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Comment by Nursie | Hacker News Reader

> This article makes it sound like a good thing

At the time, it was, it allowed the country to feed itself on (largely) its own wheat. They didn't know it could contribute to IBS, they did know there was national food security at stake. Beyond that it made cheaper, mass-produced bread more viable in a bunch of places. Historically, globally it's hard to see cheaper staple food as an entirely bad thing. Now we know the consequences perhaps it's time to rethink.

> causing real bread to become an expensive, and hard to find in some places, specialty.

How do you think it has it caused real bread to become expensive? Is it not more likely that real bread is more expensive to produce and therefore people buy the cheap shit?

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> At the time, it was, it allowed the country to feed itself on (largely) its own wheat. They didn't know it could contribute to IBS, they did know there was national food security at stake. Beyond that it made cheaper, mass-produced bread more viable in a bunch of places. Historically, globally it's hard to see cheaper staple food as an entirely bad thing.

That's just not true. It allowed to industrials using british wheat to compete against industrials using canadian wheat. Another approach could have been to protect artisan baker instead of going all in with the industrialisation of food production.

> How do you think it has it caused real bread to become expensive? Is it not more likely that real bread is more expensive to produce and therefore people buy the cheap shit?

Because bakery are seen as a specialty, and do not sell high volumes. You just have to cross the channel to see that real bread doesn't need to be that expensive and small bakers can compete with industrials.

> That's just not true.

It's right there in the article, in the postwar years the UK was reliant on imported Canadian and other wheats, the process allowed the UK to use its own wheat. "Artisan" bread was not a thing in the early 1960s, AFAICT at that point in time Britain had an extremely impoverished food sector.

> Because bakery are seen as a specialty, and do not sell high volumes. You just have to cross the channel to see that real bread doesn't need to be that expensive

France seems to be a bit of an outlier here AFAICT. But is 'real' bread even that expensive in the UK?

Look, you can get a 24hr sourdough loaf at Tesco for 2 quid - https://www.tesco.com/shop/en-GB/products/272914228 - or 3.75 for the 800g version. And you can tell it's not chorleywood because there's no Ascorbic acid or added oils. Real bread is available at any given supermarket if you want it.

If your real complaint is "Why don't we have France's bakery culture?" well I think that goes a lot deeper.

Supermarket bread in France is also industrial.

I wonder about bakeries too. When traveling in France and elsewhere in Europe, the uniformity of bakery bread has suggested to me that a lot of it is made from a mix.

It's a bit more complex but quality in bakeries varies a lot. First, if something is not called a Boulangerie, then they don't make the bread they sell.

Then there are things like Festival des pains (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Festival_des_Pains in french) which is a group of mills, provides training recipes and flours. You see there bread a lot (like the Festive baguette). Those are still proper bread and the quality will vary depending on the baker. Most often bakers will have a mix of those breads and their own recipes. The branding tends to make those standard recipes more visible though.

In term of viennoiseries (croissants etc...), most bakers don't make their own and relies on industrial ones. It can be quite hard to spot, the best way to know that is if it mentions "Fait maison" (this can only be mentioned if it is made on the spot using raw ingredients if I'm not mistaken).

I find french supermarket bread not better than UK ones, it's the same technique and same crap result.

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