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Frequently asked questions

Here are answers to some of the questions we've been asked over the past few years.

See also

Sourdough

How can I join in?

  • Join us! Becoming a member helps to strengthen our voice and fund campaigning activity. 
  • Buying Real Bread from a local, independent bakery is one of the best ways in which you can help support the cause of Real Bread. The more people buy their bread, the better their chances in the face of supermarkets and ever tougher economic times. If you have a local bakery, pop in and say ‘hi,’ have a chat about what goes into their loaves and enjoy.
  • How about baking Real Bread for your local community, perhaps starting a Community Supported Bakery and maybe even baking from home. Our book, Knead to Know: the Real Bread starter, will point you in the right direction.
  • If you bake Real Bread, make a noise about it, giving a full ingredients list and highlighting why people should buy from you - e.g. locally grown wheat, stone ground flour, locally milled flour, genuine sourdough with longer fermentation, organic ingredients, higher extraction white flour etc.
  • If the baker/retailer isn’t telling you enough about the bread you buy – ask questions.
  • If you are not baking Real Bread already, start now. If you have children, get them involved - the fun, knowledge and valuable life skill they get out of it will be well worth any mess. See our recipe page  
  • If you are a confident Real Bread baker, do you feel you could teach others?
  • We need help from baking colleges and tutors to get Real Bread skills training into professional courses
  •  We would be happy to hear from anyone who can lend support in kind in the form of photography, animation, video clips, printing leaflets, t-shirts, cards etc. to help illustrate and share Real Bread skills and to promote the campaign
  • If you are a journalist/writer, would you be interesting in donating an article for our magazine or website?
  • Do you have a Real Bread recipe of your own that you’d like to share with our members?

And we'd love you to make a donation to support the charitable work of the Real Bread Campaign.

Why no additives?

Simply put, because Real Bread doesn’t need them. However manufacturers may present their reasons in terms of consumer demand, their motivation for adulterating their products is basically generating greater profit.

Examples of the purposes of additives include:

  • Prolonging the time a loaf stays soft by artificial means and advertising this as ‘freshness’
  • A spraying of chemical fungicide to prevent mold
  • Adapting natural ingredients to comply to the technical demands of modern processing
  • Modifying and supplementing natural ingredients to produce a certain type of product, rather than allowing the flour determine the type of bread that can be produced.
  • Shortening natural rising times

Click here for more on additives, including a category known as processing aids that don't even have to be declared on the label.

Don’t factory loaves stay fresh longer?

In terms of bread, surely ‘fresh’ means just made. Treating products to prolong artificially the characteristics of a fresh loaf is effectively loaf botox. 

Just as a chemical facelift does not change a person's age, a ten day old loaf that is made using processing aids to prolong softness, pumped full of salt and sprayed with a fungicide to inhibit the growth of mould, is still a ten day old loaf.

It should be noted that certain sourdough Real Breads will keep for a week or more, the products of the fermentation process acting as natural preservatives.

What's the best way to store bread?

For notes on storing bread and slowing staling click here.

What if I can’t afford Real Bread?

Real Bread is not necessarily more expensive than a factory loaf and in fact, baking your own could well be cheaper. We believe in an honest price for an honest loaf. For more thought on the real value of Real Bread and true costs of other alternatives, click here.

What's the best flour to use?

Most modern British recipes call for strong or bread making flour.  This is what flour that has high levels of gluten, the stretchy protein that traps bubbles of carbon dioxide and allows them to expand, causing bread to rise.  Look for a protein content of 12-15%

You can make bread with lower protein flours and indeed some styles of bread (e.g. traditional baguettes, focaccia, ciabatta and other breads with a more open crumb structure with large, irregular holes) rely on this.

Beyond these technical considerations, we would suggest using flour that is:

  • Stoneground
  • Milled using renewable and pollution-free wind or water power
  • Produced as locally as possible
  • Milled by an independent company that gives more meaningful, skilled employment

And if you purchase either direct or from a locally owned retailer, more of your cash is likely to be re-invested in that local community.

Click here for notes on finding independent mills.

