Reading through Simon Ford\u2019s article about bread and the \u2018quiet revolution\u2019 that is taking place in the baking industry, reminded me that the Chorleywood Bread Process he mentions \u2013 the process that allows large bakeries to speed up breadmaking \u2013 will be fifty years old this summer. It\u2019s quite a milestone when you consider what a huge amount of additives and improvers have found their way into what for many youngsters has been a huge part of their daily diet. Even more thought provoking is the fact that most people beyond fifty five are likely to have consumed more than 3,000 loaves of the stuff so far. There is an argument that the human body has the ability to build new defences against much of the alien matter that gets thrown at it by the modern world. But I don\u2019t buy that. It\u2019s not a strong argument and those making it usually have another agenda. The organisers of the \u2018Real Bread Campaign\u2019, a group devoted to highlighting and promoting old fashioned breadmaking have recently been running a competition to design a \u2018pappy birthday\u2019 card to highlight the Chorleywood Process anniversary and have enlisted the help of Michel Roux Jr as one of their judges. He says \u2018The Chorleywood Bread Process is past its sell-by date. It was in part to blame for the loss of the once great British baking industry and the disappearance of our local bakeries, which has been a factor in the sad demise of many a high street.\u2019 It\u2019s good to see organisations like the \u2018Real Bread Campaign\u2019 getting support and the \u2018quiet revolution\u2019 opening up a market for old fashioned high street bakeries. What\u2019s not so great is the news that the price of wheat has risen to record highs this season. Although that will affect high street prices it apparently hasn\u2019t helped local farmers. According to Justin Lascelles, associate director at rural consultant Savills, farmers could have bought 211 pints of bitter for a tonne of wheat in 1981 \u2013 today they could only afford 65 pints. Now that\u2019s serious.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Reading through Simon Ford\u2019s article about bread and the \u2018quiet revolution\u2019 that is taking place in the baking industry, reminded me that the Chorleywood Bread Process he mentions \u2013 the process that allows large bakeries to speed up breadmaking \u2013 will be fifty years old this summer. It\u2019s quite a milestone when you consider what […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[13],"class_list":["post-5396","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-editorials","tag-fergus-byrne"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5396","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5396"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5396\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5396"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5396"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.marshwoodlife.com\/test\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5396"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}