Chorleywood bread process

The Chorleywood bread process (CBP) is a method of efficient dough production to make yeasted bread quickly, producing a soft, fluffy loaf. Compared to traditional bread-making processes, CBP uses more yeast, added fats, chemicals, and high-speed mixing to allow the dough to be made with lower-protein wheat, and produces bread in a shorter time. It was developed by Bill Collins, George Elton and Norman Chamberlain of the British Baking Industries Research Association at Chorleywood in 1961. As of 2009^[update], 80% of bread made in the United Kingdom used the process.^[1]

For millennia, bread had been made from wheat flour by manually kneading dough with a raising agent (typically yeast) leaving it to ferment before it was baked. In 1862 a cheaper industrial-scale process was developed by John Dauglish, using water with dissolved carbon dioxide instead of yeast. Dauglish's method, used by the Aerated Bread Company that he set up, dominated commercial bread baking for a century until the yeast-based Chorleywood process was developed.^{[citation needed]}

Some protein is lost during traditional bulk fermentation of bread; this does not occur to the same degree in mechanically developed doughs, allowing CBP to use lower-protein wheat.^[2][3] This feature had an important impact in the United Kingdom where, at the time, few domestic wheat varieties were of sufficient quality to make high-quality bread; the CBP permitted a much greater proportion of lower-protein domestic wheat to be used in the grist.^[4]