How the Chorleywood Bread Process transformed British bread

In the US, most high quality flours will state their protein percentage reasonably prominently on the label. It’s not particularly hard to buy commercial flour at a fairly wide range of protein levels - 13.5% and even higher protein flours are available and inexpensive. And (lucky for us?) they’re basically all farmed in the US.

But in Europe, the labels seem more interested in ash content and the milling technique, and, at best, the protein can sometimes be inferred from the nutritional information. The last time I shopped for bread flour in Europe, I found a Canadian flour with sort of acceptable protein at a very high price, and I found a Croatian “Pizza” flour that was even better at a lower price.

Do not take American mass-produced sandwich bread as any kind of product that Europeans should wish they had :)

The specific one whose flours I use for my (very amateur) bread baking is Shipton Mill. I tend to make my bread using some of their very strong Canadian flour and some of their others which are weaker but possibly produce more interesting-tasting bread. (I do not guarantee that I would actually notice the difference in a blind test. I haven't tried.) One of the other flours I use is made from some continental-European and some British wheat. Another is all-British.

(I am not personally all that concerned whether my flour-buying supports British businesses; I'm just one person making a small amount of bread for my own family's use and the impact of my flour purchases on the national economy is a rounding error on top of a rounding error.)

As others have said, you could try using not-Canadian wheat and adding some vital wheat gluten. I haven't tried doing this myself but my understanding is that it works about as well as using stronger flour to begin with. It might make your ingredient lists a little less appealing if you're going to be doing this commercially, though.

I guess others are no angels either, but at least they have regulations with teeth and less corrupt politicians.

Just buy what you want and certainly do not _prefer_ British. If they don't care about your health why should you care about their bottom line....

Ships three times a week from Halifax docked at Birkenhead's grain elevator. The flour was then transferred to the mill over the road. British wheat flour (refined) at that point in history (60s) could not get to more than about 9% protein, not really enough to raise a loaf.

Common Market (? 1975) and we have tariffs &c so British wheat gets some serious cross-breeding attention. And now you can get home grown strong white flour above 11.5g. I think there was a similar story with Sugar cane and beet. The old Spillers mill is now flats, and the grain elevator was demolished decades ago.

But, yes, a few of the ships still come and yes you can get Canadian flour at 14 to 15%. One local artisan baker uses French flour as a matter of principle. Others don't specify the source. I'd say develop your recipes and go for it.

Then, you would get 75% of the local support benefit while having a potentially better product.

(ratios theoretical; you know more than me!)

what is up with Canadian flour? Just recently we were talking to an acquaintance here in Bay Area who makes her own bread from specially ordered Canadian flour.

I suspect that Chorleywood bread made with stone ground whole wheat flour is better for you than home made four ingredient white bread. (with the caveat that Chorleywood probably doesn't work with such flour).

At the time, it was, it allowed the country to feed itself on (largely) its own wheat. They didn't know it could contribute to IBS, they did know there was national food security at stake. Beyond that it made cheaper, mass-produced bread more viable in a bunch of places. Historically, globally it's hard to see cheaper staple food as an entirely bad thing. Now we know the consequences perhaps it's time to rethink.

> causing real bread to become an expensive, and hard to find in some places, specialty.

How do you think it has it caused real bread to become expensive? Is it not more likely that real bread is more expensive to produce and therefore people buy the cheap shit?

You can find bread as good as French bread in other places, like some Belgian bakeries but definitely not all of them, or in Vietnam and much of North Africa.

It's really just that much of the Western world seems to have moved to the Chorleywood process because it's cheaper while France has laws to prevent it.

do this. thank me later. (yes, it takes multiple days!). as good as when we hop over to France.

The first thing I noticed travelling to France as a Brit is everything you eat is delicious. This has changed a bit now; they have McDonald's in France now. But 30 years ago it was mostly true. You could buy a sandwich from a railway station and it would be the best sandwich of your life. It took me a while to realise why. The British and American way to prepare food is to take any old crap but use just one or two strong flavours like bacon, cheese, pickle etc and let it carry the whole thing. The French way (and even more so Italian for that matter) is to take a handful of already delicious ingredients and combine them into something greater than their parts. French sandwiches taste good because the bread tastes good, the butter tastes good, the ham tastes good, and the cheese tastes good. That's the secret.

I resorted to getting chatgpt to make a summary... Which I am loathe to do:

"Chorleywood replaced long fermentation with intensive mechanical mixing, allowing Britain to turn its previously unsuitable low-protein wheat into cheap mass-produced white bread and substantially reduce its reliance on imported Canadian grain."

But, yes, after about seven paragraphs I could no longer read on, and I had completely lost any interest in his book.

This should be given as an example how marketing can actively damage your product.

I can't believe how high this is on hackernews. It feels odd.

> The guiding principle of the Chorleywood Bread Process (I’m paraphrasing, of course) is that instead of depending for the most part on fermentation to generate all those bubbles of CO2 that later become the “cell structure” of microscopic holes in a loaf of bread, something similar could be achieved by beating that dough to within an inch of its life in a massive mechanical mixer.

It's much the same for all soft (tin) loaves sold across Europe. The exception being breads with crusts - baguettes and rolls etc. and rye bread.

The content is good but yes it's like there is a different class of people that really want to FEEL like they are reading. They are doing THE WORK.

Good old post-WW2 poverty thinking that never went away because profit

It's still better than slop though.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chorleywood_bread_process