Why does bread need strange ingredients?

For five thousand years, this basic food really only needs four ingredients: flour, water, salt and yeast. Many recipes also need some kind of sugar and fat. You can also add spices, dried fruits, drupes and seeds according to your own preferences. But basically, the four basic ingredients are still more or less common all over the world-making baguettes in small bread shops in France, in North African bread shops frequented by families supported by * * * every day, in German shops that make countless patterns, and in handmade bread shops in the United States. (Recommended reading: A guide for housewives to buy safe bread! )

Unfortunately, this simple and ancient method is not completely suitable for modern mass manufacturing mode. This takes a lot of time, mainly because dough needs to be fermented and expanded to make relatively dense (and therefore more expensive) bread. A long time ago, most bakeries in the United States gave up the traditional method of making bread and preferred a much lower-cost method of making bread-this method requires far more than four kinds of raw materials. Commercial bread in supermarkets and chain restaurants is not only the basic necessities of life, but also the food evidence of the great victory of chemical technology.

Subway bread is an excellent example. In Subway, the strip bread baked several times a day is as soft and attractive as all freshly baked bread. The aroma of yeast wafts throughout the store, reminding people of the bread made at home (although most of it is just an imaginary memory). Despite the disturbing smell in the aroma, Marc Christian O, a global baking expert at Subway, said that this kind of in-store baking is "part of the atmosphere we want to operate". If you calculate the age of bread from the time it is baked, in Subway, "you can only eat the product for a few hours at most". He said: "We always bake fresh bread, and customers can see it. We are proud of it. 」

That was in 1983. Subway decided not to buy prepackaged bread that everyone else could buy, but to buy its own oven and put it in front of the store. This was a smart move before the popular Panera, which boasted proudly (somewhat misleading) that it baked bread in the shop next to the delivery truck. However, neither Panila nor Subway can overcome the difficulty of making real dough in the shop. Panera delivers dough from the regional baking center every day-all the famous "bakers" in the store have to bake in the oven-while Subway gets frozen dough from one of the top ten contract factories in China.

In the past ten years, Subway bread has become the basis of this chain store's extremely successful "early adopter" publicity campaign. In addition, they also sell attractive low-calorie/low-fat foods. As soon as Castle Under the Sea published The Charming Story of Obesity Spokesperson vogel, this chain store jumped to the top of the list of "the healthiest fast food". In the 20 1 1 year "Men's Health" interesting "eat this but not that" restaurant rating report, this company is the only one that has obtained an A-level. It is also the most popular large chain store in Zagat survey. Tim Zagat told matt lauer on NBC's Today Show: "[Customers] especially like the freshness of raw materials. But if you really test them, the ingredients in the raw materials, or the ingredients in the ingredients (there are about 20 to 50 kinds in bread alone) will tell you a completely different story, which has little to do with freshness or health.

When the industrial production dominated, bread was already the product of kneading less than beating. In the huge rectangular high-speed machine, it pounded while stirring, adding a lot of air and water to the dough, trying to increase the amount of bread that can be made per pound of flour to reduce the cost. Turbine stirring also makes the dough pass through the assembly line quickly, reducing its expansion time. The result is a soft and fluffy tissue with less bread and more air, which is what Americans expect. When I was in primary school, I remember that all the children brought some miracle bread, rolled it into balls, and threw it around in the restaurant when the nun wasn't looking. Although miracle bread is no longer the lunch box that once dominated the country, you can still turn Sally and Orovit's bread slices into spherical weapons. A fifteen-centimeter-long submarine bread can be easily kneaded into a ball as big as a lemon. (Recommended reading: Don't let food additives ruin you! Touch 5 kinds of mineral grains less)

In order to make dough stand puffing and beating in the machine, we must rely on "dough improver". Submarine bread contains five modifiers: sodium stearoyl lactate (SSL), monoglyceride, diglyceride, ascorbic acid and diacetyl tartaric acid monoglyceride (DATEM). Without these ingredients, the dough in the submarine fortress will collapse, lose its elasticity, become sticky and stick to the machine. These additives are used in most fast food and supermarket products, which endow bread with qualities that most traditional bakers may not consider-that is, what baking scientists call "dough processability"

It is not entirely correct to call dough improvers chemicals because they are originally fats (such as soybean oil, butter or palm oil). Then, you should bring a powerful mercury lamp to lead you into the rabbit hole of industry. Here is a quick look: in order to make sodium stearoyl lactate, fat is first cut into fatty acids (usually used to refine petroleum) during thermal cracking. The stearic acid or palmitic acid produced is combined with heat, lactic acid and sodium. At this time, you will get some sodium stearoyl lactate, that is, sodium stearate. In order to obtain another part of sodium lactate, corn starch should be treated with enzyme to produce glucose, and then fermented into lactic acid. Monoglycerides and diglycerides are obtained by adding alcohol and acid to glycerol (a derivative of soybean oil or palm oil). In addition, the compound is treated with tartaric acid (a chemical substance that can naturally exist in wine but is obtained by a synthetic method) to produce diacetyl tartaric acid monoglyceride. Sodium stearoyl lactate, monoglycerides and diglycerides are not only used for bread. We can find them in many other foods, from frozen meat and desserts to breaded meat, pancakes, children's lunches and Starbucks fried apple rings and pound cakes (although this chain emphasizes natural ingredients).

Another bread ingredient of Subway-azodicarbonamide-is the white and sour dough bread used in this chain store, which helps to evenly distribute the air inhaled during mixing. This makes the bread look smooth and smooth, and the size of each small bubble is roughly the same-this is a perfect work called "meticulous bread core structure" by the baker.

Azodiformamide is an orange powder made of diamine. Diamines come from the chemical reaction of sodium hypochlorite and ammonia. The biggest use of azodicarbonamide is not to make supermarket products, but to make rubber and plastics. When you walk in the gym, it may also be used to make soles and mats. This is something that anyone can hardly imagine eating. One morning in the summer of 200 1 2000, a truck carrying it capsized on the Danryan expressway in Chicago. The city's fire officials immediately issued the highest dangerous material alert and evacuated residents within 800 meters of the downwind. Many people at the scene had to abandon their cars because of serious traffic jams, and complained about stinging eyes and skin allergies.

Bread can be made in large quantities without using flammable chemicals and highly skilled fat derivatives; It's just quite difficult, and it may be more expensive. Subway's large list of bread ingredients can ensure that the products are almost foolproof, and in the manufacturing process, a small number of people in the automated factory do not have to deal with too many variables. It also ensures that once baked, bread looks, tastes and feels the same everywhere and at any time. (Recommended reading: Parent-child bread cooking DIY My simple and happy love with my children begins with bread! )

When a licensed baker talked to me, he recalled his 30 years working in a large traditional baking company and his toolbox of synthetic additives, which was a bit sad. "If there are sodium stearoyl lactate, monoglycerides and diglycerides, azodicarbonamide and calcium propionate (preservatives), things will be much simpler. He said: "If you are dealing with organic products, you must be just right. None of these ingredients are allowed to be used in organic products. He showed me his bread products-Rudy's organic bread, our store in Boulder, Colorado-with irregular pores and other defects. And more expensive, a loaf of bread is more than four yuan, which is about two to three yuan compared with the national average, but most of it is expensive in the cost of organic flour. Harvest bread, which is closer to traditional bread, is even more expensive, averaging $5 per loaf. However, when you taste this incredible bread and consider that there is nothing in it, the effort is worthwhile.

The original source of the price of the best appreciation period is reproduced in the publishing house. Author: Melanie Warner Translator: Zhang Date of publication: 20 14/05/0 1 Press: Press.