Additives, preservatives in bread

A couple of months ago I decided to look up all the zillion bread varieties that my local Kroger had to offer to see if I could pick one that had ingredients that I could 1. pronounce, 2. identify!

I spent 20 minutes or so in the aisle and was soon joined by another lady looking for a natural bread that had more fiber since her husband needed to have more fiber :p So, we continued looking at "All Natural", "No colors or preservatives", "Organic ingredients" and so on. That's when I decided to actually look into the ingredient list and make some sense of it. So, here's an incomplete list of some common ingredients in bread, side-effects, what to avoid etc.

1. The easy ones first, I picked organic bread made of unbleached, unrefined whole-wheat or whole-grain flour.

2. The next ingredient to avoid on my list was HCFS (high fructose corn syrup), hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated oils (trans fats) and boy! that one was trouble! Almost all the bread varieties there had HCFS except the organic one. That eliminated like 95% of the available packages.

3. I avoided the ones that had a super long list of ingredients and listed colors, dyes (red lake, blue lake blah)

Finally got home what I thought was a pretty good loaf of bread although it listed ingredients I couldn't really identify. After some research, here is what I found about the ingredients on my bread:

1. Propionic acid, Sodium/Calcium/Potassium propionate - Avoid and here's why.

2. Mono and di- glycerides - Hmm, preferably avoid and here's why.

3. Sodium stearoyl-2-lactylate - I vote to avoid, might be of animal origin and anything found in my face cream, I just don't want in my bread!

4. Nitrite, Nitrate, Sulfites, Potassium Bromate - avoid and here's why.

This is hardly a comprehensive list but something I can refer back to for the next time. If you have an ingredient you are unsure about in your bread, do post a comment and I'll try to find out more information. For now, I bought Great Harvest Bread Co. bread from my local whole foods co-op and it has "Fresh ground 100% whole wheat flour, water, yeast and honey" - that's it! And it's locally made!

So long then, happy researching for your perfect bread, tried making bread at home people?!