Bread Matters: The State of Modern Bread and a Definitive Guide to Baking Your Own
by Andrew Whitley
Buy on AmazonThis was the book that changed my life. I was very interested in food, as I said, and had a passing interest in bread. Dan’s book had awoken that in me, but it was pretty low level. I really disliked my job at the time and took a week off to have a think about my life. I went on a course at Schumacher College, and the guy running it was Andrew Whitley, the author of this book. By the end of the week, I was like, ‘Oh my God! I didn’t know that they were doing that to my loaf.’ I asked Andrew if there was anything I could do. By that point, I had a bit of background in PR and marketing so I asked, ‘Is there any way I can, in my simple way, help spread this message?’ Andrew suggested that I should chat to a charity called Sustain, because the following week they were launching a thing called the Real Bread Campaign, which was about putting into practice a lot of what he was saying in the book. “One of his mantras is ‘the wetter the better’—you’ll probably get a better result the more water you have in your dough.” A few months later Sustain was asking for a volunteer so I went along in my lunch break. They said, ‘Yes, alright, come and volunteer.’ So I went back to my office, quit my job and started volunteering a month or so later. I’ve been here ever since. The thing about Andrew’s book is that it’s more than just a bunch of recipes. People have taken it on as a manifesto, really, of what can be done better. It says, ‘This is what’s wrong and this is what we can do to make a difference.’ Initially it was just about changing Britain’s loaf life, but it has become a worldwide thing. I’ve heard people refer to Bread Matters as the Bible. One of the things that the book alerted people to is the fact that there are certain additives that can be used in loaves that don’t have to be declared on labels. So there we are, thinking that we’re buying a loaf with fewer additives—or even no additives at all—and it turns out that because of (what we see as) loopholes in the law, they have got lots of additives chucked into them. Call an additive a ‘processing aid’ and the manufacturer is under no obligation to declare it. More generally, a lot of loaves—for example, supermarket in-store bakery loaves—are sold without ingredients listed at all. That’s perfectly legal. But there you are, going into a supermarket bakery and seeing a baguette that’s supposedly freshly baked and you think, ‘I’m here, it’s convenient, it’s possibly cheaper than the local bakery, what’s the difference?’ What you’re not being allowed to see is the fact that that loaf might have a load of additives in it and it might have been made at some point in the distant past. Some loaves are made overseas, in France for example, and then frozen or chilled and re-baked in the store. So you’re getting a rebaked loaf full of additives: that’s the price you’re paying for the supposedly low price at the till. So it’s also about encouraging people to ask questions when they go into a bakery. Get the weekly Five Books newsletter Then, on the home baking front, Andrew does some myth-busting. Kicking out sugar I’ve already mentioned, but another one that I used to do is if you’ve got a dough you think is a bit wet and sticky, you start adding more flour to make it easier to handle. He says that while that might make it easier for you in the short term, it isn’t actually better for the bread. One of his mantras is ‘the wetter the better’—you’ll probably get a better result the more water you have in your dough. Perhaps the most important ingredient for Andrew is time. Time is what allows yeast, and particularly a sourdough starter, to work its magic. Over time, not only do compounds develop that allow bread to taste and smell fantastic, but there are also potential health benefits. So that’s a key message that ‘Whitley-ites’ have taken on, the importance of time. As long as it’s real bread, it doesn’t matter. We either encourage people to buy additive-free loaves or to bake bread at home. If you bake it at home, that’s fantastic; it’s a great way of taking control over the food you eat and feeding your families. If you buy a loaf, especially from a small independent bakery, you’ll be helping to support a local business that supports more jobs per loaf, helps to keep your high street alive, and keeps money circulating in the local economy. It might even be a hub, in some cases, for the local community. That’s better than having a mobile phone or vape shop or a shop sitting empty. It varies, and that’s one of the challenges that we’re constantly trying to tackle at the Real Bread Campaign. We’re actually calling for an ‘Honest Crust Act’ of improved loaf labelling and marketing legislation. For example, on the high street, there may be one bakery that bakes genuinely fresh, real bread from scratch. They won’t use additives and when they say the bread is fresh, it’ll be freshly baked that day. If it’s a sourdough, it’ll have just been made with a live sourdough starter culture. Unfortunately, there are other bakeries that, quite legally, might say ‘fresh bread baked daily.’ They might say sourdough. They might talk about wholegrain or artisan or craft bread, but actually what they’re selling is nothing of the sort. They’ll be using additives and techniques that no genuine artisan baker would use. In some cases, instead of crafting bread, they will actually be selling products that have been made in a factory elsewhere and either baking or re-baking them on site. So they are saying all sorts of things that we as shoppers can’t necessarily trust. That’s why we’ve been campaigning for a change in the law for the past decade.