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Sourdough taste test: can supermarkets do artisan bread?

The past, it is said, is another country. Nowhere is this more true than in Britain’s relationship with bread. In 2002, the launch of Parisian bakery Poilâne’s pain au levain in London was met with outrage and sniggering amusement. Priced buy canada goose jacket in canada at almost £10 a loaf, this sourdough, made with a starter that was then 70 years old, seemed utterly fantastical.

But no one is laughing now. Sales of white, sliced factory bread are reported to be in steep decline, and you can buy a sourdough loaf in Asda for £1.40. If we are not quite a nation of sourdough addicts – it remains, for most, a posh weekend treat – we buy canada goose jacket ebay have definitely embraced the idea of slow-proved, natural loaves fermented with live starters that teem with billions of wild yeasts and lactobacilli bacteria. Visit benchmark bakeries such as St John in London, Hart’s in Bristol or Price’s in Ludlow, Shropshire, and you will encounter revelatory sourdoughs with chewy crusts, airy, elastic interiors and profound, complex flavours – breads that would score eight or nine out of 10 in this test. Bakers skilfully manipulate the precise sourness in their breads, but many of us now crave the distinctive lactic tang of San Francisco-style sourdoughs.

Some argue that sourdough is already a victim of its own success. Most supermarkets now sell the loafs on their bakery counters, but campaigners pushing for an Honest Crust Act maintain that many of these loaves are industrially produced best price canada goose jacket outlet usa online store imposters, made with bland, commercial bakers’ yeasts and unnecessary ingredients and additives, rather than simply flour, salt, water and natural yeast. Andrew Whitley, co-founder of the Real Bread Campaign, refers to such breads as “pseudough”. True, there is no legal definition of sourdough, and retailers are not obliged to list the ingredients of breads baked instore. But are the results really that bad? We tested a selection of supermarket sourdoughs to sort the staff of life from the chaff and strife.

Morrisons, sourdough bloomer, 400g, £1.47

This smells fresh-baked and wholesome, and has a promisingly astringent sourdough aroma. The slices are moist and springy. However, it lacks the large holes you expect in a bread leavened with an energetic yeast, and is less impressive still in the mouth. There is some vague lactic action going on – it just about gets your saliva glands going – but it is a fleeting, one-dimensional, simulacrum sourness. Beyond that, for a rye-spiked sourdough, its flavour is dull. Blindfolded, you may well struggle to differentiate this from any white farmhouse loaf.4/10

Waitrose, white sourdough, 400g, £2.65

It looks the rustic part: an unevenly shaped, flour-dusted boule with a properly pot-holed interior. It smells earthy, too, but, again, more like a farmhouse loaf than a spiky sourdough. The crust has a reasonable chew, and the bread has decent texture, but the flavour is bland. It lacks all but the faintest sourness and any compelling supplementary complexity. Full marks for listing the ingredients online, but perhaps Waitrose should drop the milk, rice flour and “mono- and diacetyl tartaric acid esters of mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids” (a commercial baking aid) and get back to basics.3/10

Tesco, Tesco Finest white cob, 800g, £1

A curio, this. It is a white, sliced loaf made with a sourdough starter, presumably aimed at customers who have heard that sourdough is trendy, but still demand convenient, rectilinear sandwich bread. In terms of depth of flavour, it has a marginal edge over standard white sliced (6/10 on that criterion), but in all other ways – its sweetly milky, slightly salty taste; the dampness typical of plastic-wrapped factory breads – it bears as much relation to sourdough as Michael Bublé does to Frank Sinatra.0/10

Sainsbury’s, Taste the Difference San Francisco-style sourdough, 400g, £1.50

A stealth loaf. It has a discrete edge, but otherwise smells indistinct. Sliced, it looks unappealingly tight-knit and uniform. A label that reads: “Previously frozen – contains flavouring”, does not bode well. Yet it delivers a distinct sourness, one that almost prickles on the back of the tongue. No, it is not the boldest sourdough going, but that bristly lactic tang, allied to various robust, darker flavours more common in wholemeal and rye breads, means that, in its class, this is an unusually vibrant loaf.6.5/10

M&S, San Francisco-style sourdough, 400g, £1.90

You may have a sentimental attachment to this stout loaf, as it was one of the first sourdoughs available nationally. Four years on, it is the ageing lothario of the sourdough scene. It still looks ruggedly handsome, and smells good, but beneath the golden, Mediterranean tan its powers are fading. There is now a big gap between the dazzling impact of the best artisan sourdoughs and this meek approximation of the style. It offers a thin hum canada goose coat 1000 bulbs lamps authorized canada goose outlet of acidity, underdeveloped bready flavours and a modest baked oomph in the crust.5/10

Tesco, stonebaked sourdough, 420g, £1.50

For a supermarket loaf, this has remarkable provenance. It is made with an 18-year-old starter. It goes through three stages of fermentation. It contains no commercial yeasts or additives. However, it is merely so-so bread. It has a sound baked, yeasty aroma, and a promising oatmeal colour within, but the texture is too dense (it also has a doughy, Plasticine quality). What’s more, beyond a brief, upfront sourness and intermittent bursts of bready character from the crust cheap canada goose, the flavour flatlines.3/10

Asda, Chosen By You sourdough batard, approximately 420g, £1.40

Fragrantly lactic as you open the bag, evenly tanned and impressively pockmarked in a way that suggests yeasty vigour, this, in appearance, is probably closest to the sourdoughs you see topped with smashed avocado in glossy mags. If the flavour does not quite deliver fully on that promise, it is … not bad. The pleasingly bouncy slices have a solid, milled-grains flavour, and a reasonably complex, winey sourness. This fades more rapidly than in the Sainsbury’s contender, but it is close.6/10