Far from being “the staff of life”, cheap supermarket loaves are just plain bad, says Tom Hodgkinson

We were talking about the price of bread. Good bread is quite pricey. As organic-tending middle class customers of Riverford farms, V and I tend to order two or three of their sourdough loaves each week. It costs £4.35 for a 750g loaf. It makes fantastic toast, though dries out fairly quickly so is not so good for sandwiches two days after delivery. It’s baked by the Authentic Bread Company of Gloucestershire, who claim that each loaf takes 48 hours to prepare and bake.

If this runs out, we sometimes indulge in a loaf from Gail’s, the chain of artisanal bakeries that is doing so well. Gail’s, founded in the 1990s, has grown to 100 branches with investment from Luke Johnson of Pizza Express fame, who is chairman, and has ambitions to get to 200 over the next five years. Its prices are high: £4.90 for a 650g loaf. It’s a near-perfect loaf – though not quite as tasty as the Riverford one.

Then there’s the Polish deli down the street, the wonderfully tricky-to-pronounce Mleczko. They have 11 branches, mainly in west London, and sell eleven different types of bread. Their “Caleb Firmowy” bread costs a mere £1.39 for an 800g loaf. It’s not quite as grand looking and crusty and dramatic as the Gail’s loaves. But Mleczko claim it’s “baked without artificial additives, using the traditional method”.

This distinguishes it from the non-bread sold by supermarkets. An 800g loaf of Mothers [sic] Pride is currently on sale at Tesco for £1.19. A glance at the ingredients list reveals the following: ”Wheat, Flour (with added Calcium, Iron, Niacin, Thiamin), Water, Salt, Vinegar, Yeast, Soya Flour, Preservative: E282, Emulsifiers: E471, E472e, Rice Cones, Palm Fat, Flour Treatment Agent: Ascorbic Acid.” Yummy! It’s made by Hovis, who were helped to make millions by Ridley Scott’s famous 1973 “Boy on Bike” ad. Shame on you Mr Scott, servant of capitalist exploiters!

In 2021, Hovis made a profit of £47.3 million for owners Endless, a private equity firm. In 2022, they lost £28 million thanks to rising costs. A spokesperson predicted an upwards rise: “Having now recovered commodity inflation, we expect bread pricing to stabilise for 2023 and beyond. As we close the full year to end September 2023, we are confident that we will be able to report a return to strong profitability.”

Shockingly, an academic, a professor of molecular neuroendocrinology, writing recently in the Guardian, claimed that sourdough bread is no better for you healthwise than cheap supermarket bread. He also quipped that it just has better PR. What nonsense! For one thing, the supermarkets are masters of marketing, as the Hovis ad and many others demonstrates.

And Mleczko prove that good bread can be made and sold cheaply. Look out for the Polish section in your supermarket.

As for the idea that supermarket bread isn’t bad for you, that is also codswallop. In fact I’m of the view that it actually shouldn’t be called bread at all. As you may be aware, it’s made by the Chorleywood Bread Process or CBP. This bypasses the inconvenient and time-consuming process of baking.

My guru in these matters, Andrew Whitley, has been waging a campaign against fast bread for some decades: “CBP has turned out to be a culinary and digestive disaster. Traditionally, most bread was fermented (allowed to rise) for many hours, often overnight. The CBP uses high-energy mixers and a slew of chemicals to make a very white loaf in double-quick time. Only if you let dough ferment for long enough can naturally occurring beneficial bacteria work to make the bread more digestible, nutritious and tasty. Most British bread is made too quickly for these bacteria to have a chance.”

Idlers, you will now be thinking about the savings to be made by baking your own bread. This would be my heartiest recommendation – in fact, we have produced a brilliant online course showing you how to do it – though you will accuse me of hypocrisy, since I haven’t baked a loaf for about eight years. My capable friend Edmund bakes two or three sourdough loaves each week using the finest flour. That’s the real answer, isn’t it, to take bread into your own hands?

Please tell me, idlers, what you do for your daily bread?

Live well,

Tom

PS We’re thrilled that Dominic West will be joining us at the Idler Festival. He’ll be in London playing Eddie Carbone in Henry Miller’s A View From the Bridge, at the Theatre Royal Haymarket. I saw this in Bath a few weeks ago: it’s brilliant.

SELECTED COMMENTS

These comments were mailed to us after an earlier version of this piece was sent out as a newsletter. We like to publish a selection and reserve the right to edit them for clarity. Feel free to drop us a line with your thoughts.

