Our daily bread too often comes to us in cellophane or plastic packages and often from a long distance away. The source for our daily bread is no longer the local bakery, the majority of consumers in the US get this critical part of their diet from the vast bread industry, a $40 billion dollar a year enterprise. See: http://www.just-food.com/store/product.aspx?id=73540
At the present time, many of us are concerned about how our personal choices and actions affect the environment. How much heat-trapping carbon dioxide (and other greenhouse gases) are we producing? Or what decisions are we making which may encourage their production? What can we do to ameliorate the global warming phenomenon? Each day we y we make decisions in this realm which may have considerable impact on the environment. Each of us consumes our required compliment of bread and grains, the largest component of the food pyramid, and we may ask are we making "green" choices in this realm? Can we choose to eat "green bread"?
Bread, as anyone who has ever tasted the home-baked product knows...has a short of time in which it can be described as fresh. Home-baked bread will stay edible, at most, for only a day. After that, it will make a good doorstop, or it must be grated into bread crumbs or perhaps be soaked in milk and eggs and used in making bread pudding, or mixed with other ingredients to make Italian meatballs--as my mother did. In fact, I remember well her bread draw where she purposely saved stale bread for that purpose. But it was good eating bread only for a very short time.
Since modern industrial bakers are often situated a very far way from their consumer base...in fact often hundreds of miles away--traditional breads would be stale a long time when it reached the shelves of stores and the consumer. As a result commercial bakers have modified and altered the ingredients and finish of their baked products to adapt their production to the relatively long transportation distance and elapsed time and to overcome the normal short shelf-life of this product has. These modifications, we will see below, have geatly altered bread products and have added to the overall impact of commercial bread baking on the environment.
To achieve their goal of presenting a "fresh looking" long-lasting product on the shelves modern bulk-produced bread is started as a frothy, wet dough and then baked incompletly to a soft, damp consistency rather than the hard-baked texture one would see in a home-baked loaf. (I remember Mom tapping the crust of one of her loaves with a wooden spoon to hear the "thump" of doneness.) Detractors describe the typical modern loaf as having a soft, "gummy" inner texture and a brown but mushy so-called "crust" (a misnomer..since this bread exteior is not "crusty" at all). The partial-baking leaves a soggy loaf which adds only to the shelf life not to its taste or desireable texture. Then too, bakers add chemicals to their soft doughs with the aim of lengthening shelf life. The most common is a chemical emulsifier known as monoglyceride (and diglyceride). Emulsifiers aid blending of the component oils and water in the dough and aid in its frothing action which increases loaf-volume (so each loaf has more air and less actual product) and the glycerides also act as a softener to generate a softer crust and thus retard rapid drying of the baked product.
Unfortunately for the industry, when this partially-cooked, soft, moist-style, monoglyceride-altered-and-fluffed warm bread leaves the oven and is rapildyb packaged in its plastic bag--we have generated the perfect conditions to grow all sorts of molds and bacteria! One type, Bacillus mesentericus or "rope" and other molds were a common bread contaminant and a great problem in the early days of wholesale bread production. To prevent the growth of bacteria and molds on bread a chemical preservative which will kill these organisms was added to the ingredients. You will see listed on the label of all baked goods the fungicide of choice for modern wholesale bakers known as calcium proprionate. This substance, the calcium salt of proprionic acid, is one of the most common preservative substances antifungals and antibactreials used in baked products. In low concentrations, calcium propionate is effective against bacteria and fungi and is only slightly toxic to humans and is probably overall completely harmless to adults who ingest it with their morning toast. But it has been linked to irritability, restlessness, inattention and sleep disturbance in children. Some studies have linked it to allergic reactions in bakery workers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calcium_propionate.
