Rose Gregory

Paintings of bread dough, before and after proving

Banneton painting 

In 1961 the Chorleywood Bread Process was developed, and revolutionised the way bread was made and produced. Now used to produce 80% of the bread in the UK it made an important impact on the domestic population.

The Chorleywood process is able to use lower protein wheats to produce bread, this development has enabled more bread to be produced in the UK where our wheats don’t normally have a high protein content.

The process uses intensive high speed mixers to combine the flour, improvers, vegetable fat, yeast and water to make the dough. The whole process from flour to a ready loaf can be done in about 3 ½ hours. This is able to happen because introducing a number of high speed mixes the fermentation period quickens it up, making each loaf much faster. It is also important the solid fats are used, this is because its used to provide structure to the loaf during baking otherwise it would collapse.

This process can’t be done in a normal kitchen because of the equipment required. The dough then needs to be shaken violently for around 3 minutes, this requires a lot of energy and the heat given off helps the dough to rise. The air pressure in the mixer headspace is maintained at a partial vacuum to prevent the gas bubbles in the dough from getting too large and creating an unwanted "open" structure in the finished crumb.

Once finished the dough is sliced and left to ‘recover’ for about 8 minutes. After being placed in its tins it sits for about an hour, at this time it’s very important to regulate the humidity and temperature of its local environment. After the time is up the bread is baked for around 20 minutes at 400 degrees F and then moved to cool down. After about 2 hours it’s ready to be sliced, packaged and sent out.

Bread consumption has declined by half per person since 1960. If this were merely a consequence of affluence and the broadening of the national diet, there would be no problem. But for those who replace bread with foods high in saturated fats and refined sugars, the consequence may be seen in the ongoing epidemics of obesity, diabetes and coronary heart disease. Nutritional advice is that cereals, especially whole grains, should be a key component of a balanced diet.  

At first Tatsumi Orimoto's work caught my eye due to the use of bread in his work but on further research his work has connected with me on a deeper level. 

Tatsumi's work "Bread Man" involved him wrapping several loaves of bread around his head using string, then he proceeds to walk around various locations of the world shaking hands, boarding trains to challenege people to accept him. This connects with the notions I touch on to do with judgement on appearence having struggled for years with self loathing and image. His trips were documented by a photographer and an exhibition was held to show 1000 photographs, 160 drawings and 10 videos. 

"I was looking for my style,' Orimoto says, and about 10 years ago he found it. A Christian friend told him that in the Bible 'bread means body', and that gave Orimoto an idea. If Marcel Duchamp could call a toilet a fountain, he explains, then 'bread means not food: it is sculpture'." Full article 

Another aspect of Tatsumi's work that has grabbed me is that involving his mother who has Alzheimers, a disease my Grandad, whom I was very close to, suffered from for a number of years. His mother's illness meant he couldn't travel as much for "Bread Man" so he decided that his daily life was to become his art; focusing intently on his mother to rescue her (and those handicapped in general) from the outer limits of society. It could be easy to judge these works unfair as it could be said his mother has no cognitive capacity to refuse but it captures the most contemporary issues about ageing, self image and being excluded from society.

Jeph Guureka's work contends with themes simialr to those I have been looking at in my own work; bread in particular. Jeph uses bread, salt and water as symbolic metaphors for sustenance of life, exploiting their physical properties like chemistry experiments. He states "as material, bread has an amazing organic process that I attempt to shape, but ultimately it shapes itself". Similarly how I draw references to bread being a living thing, with a life of its' own. Jeph also recognises the integral meaning of bread

moreover to life and culture illustrating the fundamental elements of existence which is something that is overlooked in contemporary western culture due to the sheer pace of life. Bread possesses the power to bring people together, evident in its' intrinsic roll in the Church as a representation of the body of Christ while it has also been used by the State. 

The above images are of Jeph's "Momento Mori" piece which was made up of 1000 anatomically correct human skulls cast in various types of bread, coated in archival resin.