Chris Young coordinates the Real Bread Campaign for food and farming charity Sustain, championing additive-free bread and the people who make it.
Don’t you just love Real Bread? The aroma, the taste, the texture. Just reading that, I bet you now fancy a golden slice of wholemeal toast, a chewy bagel, some pillowy naan… but where to get it? Convenience and affordability may lead you to a supermarket. There you might find crusty loaves stacked in wicker baskets or lined up on wooden shelves, ready for you to select and slip into a paper bag. Perhaps it’s a bit more expensive than plastic-wrapped-white-sliced, but why not? After all, the retailer is promising you traditional, wholegrain heritage wheat, artisan sourdough, pain rustique – all “expertly baked in-store today”.
In truth, however, your freshly baked loaf could be a prefabricated industrial dough product, manufactured elsewhere (even overseas); it might include highly refined modern wheat flour, baker’s yeast and a cocktail of additives. It’s fine to use yeast unless the product is then marketed as sourdough – say no to sourfaux! It could also have been frozen, transported, then thawed and re-baked at a later date in the store’s ‘loaf tanning salon’ oven, merely to colour and crisp the crust, by someone who doesn’t have to know the first thing about making bread.
How do they get away with it? While consumer protection legislation requires that food labelling and marketing must be honest and must not mislead, the terms above have no legal definition. Manufacturers and retailers can choose to make such claims and it’s unlikely that anyone will stop them. The law doesn’t require full ingredients lists to be displayed for food that’s sold unwrapped, either, so supermarkets typically decide not to share that information. We continue to lobby for an Honest Crust Act of updated and improved composition labelling and marketing standards, giving people the chance to make better-informed choices.
For now, you could consider supporting your local Real Bread bakery, or ordering a loaf via your Riverford box. There are free recipes on our website (realbreadcampaign.org) if you want to BIY (bake it yourself), by hand or with a bread maker.
Learn more about the Real Bread Campaign, and where to find Real Bread, at realbreadcampaign.org
Our Sustainable Food Series also explores the real deal with bread, here.
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