Bread chemistry on the rise
The ancient tradition of bread baking depends on a cascade of chemical reactions. Scientists have found myriad ways to modify the process, say Bryan Reuben and Tom Coultate
The usually quiet world of bread has been disturbed recently by both economic and technological changes. Wild fluctuations in the price of wheat in the past two years have made life difficult for the milling and baking industries and, at one point, the percentage increase in price of bread in the UK was greater than at any time since deregulation in the 1950s. The credit crunch has pushed people towards bread as a replacement for more expensive foods - in the UK, the annual quantity of bread sold up to April 2009 showed the first increase for 35 years.
The traditional English preference for white bread has led to at least two centuries of the use of additives, or adulterants, depending on your point of view. Initially this was to cheapen bread, enabling it to appear white in spite of the inclusion of potatoes, oats or worse. In more recent decades, the goal has been a soft, springy and open crumb structure, even with the non-ideal, protein-poor wheat that is grown in Europe.