The White Bread Myth

While looking into the history of bread that I discovered this rather odd fact, that it was during the industrial revolution that white bread became the norm. This was not because it was what people preferred, but the factory owners who also controlled the flour mills, wanted the workers to eat it as with far less roughage it meant that the workers needed fewer toilet breaks.

There is a myth that people preferred white bread and that was why it replaced the traditional wholemeal. But the reality was that it was not until urbanisation and industrialisation that white bread really started to be eaten by all but a few of the elite nobility as white bread was far more expensive to produce. That also meant that there was a demand for white bread as people wanted to emulate the upper classes, but this did not mean that the majority wanted or demanded white bread. Not least because to make white flour you loose 30 percent of the weight and volume when you remove the germ and the bran. Even the middle classes could not afford to loose that much, and in pre industrial Britain nothing was wasted.

Also in pre industrial Britain, bread was a product that was predominantly home baked and even in the 16th and 17th centuries it was possible to sieve out the bran. Therefore if people had truly been demanding white bread why were they not making it like that themselves? There are food historians who see the change to white bread as being consumer led, when the reality was it was imposed upon them by mill owners.

Equally as the population moved from the countryside, they became reliant upon bread made by “Journeymen Bakers” who set up in the new industrial centres. Because of the lack of hygiene with many of these bakers, having white bread enabled the industrialised population to avoid contaminated bread. Put simply, droppings that could be hidden in a wholemeal loaf were much more evident in white bread. This was why the Bakers were Journeymen, as the were often driven out of town because of these problems.

Thus while it was historically true that there was a switch to white bread at the same time of industrialisation, it was not because of a consumer demand for white bread, but imposition and avoiding the low hygiene standards of some of the bakers. Also at the same time as this social change was happening in Britain, on continental Europe, new milling processes were developed. Traditionally all flour had been ground using stones, but with steam power came the ability to use steel rollers to crack and grind the wheat. As stone milling can result in sparks if run to fast, resulting in mill fires. Steel Roller milling avoided this, and more wheat could be ground faster and the technology allowed the bran and germ to be removed making it possible to make white flour cheaper than wholemeal.

As white flour was now cheaper the working population made that switch to white bread, not because it was better but was cheaper. This switch to white bread mirrored another change, the health of the general population also became the worse that it ever was in Britain. While aspects of industrialisation have traditionally be blamed, and that will be true in some aspects, this major change in the diet was really at the centre of this. Further, because white flour was far easier to adulterate, the lower nutritional value of white bread was further reduced by adding items like chalk.

However the adulteration was far more dangerous than adding chalk, as often alum was added to bread. As it aided the rise and made the gluten more elastic it looked like bakers had found a magic ingredient, except that alum is a poison. It stops the body absorbing and making vitamin D, and indirectly white bread added to an epidemic of rickets in Britain.

This changed when Britain started to import wheat from Canada and America. With better wheat growing climates and different varieties, it was possible to have cheap and price stable, bread in Britain and Ireland for the first time.

All this was fine until the first world war, when grain supplies form overseas were interrupted. It took nearly three years for British agriculture to respond and by the end of the Great war all bread was wholemeal. As simply we could not allow thirty percent of the grain to be wasted.

The situation returned where Britain imported most of its bread grain, and white bread regained predominance. Just because it was cheap. As by this point the wheat-germ and the bran were now useful to feed livestock, so rather than grow bread wheat, British farmers just grew wheat for animal feed. As during the inter-war years the market for animal feed was limited, many farms closed down. Further, the wheat industry was controlled by a small group of large companies that milled the wheat and even controlled the bakeries across the nation. Thus white bread became the norm again.

Then came the second world war, and again importing wheat became difficult. However, the experience of the first world war actually provided lessons, and the war time government understood the need to produce food. Fortunately because so many farms had been abandoned and left unproductive, there was the land available to increase food production. Also, because of the waste that milling white flour produced, a type of bread was produced that was called “The National Loaf”. This was a bran rich semi Wholemeal, using a flour known as wheat-meal, containing 85% of the wholemeal. And it is here that the myth of white bread really takes hold.

The National Loaf was universally despised by everyone. It was not until talking to a retired baker who had started his apprenticeship during the war, did I discover that by law bakers could not sell bread on the day it was baked but only on the following day. Thus, during the war The National Loaf was stale bread, and who wants to eat stale bread? Therefore when in the early 1950s bread rationing was ended, the major millers that had controlled the bread industry returned to making the bread that made them the most profit. But also, bread became fresh again.

It was therefore no surprise that white bread became popular, as compared to the stale bread people had grown used to, a basic white loaf was better.

Equally at the same time was the need to feed a starving Europe, thus bread started to be made in ever larger quantises, in factories rather than bakeries. As a result a bakery industry research laboratory was set up in Chorley Wood. While it was supposed to represent all bakers, the smallest through to the largest, as often happens the largest players took control. Out of this what's now known as the Chorley-wood Bread Process was developed. This reduced the bread making process from three hours to one hour.

With lots of marketing, the British public were sold this new bread by all the major players. In fact it became nearly impossible to buy real wholemeal bread, and the only choice was only the different brands of the same bland, white pap being sold as bread.

Good white bread can be very good, but often it is just the bread of choice simply because it is cheap and what is available. Throughout history it has not so much been the bread of choice but what has been imposed by others. During the early Industrial years, it played a part in damaging public health. Equally, during the second world war, a type of wholemeal played its part in improving the nations health. It is for good reason that bread is called the staff of life.

This is where the Chorley-wood Bread Process has harmed real bread. Because so many people have been brought up only eating this poor excuse for bread, they just don't realise what real bread tastes like. As natural bread needs time to mature, for the flavours to develop, cutting the time to a third of the natural process means that majority of bread is flavourless. Further, as the Chorley-wood process, makes a bread that makes people feel bloated and could well be a contributory factor to bowel problems and coeliac disease.

It is telling that in my local village co-operative supermarket, it is the better quality breads that sell out fastest and what is often left is the cheap white pap. Additionally, across the nation there are quality artisan bakers making real bread in many different forms. So while the food industry has tried to ruin bread and most other foods too, real bread still exists and is growing in popularity.

While white bread has its place in the larder, there is nothing better than a good wholemeal loaf. There will never be a time when we will return to everyone making their own bread, nor will the cheap imitation of bread ever disappear, but slowly people are discovering what the food industry has tried to take away from us.