Can the little pastry shop run by the baker from the corner you frequent supply a variety of breads and pastries? Are his breads given appealing names like "delicious and health-enhancing," "good for jogging, hiking, or adventures," and so on? Are the walls of the shop plastered with colorful posters advertising these special-effect breads? Are there little signs on the shelves that say "Exclusively Made"? Does the small shop smell of fresh rolls rather than yeast? — If you answered "yes, indeed" to several of these questions, then there is a 98% chance that your favorite baker is just relying on ready-made bread mixes, adding only yeast and water, mixing them up, and popping them in the oven to produce so-called "exclusive products."
As the saying goes: the easier, the better. Who could blame the bakers for exercising their right to an easy job? But has this progress gone a bit too far? Cynics say that what is now required in a bakery can be done by a monkey, provided it has a little training and some encouragement. Apprentices are also a bit baffled; if you can achieve great results simply by tearing open a bag, why does it still take three years to learn? Ready-made bread mixes, with their various refined chemicals, have made the art of baking so simple to learn that skilled craftsmanship is hardly necessary, let alone an emphasis on feel and experience.
It must be emphasized that this convenience is brought to you by the chemists of the baking food industry. They have created many little assistants for the bakeries: emulsifiers to soften the dough; phosphates to regulate the size of air pockets in the dough; colorants to make light-colored flour look more like bran; browning agents to make the bread crisp and tasty; and let's not forget the flavorings, which are like magic for the bakery, making the whole room smell wonderful and appetizing. Do consumers know about this?
In a bread factory, it's a different story. You would probably find it hard to believe that industrially mass-produced bread can actually be better, at least in terms of ingredients, as they contain fewer baking agents and additives. Because according to food regulations, all industrial products must be packaged before they go on the market, and the packaging must list the product's ingredients. Although it's not necessary to list every single ingredient, especially the several common ones that simplify the production process, the ingredient labeling still plays a positive "market-oriented" role. To avoid consumers rejecting the entire product because of a certain additive, and to please consumers, bread factories will abandon that additive or try every possible way to find a substitute, and adjust their ingredient lists.
Compared to small workshops, bread factories benefit from mass production and don't need to use this or that baking agent. Because the baking conditions in small bakeries vary greatly, bakers have to consider the specific processing conditions for each batch of dough and handle them individually; whereas the masters in a bread factory can simply place the dough on an industrial baking conveyor belt, hardly needing to rely on too much "outside help." Moreover, traditional methods (such as using a sourdough starter) are often the most economical, and so, under competitive pressure, they prefer to use old methods to ferment the dough rather than increase costs by purchasing baking agents. Because bread factories also have to wholesale their products to retailers at prices lower than the retail price, they have to figure out how to produce more economically than bakers who sell directly.
Of course, you shouldn't expect to get "classic, traditional" handcrafted bread from a mechanized bread factory. But on average, these products often contain fewer chemicals than those "from the street corner baker." However, if you insist on "authentic" handmade bread, you're probably searching for a needle in the haystack.