After the bread is baked it must be packaged, boxed, transported and finally delivered to distant stores and then to the final consumer. All of these pakaging and transportation steps have envirnomental impact and consequences. As noted above to keep bread fresh it must be protected from dehydration. Air-restricted packaging of bread product is essential. Drying is to be avoided since that causes the bread to feel and appear stale--however old it actually is. Some companies wrap their loaves in two bags--an inner cellophane bag and outer polypropelene bag both of which become part of the solid waste stream and will likely become part of a landfill. Finally, the loaves are boxed for transportation. These cartons may be of plastic (often these are a hard-clear-plastics composed of polycarbonate which generally contain the hazardous BPA (bisphenol-A) or in cardboard boxes. Both of these have an impact on the environment. As to the actual cost of physical delivery i.e. to transport bread and bread products hundreds or even thousands of miles to its destination and finally to the consumer, their are obcious transportation costs, oil, gas, wear-and-tear on vihicles, and the carbon burden of these actions are added to that of the actual baking of the bread. See: http://baking-management.com/production_solutions/choose-environmentfriendly-packaging-0209/
Another recent development in the wholesale bakery industry is the delivery of partially baked or frozen bread and cakes to retailers who then bake the products locally. I suggest that this is simply one more additional envirnmentally deleterios step which adds additioanl envirnmental costs to the production of breadstuffs since the freezing, transportation-in-the- frozen state, storage at the retailer as a frozen product, then baking on premises only adds to the impact of bread products over those that are baked fully in some distant place. The additional costs to the environment (energy to cool, freeze and remain in the frozen state) are probably very significant.
The soft texture of these wholesale breads has led to another even more wasteful practice. Bread toasting! The process of toasting bread grew from an optional preparration in earlier times an essential element of home bread preparation when most available bread to consumers was designed the modern soft-textured variety. To make packaged bread palatable it must be toasted. I submit that almost all modern breads are baked with the tacit understanding that that the product will most probably be toasted before eating. The practice of toasting bread uses a great quantity of electrical energy. For example a modern toaster uses about 1000 watts of electical power an hour, while a laptop consumes about 75 watts an hour. Thus your one time per day, four-minute bread-toasting each morning may consume about as much electical energy as your a laptop uses in an hour.
Now lets consider the alternative.
After the bread is baked it must be packaged, boxed, transported and finally delivered to distant stores and then to the final consumer. All of these pakaging and transportation steps have envirnomental impact and consequences. As noted above to keep bread fresh it must be protected from dehydration. Air-restricted packaging of bread product is essential. Drying is to be avoided since that causes the bread to feel and appear stale--however old it actually is. Some companies wrap their loaves in two bags--an inner cellophane bag and outer polypropelene bag both of which become part of the solid waste stream and will likely become part of a landfill. Finally, the loaves are boxed for transportation. These cartons may be of plastic (often these are a hard-clear-plastics composed of polycarbonate which generally contain the hazardous BPA (bisphenol-A) or in cardboard boxes. Both of these have an impact on the environment. As to the actual cost of physical delivery i.e. to transport bread and bread products hundreds or even thousands of miles to its destination and finally to the consumer, their are obcious transportation costs, oil, gas, wear-and-tear on vihicles, and the carbon burden of these actions are added to that of the actual baking of the bread. See: http://baking-management.com/production_solutions/choose-environmentfriendly-packaging-0209/
Another recent development in the wholesale bakery industry is the delivery of partially baked or frozen bread and cakes to retailers who then bake the products locally. I suggest that this is simply one more additional envirnmentally deleterios step which adds additioanl envirnmental costs to the production of breadstuffs since the freezing, transportation-in-the- frozen state, storage at the retailer as a frozen product, then baking on premises only adds to the impact of bread products over those that are baked fully in some distant place. The additional costs to the environment (energy to cool, freeze and remain in the frozen state) are probably very significant.
The soft texture of these wholesale breads has led to another even more wasteful practice. Bread toasting! The process of toasting bread grew from an optional preparration in earlier times an essential element of home bread preparation when most available bread to consumers was designed the modern soft-textured variety. To make packaged bread palatable it must be toasted. I submit that almost all modern breads are baked with the tacit understanding that that the product will most probably be toasted before eating. The practice of toasting bread uses a great quantity of electrical energy. For example a modern toaster uses about 1000 watts of electical power an hour, while a laptop consumes about 75 watts an hour. Thus your one time per day, four-minute bread-toasting each morning may consume about as much electical energy as your a laptop uses in an hour.
