Excerpt from UK Real Bread Campaign Newsletter Sept15 - It looks like plenty of you are getting stuck in by learning how to bake it for yourself; supporting your local, independent, Real Bread bakeries by buying from them; or teaching other people how to make it. Keep it up!
At the same time as celebrating the genuine article, we’re challenging the rise of what we call sourfaux, meaning loaves marketed as sourdough but made using all sorts of unnecessary extras.
As you know, the only 3 ingredients necessary to make genuine sourdough are flour, water and salt. Research by The Real Bread Campaign has discovered packet mixes marketed as sourdough that contain up to 22 ingredients and artificial additives!
Sourfaux
One supermarket’s ‘Sour Dough [sic.] Bread Mix’ lists more than 20 ingredients and artificial additives, including an unspecified added flavouring. Meanwhile, the 16 listed on another company’s so-called ‘simple sourdough’ mix include mono- and diacetyl tartaric acid esters of mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids. A third packet mix contains added yeast.
We believe that shoppers deserve better than to be sold the promise of a shortcut that turns out to be an expensive way of making an additive-laden loaf without the benefits genuine sourdough offers. Surely it says something when a manufacturer feels the need to add flavouring!