Baguettes must be made using less salt, French bakers are told
THE French baguette is to undergo a healthy makeover as bakers commit to slashing salt content by at least 10 per cent over the next four years.
Intimately linked to Gallic identity, consumption of the bread accounts for a fifth of the recommended average intake of salt, according to the country’s health ministry.
With the World Health Organisation urging countries to reduce salt intake by 30 per cent by 2025, cutting sodium in baguettes and other types of bread has become a matter of national importance. As a result, the country’s top baking representatives issued a pledge at the annual agricultural fair in Paris last weekend to bring salt content down from around 4.25g per loaf to a maximum of 3.5g within four years.
According to the WHO, most people consume too much salt – on average 9g to 12g per day, or around twice the recommended maximum level of intake.
Salt intake of less than 5g per day for adults helps to reduce blood pressure and the risk of cardiovascular disease, stroke and coronary heart attack.
Speaking to The Daily Telegraph, Dominique Anract, president of France’s national confederation of bakers and patissiers, said: “We already agreed to keep salt down to 18g per kilo of flour a couple of years ago but, because there are 33,000 bakers in France, some have not done so and we have agreed to launch a new campaign.
“For a year, we will test the salt content of 100 bakers chosen at random over a year. If they fail to bring down salt content, then we’ll have to introduce new legislation.”
However, he warned that salt could not be cut too much. “Salt is vital for bread, for its taste, crustiness, colour and for fermentation and keeping its humidity,” he said.
“It’s doable to bring down salt a certain amount but there is a cut-off point when it no longer looks or tastes like a baguette. Under 16g per kilo of flour, it alters the taste because without salt, people find the bread sugary. We don’t want to see our flagship product suffer.”
Frédéric Roy, a baker in Nice, agreed there was no problem cutting salt content to a certain extent and that he had done so for the past four years without customer complaints. But cutting salt by 30 per cent would be hard.
“Salt creates a balance. It plays a key role in fermentation. We’d have to work differently. We’d have to leave the dough a lot longer before kneading it and would require changing our way of working but if we have to for the sake of national health then so be it.”
Mr Roy said salt was not the main concern for the traditional French baguette, whose worst enemy is the invasion of poor-quality industrial produced loaves.
Mr Anract said he was convinced the French would get used to less salt in their daily bread. “When I go abroad and eat saltier bread, when I come back I find our bread lacks salt. It’s a question of getting the palette used to it.”