Now lets consider the alternative.
When I was a young boy, I walked up to the corner of 18th Avenue and in 86th Street in Bensonhurst Brooklyn, where I had been sent to buy a loaf of crusty Italian bread from Sam Pastore our local baker. Inside the big smiling man with oven pinked cheeks and a bald head stood in front of his great coal-fired ovens and proudly handed you over the fruit of his early-morning labors. There was no list of ingredients on the package, since there was no package. If you asked Sam, he would proudly tell you that the bread's ingredients were only four: the best flour, fresh water, yeast, and sea salt, and if you counted them, the wonderful toasted sesame seeds on the outside (were another). He might admit, if you pressed him, that for some soft-style bread loaves, he might add a little olive oil. "But it is Extra Virgin Bertolli oil" he would add. And at certain times in the fall of the year, before Thanksgiving, he might make a special loaf with pork cracklings in it called "pane di ciccioli" or cicoli bread.
The crust of Sam's bread was its own packaging. It didn't need preservatives, since the inside was sterile (from those long minutes in the hot oven) and the outside was a real hard crust. Hard and dry! You could leave that bread out all day and no molds or bacteria would grow on that surface. However, it rarely lasted around the kitchen long enough to go moldy. So in those days there was no wasted pagaging. I recall seeing our neighbors Mrs Caruso and Mrs Tanzi and even Johnny Rico's mother come into Sam's and simply pick out a loaf, pay for it and put their bread in their own cloth shopping bags. But to protect that tasty loaf from a kid's dirty hands, Sam always pulled out a sheet of nice white from his big roll of "bakery paper" and wrapped mine up neatly, then tied it with a thin white string that dangled down from overhead. It didnt always get home all neatly wrapped that way. Hurrying home, I often could not resist the mouthwatering aroma of that hot, crusty bread and too often I would surreptitiously unfold the end of the wrapping and work my fingers inside to tear off a small piece of crust. At home, Mom would carefully unwrap the loaf and seeing the missing piece give me a scolding. "How can I put this loaf on the table when it looks like a rat's been gnawing on it?" A pathetic sad face and a whining, "I couldn't help it Ma, I was so hungry," generally got me out of trouble. My mother understood bread and she liked Sam's bread as much as I did.
Sam's paper and even the string were recycled. But we didn't call it that then, Mom "saved" the string by winding it onto a big ball that we kept in the kitchen cabinet. The white paper was "used again" being kept as a good piece of scrap for Mom to write her market lists on, or to wrap my school lunch in. The paper from the ciccolo bread presented a problem for writing on with its prominent oil stains, but it didn't go to waste. Dad used all kinds of paper to start the furnace with.
Finally that Italian bread did not need toasting. It remained crusty and tasty for breakfast the next day. But that was sure to be the last of it. On the way home from school, I have to pick up up next evening's loaf.
So to help our planet, begin to think of ways to reduce wasteful consumption. Green bread may be a place to start.
Wholesale manufactured bread is definately not "green". It was and remains designed to be stored for long times and for its long shelf and transportation life, not for its taste or wholesomeness. It is simply another example of how the vast food industry has attempted to modify our habits to suit their needs..not those of the consumer or the protection of the environment. If you are interested in making "green"choices in your food purchases...you might begin by begining at your local bakery--they still exist and havent changed much from my boyhood days--- and ther buy their locally made bread products.
Wholesale manufactured bread is definately not "green". It was and remains designed to be stored for long times and for its long shelf and transportation life, not for its taste or wholesomeness. It is simply another example of how the vast food industry has attempted to modify our habits to suit their needs..not those of the consumer or the protection of the environment. If you are interested in making "green"choices in your food purchases...you might begin by begining at your local bakery--they still exist and havent changed much from my boyhood days--- and ther buy their locally made bread products.
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