Some things do get better

[drdoug]

Hovis has had an ad campaign for years with the tagline 'As good today as it's always been.' I've just put my finger on what bothers me about it.

I hear it as 'Only as good today as it's always been', which is perhaps unfair. But even with a generous interpretation, it's clearly saying it isn't substantially better than it used to be. They've been

Comments

[haggis]

I agree that the raw materials are better than they were 130 years ago and that storage is better and the process is more controlled and reliable. But arguably, since it's mostly produced by the Chorleywood process these days, bread as a product is not as nice as it used to be, if you correct for the improved raw ingredients.

[moral_vacuum]

The ingredient quality goes up, the taste/texture goes down, so on balance it's as "good" overall, even though what is good has changed.

[drdoug]

Ingredient quality didn't go up monotonically. When the process was introduced, the quality of the flour actually went down, because the Chorleywood process lets you make bread even when the protein content is too low for traditional methods.

However, modern agriculture means that the quality of British wheat is climbing, and protein levels are apparently getting close to what you used to only get from Canadian wheat.

[drdoug]

Yes - these clear improvements tend to apply only at very large scale. The introduction of Chorleywood meant that mass breadmaking could use flour with a much lower protein content (most British-grown wheat at the time), which meant that bread quality went down in terms of protein content, but the price fell dramatically too.

Whether it's a better product or not is one of those debates I think better avoided. I certainly prefer non-Chorleywood bread (part of the reason almost all the bread I eat is home made), but it looks a lot like most people would rather pay less for Chorleywood than more for the alternatives. Many claim to prefer the bread itself even when price doesn't come in to it, and I'm not going to say they're wrong about that.

That said, bread available now includes both Chorleywood and not, and so whichever you think is better, you still win. :-)