What’s wrong with refined white flour?

Modern roller milling is ruthlessly efficient at stripping away the nutrient rich outer layers of wheat grains, leaving behind not much more than starch and gluten. Additionally, the heat generated by the process actually destroys some of the compounds. Compared to whole wheat, refined white flour is highly depleted. Example losses are:

Vitamin E 93% lost
Vitamin B6 87%
Vitamin B2 81%
Vitamin B3  80%
Iron   70%
Calcium  56%

Source: USDA Nutrient Database, SR 17, 2004

Even though UK law demands that calcium, iron and vitamins B1 and B3 are all added to white and most other wheat flours (except wholemeal but including organic), there is still a whole range of minerals, vitamins, antioxidants and phytonutrients that are not replaced at all during fortification.

White flour is much lower in fibre than wholemeal. A 2011 study by Imperial College found that a daily increase in fibre of 10g can reduce the risk of by 10%. See Is sourdough better than ‘normal’ yeast? below for how to get more out of wholemeal.

Is stoneground flour better?

The simple grinding of the whole grain in a single pass through and between two horizontal, round millstones is at the heart of traditional milling. It is designed to produce wholemeal flours with excellent flavour and nutritional value. Unlike roller milling, which removes the outer layers of the grain, stone milling crushes the grain and all parts are mixed in together.  Even when finely sifted to produce lighter coloured flours, they will still contain fine particles of the fibrous and most nutritious parts - the germ and bran. There has also been research to suggest that the heat generated by roller milling destroys greater percentages of nutrients in comparison to stone ground flours of equivalent extraction rates.

Why longer fermentation?

The Real Bread Campaign calls for more research to be done on the beneficial effects of longer fermentation, especially in the presence of sourdough bacteria.

Real Bread is a natural product and just as with fruit or cheese it takes time for it to ripen. Although research so far has been limited, there is growing evidence that leaving dough to rise for longer periods can have a range of benefits to the consumer.  Examples include:

  1. Increase in thiamine, riboflavin and pyridoxine (B vitamins) 
  2. Increase in antioxidant pronyl-L-lysine 
  3. Reduction of acrylamide

See also the section on ‘Is sourdough better than ‘normal’ yeast?’ below

Sources:

1. Batifoulier, F., Verny, M-A., Chanliaud, E., Rémésy, C. and Demigné, C. (2005). Effect of different breadmaking methods on thiamine, riboflavin and pyridoxine contents of wheat bread. Journal of Cereal Science 42 (2005) 101-108.

2. Lindenmeier, M. and T. Hoffmann (2004). Influence of baking conditions and precursor supplementation on the amounts of the antioxidant pronyl-L-lysine in bakery products. J. Agric. Food Chem. 2004, 52(2): 350-4.

3. Fredriksson, H. et al (2004). Fermentation Reduces Free Asparagine in Dough and Acrylamide Content in Bread. Cereal Chem. 81(5):650-653.

Why a continuous process?

‘Baking off’ part-baked loaves or baking frozen doughs is another way that manufacturers try to deceive us into thinking that we are eating fresh bread.  Examples are the often doughy ‘French’ bread you find in some mini-markets, slightly anaemic baguette sandwiches in railway stations and even certain supposed ‘artisan’ breads coming from some supermarket in-store bakeries.

One of the problems with these are that they may well have been produced using the same processing aids and additives as the dreaded white sliced loaf.

Another is that for every bakery operative who has been taught to hit an oven’s on switch, that person plus several others could be trained up to be skilled bakers instead. Surely such artisan craft skills have greater value to the individual and his or her community than the ability to push the red button that says ‘bake’.

A further reason is that the weight and size of chilled dough or a part-baked loaf are greater than those of the flour used to make them. It therefore takes more energy to transport dough or bread than flour or grain.

For more on this issue, please see our report Are Supermarket Bloomers Pants?

Is salt necessary?

Salt serves three main functions in bread:

  • Strengthening gluten, the elastic protein in flour that holds the bubbles of carbon dioxide in leavened bread. 
  • Acting as a natural preservative
  • Enhancing flavour

Bread can be made without salt, the traditional breads of Tuscany are an example, but many people in the UK would find bread made without any salt at all to be bland.

