Changing the Paradigm

Elizabeth David wrote in 1977, in her classic book, English Bread and Yeast Cookery (Allen Lane), “What is utterly dismaying is the mess our milling and baking concerns succeed in making with the dearly bought grain that goes into their grist. Quite simply it is wasted on a notion which cares so little about the quality of its bread that it has allowed itself to be mesmerized into buying the equivalent of eight and a quarter million large white factory-made loaves every day of the year.”

It is hard to fathom that a mere thirteen years later I could hardly find any white bread in England. It seemed that every bed-and-breakfast house served wheat toast, not white toast. Fully expecting to be bombarded by boring white bread, Susan and I were astonished at the variety of wheat breads we encountered. Either Mrs. David has had an enormous impact on her countrymen or a major paradigm shift has occurred. The same sort of revolution appears to be happening in this country. The bread shelves at the largest supermarkets are filling up with whole-grain breads that are squeezing out the balloon breads that ruled our lives a few years ago.