It was not until the 18th and 19th centuries that the high-rising types of bread were invented, with plenty of pores in the crumb, such as are generally familiar today. With the use of yeast, which was invented in Vienna about 150 years ago, flour and water are turned into a “lever” or starter dough that usually fermented overnight at room temperature in a special container. This ensured that the yeast used in those days, which only rose weakly, multiplied and improved its performance.
In the 1950s the era of bread improvers began with the increasing industrialisation. Initially they were pure malt products and acids such as vinegar. They served the purpose improving the quality of low-grade wheat and rye flour and were added directly to the main dough. In the 1970s bakeries went over one by one, for organisational and capacity reasons, to straight dough production without any starter dough, but it was not possible in those days to take this step from indirect to direct dough production without any bread improvers having to be added. The bread improver needed for this purpose consisted mainly of malt products, often supplemented with acids such as citric acid, calcium phosphates, lecithin (E322) as an emulsifier, and ascorbic acid (E300). Present-day bread improvers still mainly have this composition, although malt products and lecithin have now been replaced by a combination of biotechnologically produced enzymes, swelling agents such as gelatinised wheat flour or guar gum (E412) and/or emulsifiers such as diacetyl tartaric acid ester (E472e), distilled monoglycerides (E471) and suchlike.
The many scandals besetting the food industry have led to consumers looking more and more for natural products without chemical additives. The growth in the sales of organic products in recent years shows proof of this development. It is in the products that are consumed every day in particular, such as bread, that demand is growing for those that are produced without chemical bread improvers. It is not only the dust released during use (which triggers allergies) but also the many undesirable additives, many of which are regarded as harmful to health, that are leading to an increasing trend to reject these products.
starter dough
