Australian bread can be labeled 'sourdough' even if it is not 100% sourdough. Kingsley Sullivan from New Norcia Bakeries (Western Australia) is fed up with bakeries passing off flavoured and yeasted bread as the real thing. He has taken a bold step and invited the ACCC* and FSA* to review the standard for bread labelled 'sourdough' in Australia.
Kingsley met with the ACCC recently and showed them an example of fake sourdough; it was a straight white yeasted bread that contained no sourdough culture whatsoever!
See this extract from The West Australian
Bread eaters are being duped. In some cases a flavouring is simply added to straight yeast dough in an attempt to encourage customers into paying higher prices. It is ridiculous and an insult to the art of baking.
Quote from the ACCC web site:
Whether labels are required by law, or are voluntary, they must
accurately reflect the product contents because consumers depend on
this information to make informed and better choices.
ABA support this long overdue push and is preparing a submission to ACCC with Kinglsey and other concerned bakers and bread eaters. We would also like to thank Steve and Alison Arnott for creating awareness about this issue several years back.
How you can help:
We urgently need as many people as possible to express their concern about misleading and deceptive labeling of 'sourdough' bread in Australia. It takes only 10 minutes to make a complaint to the ACCC.
Thank you!
Graham Prichard
* ACCC - Australian Competition and Consumer Commission
* FSA - Food Standards Australia and New Zealand
) considering that some additives are not. So, we call them technical auxiliaries (for example, enzymes like fongic amylases). Some ingredients are technical auxiliaries and really are (like malt) but everything else is just bull... !
Go Australia ! For a real bread !!
I totally agree with you Graham and I remember we already spoke about that when I was Down-Under.
It is necessary to protect the consumers and the true bakers against fakers.
Here, in France, we have an appellation defined by the law for the sourdough bread. Maybe it could help you to do something in Australia.
In France, a sourdough bread has to be made with an alive natural leaven or a starter (alive liquid or dried leaven blended by an intermediary products manufacturer) which has the characteristics of a natural leaven (a balanced population of bacterias and yeasts, without baker's yeast added) - This last point is for bakers who do not know the job and need to buy their leaven... (that is my opinion that I share already with myself
It can contain optionally an amount of baker's yeast which can be a maximum of 0.2% of the flour weight (for pressed fresh yeast).
The crumb of the bread has to be acidic and must contain a minimum of 900ppm (mg/kg) of acetic acid and has to present a pH=4.3 maximum.
Of course, the acidity has to come from the fermentation and cannot be increased by added acids like vinegar (acetic acid), lactic acid or whatever.
For me, I do not agree with the point about the acidity but that is the rule. You can make a sourdough bread which contains less acid. But this law protects the consumer and the genuine sourdough bread makers.
Be careful with the question of the acidity (the pH) because this point is very restrictive and that can help industrials to cut the grass under your feet... It is easy for an industrial to control and maintain this acidity. This is much more difficult for an artisan baker. Moreover, depending the way you use your leaven, you can get something which is just slightly acidic.
So, do not give the weapon to your enemy...