That said, to boost the three effects above, industrial bread often has very high levels of salt, as can be seen in these articles from the BBC and The Daily Telegraph.

For this reason, the Real Bread Campaign encourages all bakers to ensure their loaves contain no more than 1% salt in the finished loaf.  In 2011, many Real Bread bakers told us that they do so already.  Click here to read more.

Is sourdough better than ‘normal’ yeast?

The Real Bread Campaign calls for more research to be done on the beneficial effects of sourdough.

There is nothing wrong with fresh or dried yeast (though you might want to look out for additives in some instant/fast acting yeasts) but research has shown that sourdough has the following advantages:

  • Naturally-occurring (sometimes called wild) yeasts are less concentrated than commercial yeasts, thus good for people who may react badly to excessive yeast in bread. 
  • These yeasts ferment more slowly, allowing time for beneficial bacteria (lactobacilli, AKA lactic acid bacteria or LAB) to develop. They are also more tolerant to the more acid conditions that the LAB create in longer-fermented breads.

Over many hours of slow fermentation, lactic acid bacteria (LAB) produce lactic and acetic acids (and other compounds) which research suggests perform a remarkable number of useful tasks, such as:

The other thing to say is that sourdough enormously improves the flavour of bread, especially rye.  Rye flour is naturally alkaline and has a pretty bland/pasty taste unless fermented with an acid dough.   

The effects of sourdough fermentation on Glycaemic Index (GI)

According to Diabetes UK:

The Glycaemic Index (GI) is a ranking of foods based on their overall effect on blood glucose levels. Slowly absorbed foods have a low GI rating, whilst foods that are more quickly absorbed will have a higher rating. Slow acting carbohydrates will also reduce the peaks in blood glucose that often follow a meal, and this may have a role in helping to prevent or reduce the risk of getting Type 2 diabetes in those at risk. There are also benefits for weight loss. Low GI foods can help you to control your appetite by making you feel fuller for longer, with the result that you eat less. Research has shown that people who have an overall low GI diet have a lower incidence of heart disease.

Lower GI diets have also been associated with improved levels of 'good' cholesterol. One or two small changes can make all the difference.

With thanks to Diabetes UK for pointing us towards the following, here are some studies that show the positive effects of sourdough fermentation on the Glycaemic Index (GI) of bread.

Sourdough - leavened bread improves postprandial glucose and insulin plasma levels in subjects with impaired glucose tolerance Acta Diabetologica,Volume 45, Number 2, 91-96

The acute impact of ingestion of breads of varying composition on blood glucose, insulin and incretins following first and second meals British Journal of Nutrition (2009), 101, 391–398

Use of sourdough lactobacilli and oat fibre to decrease the glycaemic index of white wheat bread British Journal of Nutrition (2007), 98, 1196–1205

Glycemic index and phenolics of partially-baked frozen bread with sourdough Int J Food Sci Nutr. 2011 Feb;62(1):26-33. Epub 2010 Aug 17.

A dietary exchange of common bread for tailored bread of low glycaemic index and rich in dietary fibre improved insulin economy in young women with impaired glucose tolerance European Journal of Clinical Nutrition (2006) 60, 334–341

Sourdough bread: Starch digestibility and postprandial glycemic response Journal of Cereal Science, Volume 49, Issue 3, May 2009, Pages 419-421

Sourdough fermentation as a tool for the manufacture of low-glycemic index white wheat bread enriched in dietary fibre European Food Research and Technology, Volume 209 / 1999 - Volume 233 / 2011

Coeliac disease, food allergy and food intolerance

Some people have medical conditions that cause them to have adverse reactions to certain foods.  Individual response varies, and so whilst one person might not be able to eat any cereal containing gliadin (a type of protein that combines with glutenins to form gluten in wheat but is also found in other cereals), another might have problems with modern wheat but not spelt, which is an older form of wheat.

