How many chemicals are in that bread you're eating? asks HUGO ARNOLD
THERE IS NOT much to bread - flour, yeast and water. Knowledge is hardly an ingredient, but baking bread requires a fair amount of it. We are a nation of soda bread eaters and the re-emergence of this delightful, no-yeast wake-up-call is to be welcomed. What better way is there to start the day than with a slice of just-baked soda bread with good butter and jam.
Yet it is a basic bread. For real flavour and complexity you need a yeast bread such as those made by Declan Ryan. His Arbutus breads have depth and complexity, a delicious texture and a crust that is both pleasing to look at and delicious to eat. So what makes his bread soar above others?
Our base line is not impressive. We may wax lyrical about soda bread, but the bread world in Ireland comes to an abrupt halt after that. Sliced white? A baked-off supermarket baguette? I think not. These are not breads in the real or true sense, but a collection of chemicals, raising agents and improvers, designed to produce the goods, or shape of the goods, in the shortest possible time. Even something as delightful as a good Waterford blaa is hard to come by.
The cocktail of bread-making is a simple one, but how it works is not. You need yeast, not because of the flavour it contributes (although this is easy to attribute given Saccharomyces cerevisiae is brewer's yeast and we liken the smell of brewing to baking), but because of how it makes the dough behave. Which makes your choice of flour crucial.
The truth is, real flavour in bread comes about when compounds other than yeast are present. Monounsaturated and polyunsaturated aldehydes and alcohols, such as pentanol and benzyl alcohol, are what give bread real flavour. And these come from the flour and the activity that takes place when the flour ferments.
FOR MANY bread devotees, it is sourdough that really is the pinnacle of breadmaking. Here no brewer's yeast is used, the raising agent is provided by natural yeasts occurring in the flour and atmosphere used to create the starter culture. This mass of grey, sweet-smelling, frothing matter can, and often does, go on for years, living quietly at the back of the fridge, refreshed each time a little is taken to make a loaf.
This ancient breadmaking technique, revived on the west coast of America, but popular in countries such as Germany for years, lies behind the La Brea brand of breads, now available in Ireland. There are many who say that despite La Brea's claim to authenticity, it is still an industrially produced bread and owned by, wait for it, Cuisine de France (IAWS). While this may be so, the bread is leaps and bounds ahead of most of what is on the shelves.
Returning to Declan Ryan and Arbutus, it is not surprising to find he uses 20 per cent sourdough in his white bread, along with Traditional French flour. The latter is a legally-specified flour designed to work with sourdoughs. Simple? Perhaps not.