SYDNEY'S BREAD NEEDN'T BE BAD

Law evades any standard quality

Skim milk would improve loaf

*By Elwyn Spratt*

MOST housewives in Sydney and in many country areas are asking, "How bad can our daily bread get?"

Nearly all of us complain from time to time that our bread is crumbly, spongy, soggy, goes stale or mouldy.

Experts blame wheat, flour, careless bakers, the 40-hour week, the late start in bakeries, the craze for speed.

But none of them says anything about the combines that have our baking industry "firmly by the throat."

In recent years some small bakeries have been forced to sell to combines – or have their delivery of yeast or flour cut off.

A few years ago there were more than 500 bakeries in the metropolitan area. Now only about 200 remain.

In addition, the legal baking hours have been reduced since 1946, which has resulted in a speeding-up in the daily baking of bread.

Today, speeding-up operates in practically every city bakery, and has also been noticed in country centres.

Bread-baking today is a mass production business, like making refrigerators and motor cars.

Most bakeries have become fully mechanised with all the trickiest labor-saving machines.

These include marvellous automatic kneading machines, dough-dividers and electric ovens.

Why loaf is soggy

Even fermentation of the dough is hurried so as to keep the ovens full.

As soon as bread is baked it is loaded on carts hot, and rushed to the customer.

The outside of the loaf may look well baked – but the inside is soggy or rubbery.

During the past few years this has led to a revulsion against the standard machine-made loaf in Sydney.

Many housewives who have rebelled have found a solution by buying from shops that sell fancy (non-standard) bread.

Fancy bread favored

These housewives travel by bus, tram or train to buy their favorite loaf, or get their husbands to bring it from the city.

Fancy bread is marketed under a variety of trade names, but the two main classes are the starch-reduced loaf and the enriched loaf.

But even under price control most fancy breads cost nearly half as much again as ordinary bread, and many housewives can't afford it.

This means that most of them have to put up with the ordinary loaf their breadcarter delivers to them.

Those who don't, revert to the practice of the early days of baking their own bread in the home.

To get the average viewpoint, I selected at random from the phone book the names of a number of housewives.

A comment from Mrs. Alison Russell, of New South Head Rd., Vaucluse, is a fair example of what most housewives think of our daily bread.

Mrs. Russell said, "When I get my loaf of bread I damp the outside with cold water and put it in a medium-heated oven for a quarter of an hour or longer.

"By doing this I find the bread is properly baked and no longer doughy.

"If I didn't bake the bread again it would quickly go mouldy and have to be thrown out."

This all boils down to the single question of, "Why isn't something done to give us a better loaf of bread?"

In seeking answers, the astounding fact emerges that, under the NSW Bread Act there are no minimum standards laid down for the manufacture of bread.

This state of affairs has existed since 1950, when the outmoded Bread Act of 1901 was "brought up to date."

Weakness in Bread Act

This so-called Bread Act, which governs the sale, manufacture and delivery of the State's most vital single foodstuff, does not even contain a definition of bread.

Under this Act, anything can be foisted on the public as bread, no matter how low its vital protein, calcium, and riboflavin content.

Since 1950, a committee of experts, known as the Bread Industry Advisory Committee, has been arguing on how bread is to be defined.

The committee represents flourmillers, bakers and officers of the Departments of Health, and Labor and Industry.

Take it or leave it

With the help of the Health Department, this committee is also delaying a decision on whether skim milk powder, which is rich in proteins and mineral content, should be added in the making of our bread.

The Health Department doesn't think there is need for an ordinary loaf of bread to be enriched with protein or vitamins.

In other words, if the loaf doesn't give you what you buy it for, buy something else as well and you'll get what the loaf should have given you.

And they say this despite the disturbing fact that Australia is the only English-speaking country in which skim milk is not used to enrich bread.

Yet more than 95 pc of the 750-million gallons of skim milk produced in Australia annually is either fed to pigs or poured down the drain.

This figure serves to illustrate the colossal wastage of highest-quality protein, which is urgently needed in our daily bread.

Just when the committee is going to make up its mind on the minimum standard of our bread is anyone's guess at the moment.

To make matters worse, the Bread Research Institute revealed yesterday that recent tests of this season's wheat and flour will not give us better bread.

Testing involved chemical analyses, dough testing and experimental and commercial baking trials.

A test sample of this season's fair, average quality wheat showed a lower protein content than last season's sample.

Although the dough-making qualities were slightly better, the low protein content of the wheat will offset any real chance of better bread.

To try to get around the stubbornness of the Bread Industry Advisory Committee, Dr. Leslie Parr, MLA for Burwood, has been fighting a lone battle for some months.

Dr. Parr, a Macquarie St. specialist, doesn't mince his words over the need for skim milk content in our bread.

He says, "Sydney bread is doughy, unpalatable and quickly becomes stale.

"The poor quality of our bread will have to be enriched with protein or vitamins for the average child to be supplied with enough nutrition.

Skim milk for nutrition

"To meet this standard of nutrition, a loaf of bread will have to be enriched with skim milk.

"The addition of skim milk would provide a more palatable loaf which would not go mouldy.

"This means that the average working family, depending on bread for the basis of their diet, would have no waste as at present."

Dr. Parr adds that it is essential for the home diet to contain suitable amounts of calcium and other vitamins provided by skim milk, which had been found to equal fresh milk.

Last November, Dr. Parr submitted a plan to the State Parliament to improve the quality of Sydney's bread, but the election intervened and nothing was done.

And his chances of getting our new State Parliament to do anything immediately about it are rather slender at the moment.

The new State Parliament will meet briefly next month and adjourn.

But there is one ray of hope left.

For the past two years or more the Bread Research Institute, in conjunction with the CSIRO, has been working on the problem of producing a satisfactory skim milk loaf without the addition of fat.

New powder tested

Research has led to the development of a special skim milk powder containing glyceryl monostearate in soluble form.

The powder can be added to ordinary white doughs without interfering with the normal baking procedure.

Commercial baking trials, using this product, have given excellent results.

Bread Research Institute director Eric Bond says that loaves incorporating the special skim milk powder have a softer texture, a higher crust color and improved keeping quality.

The toasting quality is also markedly improved.

The addition of 6 pc skim milk powder to bread also raises its protein content, as well as increasing the mineral and vitamin contents.

But here is the catch. The public must pay more for such a loaf.

Better, but it costs more

"It appears that on present prices skim milk bread will cost about 1½d more a 2lb loaf," Mr. Bond says.

Fixed price for a 2lb loaf now ranges from 11½d [uncertain] when sold in a city shop to 1/0½d [uncertain] (in fact, 1/1) when delivered to extreme outer suburbs.

But any number of housewives would be prepared to pay an extra 1½d for a 2lb loaf if skimmed milk powder is going to make our daily bread really edible again.

At present several dairy factories are producing limited amounts of the special skim milk powder for the makers of fancy bread.

And they could quickly raise output if there was a big demand for it in the manufacture of the ordinary loaf.

To get the value of skim milk powder into our bread the attitude of the Health Department and master bakers will have to be overcome.

A change of attitude by the Health Department is possible in the near future, but some master bakers will need more than a gentle shove to make them toe the line.

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Photograph captions

**A loaf of ordinary bread – frequently inedible.**

**Makes own.** Fivedock dentist Keith Boulton proudly shows a loaf of wholemeal bread which he bakes twice weekly for the family.