A Salt Uproar Among German Bakers

2-27-2009 @4:37PM Matt said... With no links to any actual coverage, it's hard to form a coherent opinion based solely on the phrase "proposed regulation on the salt content in their products."

I would suspect (as someone on a medically-mandated low sodium diet) that it's not a salt restriction as much as a sodium restriction, because the food that Western nations serve is entirely too high. The more salt that gets thrown into our processed foods and restaurant portions, the more salt that restaurants add to overcome our new "default palette" and make things taste "fully seasoned," to the point where most people are eating two to three times as much sodium per day as they should. Having to keep strict track of this stuff for the past two and a half years has really opened my eyes to how much sodium is out there.

The daily recommended upper limit is 2400mg (about one teaspoon of table salt) for adults under 50, and 1500mg for adults over 50. Yet a single slice of supermarket bread has anywhere from 250mg to 400mg of sodium. 350mg is fairly common. For two pieces of bread, one ounce of ham (900mg), two teaspoons of mustard (180mg each), and a slice of strong cheese (about 200mg), you've nearly reached your day's sodium limit on one freaking sandwich. It's not so easy to remove salt from ham and cheese, but getting it out of the bread and mustard is much more achievable.

But a one-size-fits-all regulation would indeed hurt artisan bakers—the only four ingredients in classic lean French bread are water, flour, yeast, and salt. You can't leave the salt out, because it makes the bread taste "flat" and it also regulates the yeast activity.

Take, for example, this standard and useful baguette recipe from King Arthur Flour:

http://www.kingarthurflour.com/shop/RecipeDisplay?RID=R377

Just bread flour, water, salt, and yeast, yielding three shorter baguettes that fit on a half-sheet pan. Each of the three deliciously crackly loaves has only 600 calories, no saturated fat, no cholesterol, over 3g of fiber, and nearly 25g of protein—and 1170mg of sodium (half a teaspoon of salt in each loaf—1½ teaspoons in the recipe divided by three loaves).

Now, I grant you, eating half of one of these baguettes at a meal would be infinitely more satisfying than four slices of commercial squishy white bread, but it's just as much sodium. And when you look at that recipe and the pictures of the resulting food, do you think "six servings, each with half my day's sodium allowance?" I'd bet you do not.

Like calories and fats before them, we have to start learning how much sodium is in the food we eat to have any hope of getting it under control. Small restaurants oppose this because they don't have reliable ways to measure how much of something goes into their food (a pinch of this, a dash of that, a new supplier for canned tomatoes means the sodium goes up or down), but they're normally exempt from these laws. Chain restaurants, which can easily regulate portions and have average plates analyzed at labs to determine actual sodium and other content determined empirically, oppose disclosure because the NYC menu board labeling laws have already shown that when customers know a single cinnamon roll has 1700 calories and 1200mg of sodium, customers stop buying that cinnamon roll. Information is indeed power.

Bakers might oppose it because they sprinkle salt on top of some things, or work on a well-floured board so they don't know exactly how much flour is in the bread, and so on—but they have to live in the same world as the rest of us, and we need to know what's in the food we eat. Not just what ingredients, but how much. Skill and craft should still reign supreme: I guarantee you that following King Arthur's recipe gives you something you'll want to try again and again (once you get the hang of it), but dumping the same ingredients (including starter) in a bread machine and hitting "bake" will not impress you a bit.

If I were to make those baguettes, I'd reduce the salt to ½ teaspoon, cutting each baguette's sodium level to about 400mg. I'd also add half a teaspoon of salt substitute, because I use that, and it works with my medications—the large extra dose of potassium in salt substitute works for me, where for people without my condition it could easily be too much. But I'd probably reduce the yeast in the main dough to ½ teaspoon on the first try, or maybe ¾ teaspoon if that took too long to rise. Less salt means less yeast, for without regulation, the yeast will overpopulate and overinflate the dough, leading to collapse in the oven.

One of King Arthur's books has a marvelous enriched bread recipe called "White Bread 101," and I make it by reducing the salt and yeast proportions almost exactly as described above. I think it's wonderful, and so does everyone I've served it to (and none of them have sodium restrictions, and none of them eat it every day as it might be too much potassium for them).

I don't think bakers should start using salt substitutes, but limits on sodium in supermarket breads make a lot of sense, as do requirements that other bakers at least disclose how much sodium is in their final product, to the best they can determine.



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