A food intolerance is due to the body not producing an enzyme that is necessary for breaking down a certain foodstuff or part of one. This can cause uncomfortable indigestion and/or excessive gas production, leading to a bloated feeling.

An allergy is a condition that causes the body mistakenly to recognise a substance –such as gluten - as toxic and produce histamine in defence. The body then reacts to the histamine in any number of ways, including rashes and breathing difficulty.  At an extreme level, a person’s histamine response is so great it causes the body to go into anaphylactic shock, which in a minority of cases may even result in death.

Coeliac disease is not a food allergy or intolerance: it is an auto-immune disease that is triggered by the omega 3 gliadin proteins found in cereals including wheat (spelt is a type of wheat), barley, rye. Some coeliac sufferers also cannot eat oats. In common with other auto-immune diseases (including rheumatoid arthritis) this causes the body to attack itself. In the case of coeliac disease, the immune system produces antibodies that attack the lining of the digestive system, sometimes resulting in perforation of the stomach or intestines. The Coeliac Society estimates that the disease affects around 1 in 100 people in Britain.

Some symptoms are common to all three types of condition, and also to other totally different conditions and illnesses.

In order that you are not putting yourself at risk (or unnecessarily depriving yourself of Real Bread!) we urge you to obtain a professional diagnosis of your condition and narrow down exactly to what it is that you have an adverse reaction. You might find that in fact you have a reaction to one or more of the artificial addtives found infactory loaves, or that you could eat Real Bread made by the sourdough or other longer fermentation method.

Your GP will be able to advise you on how to get expert diagnosis of any of the above.  For advice on how to get a diagnosis as to whether or not you have coeliac disease, visit www.coeliac.org.uk

Read the Flour Advisory Bureau Wheat Allergy and Intolerance Report

As noted above, at least one study has found that sourdough bread made from wheat and non-toxic flours and started with selected lactobacilli was tolerated in coeliac sprue patients. A number of other studies have also shown the use of longer fermentation in the presence of lactic acid bacterial (sourdough) cultures have reduced the levels of gluten or gluten proteins in dough.

By contrast, we have concern that the addition of transglutaminase, one of the processing aids on the market for use by industrial bakers, could exacerbate the problem. Gerrard, J. & Sutton, K. (2005). Addition of transglutaminase to cereal products may generate
the epitope responsible for coeliac disease. Trends in Food Science & Technology 16 (2005) 510-512.

Why local ingredients?

Sourcing ingredients for bread locally has three major advantages:

  • Reduction of energy consumption
  • Benefit to the local economy
  • Sustainability of supply

The shorter the distance that grain has to travel to be milled, flour travels to be baked and loaves travel to the consumer, the less the energy consumed in transport.  As much of the transportation at each of these stages is currently done using fossil fuels, any reduction will bring down carbon emissions.

Local supply chains help to generate local employment. As outlined under ‘Why Real Bread’ on our About Real Bread section, money that is spent with local suppliers is more likely to be re-invested locally, which is of benefit to the economy of the local community.

Local supplies and stores of grain are much more resilient to interruption by factors such as adverse weather conditions, industrial action and fuel shortages, which have more opportunities to have impact on transport systems in extended chains.

How do I know if my local bakery makes Real Bread?

Otherwise, why not ask them what they use to make their bread and how they make it?  If they do bake Real Bread, please suggest they add it to our finder to let everyone else know, too.

Which supermarket in-store bakeries make Real Bread?

With current legislation not requiring ingredients to be listed on food that is prepared at the point of sale (eg in-store bakeries), it’s hard to say.

Between June 2009 and February 2010, the Real Bread Campaign made numerous attempts to contact the major chains to find out how many stores bake from scratch (the use of frozen dough and part-baked loaves is not out of the question) and what goes into the manufacture of their loaves.

You can read a report of our findings here.

What about the high street chain bakeries, sandwich shops etc?

That's what we'd like to know!  You can help us by asking them (a query from a customer might be more effective than one from the Campaign) and emailing any responses you receive to us, so that we can share with others.

