadmaker there's very little faffing about anyway: it takes about five minutes to put the ingredients in, and then you press a button or two and it does the rest for itself. All you need to do is come back a few hours later to get the loaf out when it's baked.

 

[bobalob]

Was that baked from scratch or sinply finished from pre-prepared dough?

For me, the main reason to avoid supermarket bread is something called the Chorleywood Bread Process (CBP) which uses a mixture of chemical additives, unnatural enzymes & particularly disturbingly, a high level of salt & Hydrogenated Fats (serious health implications here!) to make the lowest-quality raw material into a passable loaf immitation in literally a couple of minutes. Completely avoiding the normal rising & proving times for bread. I've linked-up details & ingredient lists on some of the previously processed breadmaker threads.

Sadly, CBP is not solely confined to the supermarkets anymore. Some 90% of the dough baked for sale in the UK is now made by some version of the CBP process & even small bakeries buy-in the shite rather than make their own.

About the only way to avoid it is to search-out a proper craft baker or get yourself a breadmaker,

i was reading an industry mag and they seem to hold the CBP in very high regard - quite literally the best thing since sliced bread. you use lots of salt and fat to make bread any which-way you do it. what's so bad about CBP?

 

[pogofish]

No doubt they do, as well as being very adaptable & cost effective, the CBP was designed for several purposes & served them all rather well. Particularly its cheapness, as it only needs low or semi-skilled staff to make-up the premixes instead of time-served bakers, its working with very low-quality wheat, helped create an agricultural monoculture policy for it as part of the sort of "cheap food at any cost" policies that have blighted our national food production post-war.

The salt & fat content of a CBP loaf is far higher than that of a traditional loaf, never mind that that CBP fat contains significant amounts of potentially harmful hydrogenated fatty acids, utterly unnatural enzymes & a variety of improvers & other chemical additives as well.

I've posted som equivalents on another breadmaker thread before but at simplest, compared to a similar size CBP loaf with 12g of salt & 45g of mixed fats, one of my own loaves has 2-3g of salt & 15g of olive oil instead. Preferable?

 

[Rohen]

I used to be religious about using my breadmaker every two days

I havent been religious for a while now but I fully intend to re use the thing soon

Good New years resolution stuff

 

[Fong]

Particularly its cheapness, as it only needs low or semi-skilled staff to make-up the premixes instead of time-served bakers, its working with very low-quality wheat, helped create an agricultural monoculture policy for it as part of the sort of "cheap food at any cost" policies that have blighted our national food production post-war.

While I agree with you about the whole artisan thing, we do seem to have lost any sort of workmanship in the last 50 years. I do also wonder if the world would be as it is without them.

Could we live in cities with 8 million people without it? Can we live with not only no famines, despite any droughts we face, but not even the possibility of a famine, when has it ever crossed your mind, that you and your family might starve to death, in this country.

I wonder if we don't live in a world where these things are required to make things work as they are, that without these 'advances', even tho we both somewhat consider them a production line of crap, we would be facing a very different world indeed.

 

[farmerbarleymow]

I've posted som equivalents on another breadmaker thread before but at simplest, compared to a similar size CBP loaf with 12g of salt & 45g of mixed fats, one of my own loaves has 2-3g of salt & 15g of olive oil instead. Preferable?

I think I tend to use about 5 to 10g of salt in my loaves - which usually means two loaves per batch, and a good slug of olive oil - say about 1oz or so - I don't measure the oil, just tip it in and hope for the best

The main thing with hand-made bread is that you know exactly what is in it, rather than the often bewildering list of ingredients on shop-bought loaves.