Comment by clort | Hacker News Reader

Comment by clort | Hacker News Reader

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> Their bread goes stale faster

Interestingly, I wonder why this would be a metric of lower quality bread rather than higher? I mean, the obvious way to make the bread last longer would be to pump it full of preservatives, and the white stuff you buy pre-sliced in packs lasts for ages though it is not really bread and the quality is obviously low (or is it? The slices are so smooth, the bubbles so even and the crust not hard at all)

When I have been to France and bought a baguette in the morning, obviously it is normally eaten right away because fresh and delicious, but if you leave it until the afternoon it is already stale and chewy. Does that imply low quality?

(I do buy some food from Aldi, though I prefer my bread from the baker across the road :)

Common baguette is regarded as a low quality, industrial version of "real" bread (in France). Some traditional bakeries still use ancient methods (and flour and yeast), the bread is good to eat for more than a week.

French baguette by law can only consist of wheat, yeast, water and salt. Since there are no addatives, the bread goes stale pretty fast.

The same goes for supermarket bread vs fresh bread from the baker's: supermarket bread is better suited for freezing and thawing later compared to fresh bread from the bakery. The latter tastes much better, but has to be eaten the same day.

> I mean, the obvious way to make the bread last longer would be to pump it full of preservatives

You can use sourdough, which is also "pumping it full of preservatives", just ones that are produced naturally right in the dough while it ferments. Sourdough bread takes more time, so it would make sense for it to be more expensive. So it makes sense for cheaper bread to go stale faster.

AFAIR if you go into a French bakery and order a "tradition" instead of a "baguette" you get a baguette made with sourdough.

old bread dried and lasted much longer without any preservative. The difference is in the shift in production from manual to industrial. Less flour and more water and air means keeping the weight with less raw sources, more earnings for the producer, and more mold.

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