Lidl

28 October 2011

Re: Bread

Thank you for your recent correspondence with our Customer Service Department regarding the above-mentioned product. We are sorry for the delay with your response.

We have contacted our Quality Assurance Department who have advise the following Bread from our in-store Bakeries are baked without the use of any artificial additives or processing aid,

Half Baguette                                
Original French Baguette                 
Petit Pain                                
Multigrain Petit Pain                        
Boule Rustique                        
Stone Baked Baguette                
Ciabatta Roll                                 
Butter Croissant                        
Pain au Chocolat                         
Pumpkin Seed Roll                        

Pumpkin Seed Roll and Artisan Rye Loaf have no artificial additives ascorbic acid is already added to the flour in the mill, it is not effective in the final product and therefore not declared.

Also we can advise that our Bread is brought into our stores part frozen then cooked in store.

We hope this information has been of assistance to you.

Yours sincerely,
For and on behalf of Lidl UK GmbH

15 August 2011

We sent the following email to Lidl:

I co-ordinate the Real Bread Campaign and have just read in British Baker magazine that Lidl is rolling out in-store bakeries.

It appears from the article that all are bake-off operations, i.e. bringing in previously baked loaves and re-baking them in store to brown the crust. Is this correct or are you baking from scratch in any stores?

My second question is - which of your in-store bakery loaves are baked without the use of any artificial additives or processing aids? If you are able to say that any are, you will be the first supermarket chain in the UK to tell us that any of its in-store bakery loaves are what we call Real Bread.

Pret a Manger

July 2011

Could it be that the reason that Pret's sandwiches are not 'plastered with labels containing lots of boring numbers, names, dates and symbols' is simply that current legislation does not require them to do so, rather than because the loaves and wraps it uses are made without them?

In July 2011, it was brought to our attention that Pret claims that it 'creates hand made, natural food, avoiding the obscure chemicals, additives and preservatives common to so much of the 'prepared' and 'fast' food on the market today.'

On the back of one of its sandwich cartons, it points out that 'English law insists factory-produced sandwiches are plastered with labels containing lots of boring numbers, names, dates and symbols.' By contrast, it notes that Pret sandwiches do not have labels. We believe the inference is that Pret sandwiches are made without substances that could fall into any of these categories.

So, we asked Pret:

  • Are Pret sandwiches - more specifically the loaves, baguettes etc you use to make them with - all produced without the use of any artificial additives or processing aids?
  • Could you please point me to where I can find complete lists of ingredients, additives and processing aids used to produce your loaves and wraps, or email those details back to me?

The company's technical manager responded that 'Pret’s recipes are obviously an extremely important part of the company’s know how and we are not in the habit of sharing these with the general public.'

Whilst we understand that a company may have certain 'trade secrets', surely if Pret was using what we call Real Bread (i.e. flour, water, yeast and salt, plus in some cases, nuts, seeds etc), this recipe wouldn't be one of them.

Pret's reticence to divulge what goes into its loaves and wraps leads us to believe that they are in fact made using one or more of the 'obscure chemicals, additives and preservatives' it claims to avoid.

We cannot agree with Pret's statement that 'no label is good', or with the law that indeed says that a list of ingredients is not needed on food prepared for direct sale. A list of ingredients and nutritional information on the label is a key element in enabling people to make better informed choices about the food they eat.

Pret's technical manager also wrote that 'Creating a recipe for bread which produces thousands of loaves a day with a shelf life of more than a few hours is a demanding task and we would be happy to discuss this further with the Real Bread team.'

We replied that if Pret would like to send to us an outline of their general requirements, we'll be happy to help them circulate this (or even an invitation to tender) to the Real Bread bakers in our network. To date, they have declined to send this information to us.

