Like it or not, bread needs salt

Ah... delicious salt. It brings out the flavour of the wheat berry (Photo: Getty)

A typical slice of our daily bread may contain as much salt as a packet of crisps, the Telegraph’s science correspondent Nick Collins reports today. And a pain de campagne from the chain Paul contained 2.83g of salt in every 100g – which is apparently more salt than is found in seawater. (Incidentally, Paul is an interesting case: in Britain it has an upmarket image, whereas in France it’s known mainly for its outlets in service stations.)

These findings come from a campaigning group called Cash – Consensus Action on Salt & Health. Have you heard of them before today? I hadn’t. I wonder who they are, why they feel so strongly about dietary salt, and who gives them their money. But apart from that, I think the worry about salt in our diets is exaggerated. I think there’s a group in the population who have a tendency to raised blood pressure who should watch their salt intake, but the rest of us don’t need to worry unduly. At any rate, anyone who’s ever made bread knows that salt is one of the essential ingredients.

To make bread you need flour, water, salt and yeast. You can make bread without salt, but it won’t taste like any bread you’re used to. It’s true that some Italian breads, for example, are made without salt. But on the whole wheat seems to go with salt, the salt seems to bring out the sweetness of the wheat berry, and it’s same with other cereals such as rye. As this recipe from Andrew Whitley for a Lammas loaf shows, you don’t need that much salt. For a large loaf (800g baked weight) he suggests only 6g of salt (which is on the low side, many bakers would say). Andrew Whitley is from the Real Bread Campaign, by the way, which has lots of information about real bread.

No, of far more concern to consumers should the real rubbish the big baking and milling combines chuck into their flour and loaves – especially the sort of stuff that no baker of 50 years ago would recognise, substances that, in some cases, under EU laws, don’t even have to go on the label, such as enzymes.

And, besides, there’s not nearly as much salt in a packet of crisps as people think. A bag of Walker’s crisps only contains half a gram of salt: you could eat 10 bags and still be comfortably within your daily recommended salt limits.