Chapotraphouse

I wrote this as a comment to that video about medieval bread. And, what the hell, apparently I spent two hours on it so here it is a full post. Also a tumblr link to a video of Avery Brooks giving satisfying line deliveries. One of which is "Bread...!"

The bulk of industrially produced bread differs from pre-industrial bread in the following key ways:

• Refined Grains instead of Whole Grains

Grain is a plant seed. It has an outer casing (bran, ~5% by weight) a "seed-embryo" (germ, ~15% by weight) and store of nutrients to feed the germ through its initial sprouting (endosperm, ~80% by weight). In most industrial breads, the bran and germ are removed. This improves the shelf-life of any bread you make from it... but it only lasts longer because it now lacks the gem's nutrients and the bran's fiber.

• Grinding hot and fast, rather than cool and slow

This one is pretty self explanatory. Grinding hot and fast breaks down oils and stuff in the wheat, further reducing the nutritional content of the resulting bread so that it can be produced faster. Older milling techniques also produce larger, less consistently ground flour, leaving more nutrients.

• Skipping Fermentation

After you mix the dough, it is left to rise. Sometimes for hours. Sometimes for days. I feel like if you know anything about baking bread, you know this step. It's the fermentation process. Yeast slowly eats the bread, digesting and transforming it into different nutrients that we have an easier time digesting ourselves. In the same way you cannot fully understand a plant without including the soil it grows in, the microbes and fungi that surround it; the human body does not end at the topmost dermal layer. We are just as inexorably dependent on the microbial world, both within and without our bodies. Digestion begins long, long before the secretion of saliva and the gnashing of teeth .

Industrial bread skips this step. It improves shelf-life and speeds up production.

• GMO varietals rather than EMO varietals

Genetically engineered strains of wheat TEND TO select for the highest possible yield of grain for the least land and resources. Wheat that has evolved in conjunction with human agriculture often but not always has a wider nutritional spread, but lower crop yields. Specific species will have specific qualities, GMO or otherwise. You CANNOT just say all GMO is X, all heirlooms are Y.

With that disclaimer, it sounds like the high yield GMO plants most frequently used in industrial bread have gluten that is structurally different (more complex? bigger I guess?) to heirloom varietals. It's harder to digest and can trigger an immune response in some people. Apparently it's also what lets the bread remain soft for significantly longer.

Here's a scientific paper that was cited in the video. I skimmed the abstract. Those more literate than I can have fun with it: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/medicine/articles/10.3389/fmed.2022.995019/full

Personal consumptive habits: what does this mean for me?

Consider switching to Whole Wheat / Whole Grain bread. Sourdough is also good.

Industrially: production favors quick baking and long shelf life. It doesn't have to. Even in a capitalist system. I'm sure there's still a profit to be made even with slower, cooler milling; proper fermentation times; and a shorter shelf life. But this also means you can't have one factory making bread for a large surrounding area. You'd need more factories with more staff, serving more locally concentrated customers. Long shelf-life bread needn't disappear altogether, but it would be reduced to supplementing the logistical shortfalls of healthier bread that is more time and labor intensive.

Actually getting the capitalists to implement this, would be another matter...