Sir: Some further food for thought… Availability, accessibility and affordability here.  Sourdough bread mythbuster here. Real Bread vs ultra-processed food here. Happy baking.
Chris Young, Real Bread Campaign coordinator

Sir: Great Letter from the Editor. You are, of course, preaching to the converted here. I am now a keen baker. I got back into it, as much as anything, to wean [my teenage daughter] Verity off the crap white supermarket stuff that she kept on asking for. My masterplan, which worked perfectly, was to lure her onto bread made with nothing but salt, water, olive oil and a mix of stoneground and ancient flours by using the secret weapon of any baker: timing things to serve your loaf warm from the oven. My bread started out with mostly white flour to ease her in, and I gradually changed them, imperceptibly, to incorporate a mix of stoneground whole grains, and ancient varieties like emmer, einkorn and spelt. I’ve been cooking all our bread for six months now. We get through about three loaves a week. None of the family are interested in getting bread from the supermarkets any longer – nor even from the artisan bakers. I get our flour from Matthews Cotswold Flour, who are really brilliant for a number of reasons. I do think sourdough has become a faddy marketing term. Before dried yeast, most Western bread was baked with fairly long fermentation using a cultured starter. That was just “bread”. Sourdough is just when the fermentation is made long enough (48 hours or so) for sour flavours to develop along with all the other good stuff. But there’s no requirement in terms of ingredients or methods for a shop to market a loaf as “sourdough”. They can just cook a white loaf fast, using the Chorleywood Process and bung in some vinegar to give it a sour taste. Anyway, I’ve been really enjoying making healthy food that our teenagers look forward to.
Gav

Sir: Invest in a bread-making machine. (We’ve found the Panasonic one to be best.) Just weigh out the bread flour (various types are available), add the requisite amount of water, salt, sugar, oil or butter, and pop the dried yeast in the yeast compartment. Press a few buttons and in around four hours you’ll have an amazing loaf at a fraction of the price of a good baker’s bread. And your kitchen will smell delicious while it’s doing its thing. We don’t buy shop bread anymore.
KK, North Yorkshire

Sir: I make a loaf of 100% whole wheat sourdough every 10-12 days, following (loosely) Mark Bittman’s instructions in his book Bittman Bread. It takes barely any effort, and I don’t get cute with it – no fancy designs or even dusting with flour. It makes the most delicious, sturdy staff-of-life bread ever. I slice it, throw it in a bag, keep it in the fridge, and toast a couple of slices for breakfast every morning. I don’t trust anyone who gets too precious with their sourdough. Life’s hard, sourdough isn’t!
PB

Sir: I buy a rye bread (£7.50) for my husband each week – it keeps well and has a lower glycaemic index than white. I buy on average a sourdough loaf (medium £5, I think) a week from the same bakery, Miel, on Warren Street, which is an outstanding bakery. (It’s so good that my French and Belgian guests comment on its excellence.) If the sourdough gets a wee bit dry, I slice and freeze it for toast. I also buy “Turkish bread” from Robert Street Supermarket & Post Office. It’s very simple, only keeps a day and costs £1.25, but it’s lovely fluffy bread and freezes perfectly. I never buy supermarket bread – but it can be used to mime accordion playing.
Bridget

Sir: I know this might be sneered upon by some, but I’m a huge fan of bread-making machines. I own a fairly basic model, but it’s capable of producing a wide range of breads, with highly satisfactory results. I make white, wholemeal and brioche breads in it regularly, all of which emerge crusty and tasty, after simply spending a few minutes tossing in the ingredients and switching it on. I’ve also made sourdough from a good packet mix, and some delicious chocolate bread with it. If you’re lazy like me it’s a great way to get variety and quality back into your bread with minimal effort and expense.
Lee

Sir: At 80, I’m still going strong on Finnish “Finn Crisp” sourdough rye thin biscuits – topped with Scandi tastes for lunch or an evening starter. Best wishes.
Clive

Sir: An excellent article on bread. This is why I bring it back from Italy – heavy in my hand luggage, I have to say, but much less expensive. Otherwise we buy our bread from the Chapel in Bruton but their prices are similar to the ones you quote.
Judith-Rose

Sir: Here’s a great idler’s recipe as you don’t have to bother making the sourdough starter and laboriously feeding it every day for a week and it’s just as delicious.
Nick

Sir: A very perceptive letter. It’s nothing short of a national disgrace that something so fundamental to our diet and health is (legally!) packed with such rubbish – what on earth is palm oil doing in a loaf? I could rant on (often do) but I followed the Idler’s lead a few years ago and have become my own baker. I still have a bit of a consistency issue with sourdough, which occasionally comes out as a sort of a bread-flavoured paving slab, but when it works it is rather good and I believe it to be good for me. In fact, my wife’s gluten-intolerant friend has no problem with my wheat-based bread, which makes you think that the issue is not gluten so much as the weird “E” defined chemicals or Franken-yeasts required to make bread using the high-speed Chorleywood process. I stick my dough in the fridge overnight and bake in the evening. How idle is that? And who needs speed when you can have flavour? By the way, ascorbic acid is just vitamin C and works to lighten bread made from wholemeal and heavier flours. It’s harmless and I understand it remains the only additive the French permit in their bread. That said, my very French colleague assures me that his family never buys bread from any bakery that uses vitamin C – but that’s because his 97-year-old Grandma would have a fit if she found out.
Steve

