AN INFERIOR LOAF

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 223, 17 June 1936, Page 10

AN INFERIOR LOAF

Complaints at Auckland

Dominion Special Service. Auckland, June 16.

Bread appearing in places as if it had been insufficiently baked has been a cause for complaint in the past month or two. The defect has been recognised by both bakers and millers, and is officially ascribed by the Wheat Research Committee to the use of sprouted wheat in milling, there being a big proportion of inferior milling wheat this season caused by the abnormally wet season in Canterbury and other wheat-growing districts. “Auckland bakers have been particularly affected,” said Mr. S. Green, secretary of the Auckland Master Bakers’ Association, “because it has been their practice to use a greater proportion of Canadian flour to improve the New Zealand flour than the 5 per cent, allowed by the regulations recently brought into force. Representations have been made to the Government for permission to increase the proportion of Canadian flour and no doubt the Government will do whatever is considered necessary to remedy the trouble.” Mr. Green pointed out that Mr. E. W. Hullett, chief chemist of the Wheat Research Institute, had reported on the baking trouble experienced with New Zealand flour. Mr. Hullett admitted that a good deal of the milling wheat this season was sprouted in varying degree. The most common defect in the flour was the crumb appearing insufficiently baked and sticky to the touch, especially when bread was taken from the oven. When cool the bread was rather doughy, both to eat and to touch. In extreme cases the bread was like glue and the crust also had a characteristic appearance. Mr. Hullett said however, that sprout damage should not be confused with weakness of the flour, and the customary method of correcting for weakness, the addition of Canadian or other strong flour, was of little avail. He suggested baking methods to deal with the trouble, one being the leaving out of malt because the mixture reacted as if suffering from an overdose of malt. Another was to increase the salt content and to shorten fermentation.

A baker said that because of the short harvest imported wheat was necessary, and 4000 tons imported by the Government from Australia had been landed at Auckland by the Kairanga. The imported wheat would not only help to make up the deficiency in supply, but would also assist in improving New Zealand flour, which had suffered because the grain this season was damaged by heavy rains.