From sourdough to soda, brown to batch, there are countless kinds of bread you can buy nowadays, but what makes a loaf great?
A good loaf can be the making or breaking of many a meal, and not everyone has the time to make their own sliced pan or crunchy sourdough.
Having been gifted a bread starter by a friend during lockdown, Melissa Hogenboom, BBC health and science journalist, became fascinated by the process of baking her own bread. She joined Claire Byrne on RTÉ Radio 1 to share her advice on what to look for when buying your bread.
Although local bakeries and artisanal producers are booming across the country in recent years, most of us grew up eating packaged sliced bread from the supermarket, and likely still rely on it in the weekly shop. This bread, Hogenboom said, is often a product of a method that was originally designed to cut corners.
Most supermarket sliced bread is made through the Chorleywood bread process, she explained, which was developed in the 1950s in the Chorleywood factory in the UK. "It was actually initially made as a way to help small bakeries be able to compete with larger factories, but actually it backfired because it put a lot of these small bakeries out of business", she said.
The process adds hard fats, additional yeast and chemicals like enzymes, oxidants and emulsifiers to help strengthen the dough. This is then mixed at super high speed to create the bread, which had a longer shelf life due to the additives.
"Today about 80% of the loaves consumed are still made using the Chorleywood method", Hogenboom said, adding that this would be considered ultraprocessed food.
While supermarket bread can be part of a healthy diet, Hogenboom said, ultraprocessed food, she explained, is "linked to many adverse health conditions including an early death", and while bread itself is not part of that, she added that scientists now look at the combination of additives in our food and the effect they have on areas of our health.
So what sort of bread should we be buying?
Hogenboom suggested buying bread with as few unrecognisable added ingredients as possible. Filling your sandwich with protein-rich foods will help keep you fuller for longer and keep your diet more balanced, and opt for wholegrain if possible, Hogenboom suggested.
Wholegrain is more nutritious, she said, as it is full of fibre which is beneficial for the gut and heart health.
She cautions against shop-bought bread that relies heavily on appearing healthy, suggesting that you check the ingredients to ensure that the recipe is as nutritious as it looks. "It's an awareness of what we're eating and what we're putting into our body", she added.
As for her own recipes, Hogenboom makes a 'fold' bread that doesn't require any kneading, just periods of folding the dough over the course of the day - a process that takes 36 hours start to finish.
To listen back to this interview, click above.