Sir: I bake my own sourdough – once a week is enough for us. I think making your own bread is a revolutionary act in modern-day Britain. Baking sourdough yourself makes each loaf pretty cheap – if you can bake several loaves at the same time, then you can save a bit on heating up the oven, too. If bread is your staple, then make it a good one – cut corners elsewhere. It is possible to make sourdough and work full-time. I spend about 15 minutes making a loaf – less time than standing in a chippy queue waiting for fish and chips. But yes, you have to be dedicated and care.
Veronica

Sir: I read your email this morning right after I finished getting our bread for today. I take a middle route between expensive artisanal breads and supermarket rubbish: I use a bread machine. The ingredients for the loaf I’m making today are flour, water, sugar, salt, olive oil, and yeast. Yum!
Fergie Meek

Sir: I have been on three of Andrew Whitley’s courses and seen him lecture on Russian bread at the Pushkin institute. It is phytic acid that is the difference between sourdough and other bread. Keep up the good work.
Sebastian Peattie

Sir: Please tell me that on your bread adventures you’ve tried the potato sourdough loaf from the Dusty Knuckle bakery? It’s absolutely my favourite loaf. It still suffers from the quick staleness of other lovely loaves but it’s glorious for toast. Lashings of butter and Marmite or marmalade.
Simon

Sir: I love your books. They actually saved me almost a decade ago when the system chewed me up and spat me out. (My English is not the best, but I hope you know what I want to say.) I started to make my own sourdough and other bread two months ago and I love it. The whole process is very relaxing. I stand in my kitchen smelling the wonderful dough as I knead it, and my mind wanders to happy places while my two little kids go crazy and create the kind of chaos only an 18-month and four-year-old can create – and I absolutely don‘t care! I just sink into the soft dough of happiness. Thank you all your wonderful input over the years. It has made my life so much better.
Madlene, Austria

Sir: Ever since reading about the Chorleywood Process in your book many years ago (I think in Brave Old World) I have avoided supermarket bread. Bridget Hugo’s Idler Academy sourdough course changed my life because I can now successfully make sourdough. But I must admit that mostly I just make a no-knead overnight loaf using commercial yeast, as it’s simpler when working full-time. I recently read Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff that Isn’t Food… and Why Can’t We Stop? by Chris van Tulleken which explains how supermarket “bread” isn’t food at all but just a concoction of edible molecules (which are slowly killing us).
Nicole

Sir: My tip with keeping sourdough fresh is to slice it the moment you get it home or when cool out of the oven, then freeze it immediately. Take out a slice at the time as needed by sliding a knife between the slices. Put it straight in the toaster or wait a few minutes to thaw.
Molly

Sir: Hello from a very blowy Cape Town. It’s not called the windy city for nothing. I’ve had to say goodbye to bread in my diet because I’ve rather inconveniently developed an intolerance of gluten. And sadly it’s not just bread but any product containing wheat flour, so it’s farewell to cake, biscuits, pasta and pastry. Most gluten-free products are certainly different in taste and texture but perfectly acceptable – except the bread, which is quite disgusting. Of course, of all the food containing gluten, I miss beautiful bread the most. I weaken when offered the amazingly delicious South African seed bread and suffer the consequences for a couple days but it’s worth it. When we come home next week, I’ll have no trouble denying myself supermarket “bread” but, like you in London, we have some great artisan bakers in Devon who may prove troublesome, especially when boiled eggs from our hens are involved. Best wishes to you and all idlers everywhere.
Jane Parsons, Cape Town

Sir: We bake, using our cast-iron Dutch oven or skillet for foccacia. I tend to take the easy road with a “no-kneed bread” that I can do inside of a day, which comes out nice enough. My wife Jodana has taken up the hobby in earnest, now using proper tubs for rising and proofing baskets, along with an oven thermometer. Our oven tends to actually be less heat than its setting by about 25°F! She’s reading books by local bakers of good reputation like Ken Forkish, and is watching the GBBS (Great British Baking Show) with an almost religious zeal. I can’t complain about the results when she bakes. Jo is contemplating a sourdough starter, but when I mentioned that it’s a living organism and will need daily feeding and day care if we’re away for a bit, she’s now reconsidering. We already have a dog that no matter how lovable, already consumers much with her energy requirements. I’ve mentioned the Idler Academy course on sourdough, if Jo decides to give it a try. If we don’t bake, then we buy local artisanal bread, and I don’t mind the cost too much. But it’s yet another gentrification, of sorts, in a “developed” world that has gone mad convincing itself that anything good and nutritious must come with premium pricing. Cheers.
Paul

Our March/April 2024 issue is available in Waitrose, Waterstones, Smiths Travel outlets, select Smiths high street branches and around 100 indie stores. Click here for your nearest stockist.