Greggs PLC

Last updated September 2010

  • 22 July 2010 - we contacted Greggs via their online query form to ask which of their loaves are 100% additive free and which of their outlets bake from scratch on site. We received an auto-response that we would have a full reply within 3 working days. 
  • 28th July - Having not received the full reply, we emailed to follow up our query.
  • 6th September - still no reply, so we chased again.
  • 8th September - we received an email from Greggs stating that "Our Social Responsibility Manager will be contacting Sustain...tomorrow after 12.30pm to discuss this with you personally.." This did not happen.
  • 13th September Greggs called us to apolgise for the delay.
  • 16th September - we finally received the following formal response:

"We believe the bread Greggs provides is high quality, freshly baked bread at the price and quality which our customers demand. Greggs bread making predominantly follows a traditional craft baking method, which includes a three hour ferment that is added to the dough.  So, in addition to flour, water, yeast and salt, we use this specially created ferment containing malts and yeast extract along with a secret natural ingredient, to give our bread its unique flavour.  All our bread is free from artificial colours, artificial flavours and contains no hydrogenated fats or oils.   We believe our Greggs recipe helps to produce superior bread quality that is more resilient and has a delicious crust and character, as evidenced by the continuous high regard shown for our products by customer research.

We are proud to have built our business over the years to a point where we now operate 1445 shops, served by our ten regional bakeries and employ 289 Master Bakers, who are “skilled bakers” having undergone a combination of external vocational qualifications as well as rigorous and continuous internal skills training.  Our bread is freshly made daily from scratch in our regional bakeries. 

We firmly believe that we bake and sell high quality bread which we are passionate about and gives our customers great quality, freshness and value."

  • 16th September - we responded, asking if Greggs was able to go further and confirm that any or all of their products meet our definition of Real Bread - i.e are made without the use of processing aids or artificial additives of any kind.
  • 6th October - we followed this up again. 
  • 12th October - Greggs said:

"As we said in our initial response, Greggs provides high quality, freshly baked bread at a price which our customers demand.

We can confirm that our bread is made slightly differently to the approach you describe in your campaign in that we use dough conditioners.  We bake our bread each day in our bakeries which is then delivered fresh to our shops each morning.  We believe the dough conditioners are necessary to provide optimum freshness for our customers at point of purchase in our shops.  Our combination of this; our natural liquid fermentation; our predominantly traditional bread making processes; our free from artificial colours and flavours approach; and the fact that our bread is free from hydrogenated fats and oils, is, we believe what gives our customers both quality and freshness.  

We hope that answers your query.  Thank you again for your interest."

Subway

Last updated September 2010

In February 2010, a Campaign member sent us this snap of a the ingredients on the side of a Subway box. 

McDonalds

Last updated September 2010

Though ingredients lists are not printed on its packaging, the burger chain has a Q&A website, at which it gives answers about (amongst other things) the additives us uses in its buns.  Search for existing answers using keywords such as buns, or bread, or ask your own.

Which brands of wrapped loaves are Real Bread?

As far as we can tell, not many. Click here to read more about what hides in the industrial products that account for around 80% of the loaves we buy.

At present, the only mass-produced, pre-wrapped brands that have told us that they meet our definition of Real Bread are The Village Bakery, Vogels, Doves Farm and Cranks, as well as the light rye quarter sold under the Waitrose brand.

If your bakery produces pre-wrapped loaves without the use of artificial additives, flour 'improvers', dough conditioners, processing aids or any other artificial additive, please let us know.

What about spelt?

According to the Food Standard Agency's guidance notes for The Bread and Flour Regulations 1998 (as amended), spelt is "...a cereal containing gluten and therefore a product containing spelt cannot be labelled as being gluten free. It may also be misleading to label a product containing “spelt” as wheat free as spelt is a type of wheat (Triticum spelta) and this would make spelt unsuitable for anyone with a wheat allergy or intolerance."

However, anecdotal evidence varies, with some people reporting that they cannot eat wheat but can eat spelt, whilst others report that they can eat wheat but not spelt.  The whole area of food allergy and intollerance related to wheat and gluten is one in which the Real Bread Campaign calls for much more research.

Is it better to use bottled water for bread making?

We've yet to hear from a professional baker who uses bottled water: it's far too expensive, a waste of plastic, and not necessary. The level of chorine in municipal supplies is so low that it has little effect on fermentation or flavour. Water hardness is a factor, but not really an issue until you reach large scale production. You can read more on water in baking here.