Sourdough expert Sam Ellis takes Stuff through the benefits of his product.

Bread, on the surface, seems impossibly simple. At its most fundamental it is simply flour (milled wheat grain) and water.

Most have small additions of oil, salt and yeast, to help the dough rise and give it shape. But essentially, that's it. You mix the dough, you knead it to bind the protein in the flour (gluten) and give the bread structure, you let it rise and then bake it.

The modern supermarket loaf is a different story.

Two large baking companies make almost all the bread in New Zealand supermarkets.

Goodman Fielder, which makes Nature's Fresh, Vogel's, Molenberg, Mackenzie and Freya's, is owned by Singaporean-based company Wilmar International and Hong Kong-based fund First Pacific.

George Weston, which makes Tip Top, Ploughmans, and Bürgen, is owned by British-based Associated British Foods.

Ralph Thorogood, chairman of the Baking Industry Research Trust which represents both big companies, argues that in principle commercial bakers don't do anything different to what an artisan baker does.

"Weighing up our ingredients, we mix them together in a large scale mixer the same as the craft bakery does.

ALDEN WILLIAMS/STUFF A batch of sourdough starts its life on the way to becoming a loaf of bread.

"We take that dough and divide it into individual pieces. The craft baker does it by hand on a divider."

Sam Ellis, founder of Christchurch artisan bakery Grizzly, which makes bagels and breads, disagrees strongly about packaged bread being the same product as his specialty loaves.

"It's so bizarre, [mass-produced bread] has no flavour. You know when you toast a piece of that bread and you try to butter it and the whole thing caves in, it has no integrity in the product and that's kind of the whole thing."

Ellis specialises in sourdough bread which takes 12 hours to make, compared to what he says are the two or three hours required to make supermarket bread.

Joseph Johnson/Stuff Sam Ellis, owner of Grizzly bakery in Christchurch, sees no comparison between his bread and mass-produced loaves.

The bread available in supermarkets ranges from the bare basics $1 loaf to heavily branded designer loaves which can exceed $5. Enter the gluten-free section and you're past the $8 mark. Ellis' Grizzly loaves retail for $7.50.

Excluding gluten-free, all the mass-produced wheat loaves on sale in supermarkets, dairies and so on are made, on Thorogood's admission, from essentially the same flour – as in the white, refined stuff.

To understand this, it's important to know the difference between wholemeal flour and white flour.

Luca Serventi, a lecturer in agriculture and life sciences at Lincoln University, says wholemeal flour includes all parts of the wheat kernel - the bran (the outer fibre-rich layer), the germ (a nutritious embryo) and the endosperm (a starchy tissue).

ALDEN WILLIAMS/STUFF Sam Ellis, owner of Grizzly Baked Goods, gets to work on a fresh batch of sourdough loaves.

White flour, also known as wheat flour or refined flour, is made just from the endosperm, and hence is almost entirely starch.

Serventi says there is no question that bread made from wholemeal flour is better for you.

"We're going to have more fibre but also more minerals, especially iron. To give an idea, white bread has virtually no iron while the whole grain bread can contribute up to 5 to 10 per cent of our recommended daily intake."

But here's the catch. Despite the appearance of wholemeal flour at the higher-end of the bread section in the supermarket, almost all of the bread in the aisle is made from white flour with other stuff added in later.

ALDEN WILLIAMS/STUFF Rye sourdough loaves are prepared at Grizzly Baked Goods.

Lower-end wheatmeal bread in the supermarket, for example, can be simply white bread with the wheat husk thrown back in afterwards.

Serventi says the more basic wheatmeal bread could be marginally better than white bread because of this but its health benefits are dubious.

"That gives you the same fibre content, but you might be losing some of the vitamins and the minerals in the process of separating the bread."

None of the supermarket brands Stuff examined used just wholemeal flour.

ALDEN WILLIAMS/STUFF Racks of sourdough loaves reflect the growing demand for artisan-style breads made to traditional methods.

One of the key ingredient words used by many breads is "wheat flour", which Serventi says is just another name for white flour.

More expensive brands such as Vogel's, Bürgen, Freya's and Ploughmans hint in their ingredient list that wholemeal is there by using terminology such as "wholemeal wheat flour", "wheat flour (white, wholemeal)" or the more perplexing "wholegrain wholemeal wheat flour".

But Serventi says we don't know how much wholemeal is added because the bread companies don't have to say how much. He says it could be just a token amount.

The more expensive breads do, however, make up for the lack of protein, fibre and minerals in refined flour with added seeds, bran and grains, which Serventi says are definitely good for you. Ironically, though, these loaves may need more additives than plain bread to keep the structure intact.

Joseph Johnson/Stuff Freshly baked breads at Christchurch's Grizzly Baked Goods.

"Once you add the seeds they're heavy plus they contain fibre so they will make your loaf kind of collapse because the dough is very, very light, almost half the dough is air," Serventi says. These additives can be expensive, and along with the seeds, grains and marketing costs, help explain the cost.

One of the biggest differences between homemade bread and commercial bread is how the stuff is actually made, and specifically the use of what's known as the Chorleywood process, which dramatically reduces the bread-making time thanks to the use of high-speed mixing along with additives like emulsifiers and enzymes.

While Thorogood reasons that the sped-up breadmaking process is necessary to meet the public's demand for bread, artisan baker Sam Ellis reckons that all the additives simply reflect the abandonment of traditional ways.

"If you think about it this is a symptom of so much of modern society. We've accidentally created a problem and we try to retroactively fix it by treating these symptoms rather than preventing them from happening in the first place."

JOSEPH JOHNSON/STUFF Grains and seeds are a healthy embellishment to the ancient bread ingredients of flour, water, oil and yeast.

WHAT'S IN YOUR BREAD

Typical additives in a loaf of mass-produced bread may include:

Emulsifiers prevent the oil and water from separating in a loaf. They make the bread fluffier, moister and keep it from staling.

Flour improver 300 is vitamin C, which strengthens the gluten and helps make a better rise.

ALDEN WILLIAMS/STUFF Making sourdough loaves the traditional way can't be rushed.

Enzymes are described by Thorogood as processing agents. They are naturally occurring in flour but more are added to help break down starches and sugars, speeding up natural processes.

Gluten, the controversial protein compound in wheat flour; more gluten may be added to improve the texture and structure of the bread.

Preservatives, the most common being acidity regulators 263 (calcium acetate, which inhibits mould growth) and 330 (citric acid).