A Cut Above – Changes in Bakery over the Years

“In my day, things were different…” Didn’t you hate it when your parents said that? Well, at the rate things are progressing and evolving in these modern times, my daughter could be saying that to her brother and there is only a five years age difference between them. In the world of bakery, things are ever-changing. Technologies for both equipment and ingredients have evolved over time. Innovations are ongoing and the world is definitely different from when I was younger.
Technological advances are not unique; many have been borrowed from other industries.
For example, the bread slicer, 87 years old this year, was designed by a jeweler named Otto Rohwedder in Missouri, USA.

When I was growing up in South Africa during the second half of the 1900s, sliced bread was not available on the shelves. Cafes, supermarkets and bakeries had a slicing machine where customers would queue to slice their loaves – often clogging up the blades if the bread was too fresh.

Bread was, and still is, very popular

Also, ‘bread’ was money, as was ‘dough’ in our slang. Then along came a band called Bread… upper crust pop music.
Slicers, internationally, did not take off straight away, because – as we all know –
bread can become stale quicker if sliced.
So, what is the greatest thing since sliced bread?
Some might claim this to be the Chorleywood bread process (CBP), which came about in the 1960s and gave rise to ‘industrial’ or supermarket bread.
CBP allows the use of lower-protein wheats and reduces processing time, the system being able to produce a loaf of bread from flour to sliced and packaged form in about three-and-a-half hours. This is achieved through the addition of ascorbic acid, fat, yeast and intense mechanical working by high-speed mixers.
Mass produced bread took off in the UK and CBP is now used in Australia, New Zealand and India and to a lesser degree in the US.
Others may claim enzymes to be the next best thing since sliced bread.
However, while many consider the use of enzymes to be a fairly new idea, they have in fact been used in baking for a long time.
Enzymes like amylase, maltase and protease help to make better bread, and companies like Novozymes, DSM, Lallemand and others dedicate themselves to making bread better.
Today, we also have frozen part-baked products, which have also changed bakery as we know it – or knew it.
Delifrance invented the frozen part-baked baguette in 1978 and five years later followed it up with the first frozen ready-to-bake Viennoiserie.
I must admit, like many others, I wondered how supermarkets could produce ‘freshly baked’ goods so easily and quickly, while boulangeries and artisan bakers had to work long hours to satisfy their customers.
Partly baked and frozen was the answer!
Nonetheless, there is something enticing and comforting about the smell of freshly baked bread and other fresh products. So much so that I recall a baking ingredient company spokesman telling me that some supermarkets actually ‘pipe in’ the smell of baked goods from their ovens to the food halls.
Maybe that is why expensive products are usually found close to the bakery section?
The greatest thing since sliced bread? Ever-changing technology is my answer.