I am not sure where to park this post, so please relocate it if need be.
For many months my local Woolworths had an in-store baker preparing sourdough baguettes and half baguettes. He worked for an outfit called Bread & Butter Project. The former sold for $4.50 (and mislabeled as 500 gms) and the latter (a twin pack totaling 320 gms) was $5.
Both were made onsite daily.
In the last week I note that the in-store bakery has closed. The store now gets the bread delivered. The $4.50 baguette is not delivered, only the 320 gm is delivered and sold.
Twice in the last week I bought the twin pack and discovered:
(a) They tasted ok, but not as tasty (or chewy) as when made in-store; and
(b) There were no indications of when the bread was baked. Only a ābest beforeā date.
As the taste of the out of store baked bread differs from the in-store bread, my moneyās on the baking taking place say a day before I bought it.
Question: is it legal to sell with only a ābest beforeā date and zero indication of when it was actually baked? If so, what can be done about misleading behaviour to give consumers ALL the information they need to make a decision.
I believe it is legal, bread may have a date baked instead of date best before but it is not required. Here is the FSANZ page.
Coloured bag tags may be used to mark the day of the week that bread is made. You may be able to find the code for them on the web for your favoured bread which will help.
Thanks for the reply. I will look into the FSANZ page. As to the tags, this product has no tag. The cellophane wrapper just as a small sticker with a āBest Beforeā date 3 days after date of purchase.
Milk yogurt etc is dated the same way with a best before or use by date. With store purchased prepackaged bread we assume it is more than 24 hrs old. One is relying on the preservatives to stretch the usable life. The more days remaining the better. Otherwise there are bakeries where the bread may have been baked the same day.
I agree 100%. No wonder the very same bread bought a few hrs after in-store baking was my go-to carbs whenever I passed that Woolies Metro. Now the same bread, trucked from a distribution centre after delivery to the distribution centre from a bakery tastes nowhere near as good. Your comment on 24 hrs is IMHO, spot on as your comment on the longer the days to expiry the better. Thanks.
It is likely the only difference will be the location the bread in question is baked. No longer in-store, but a centralised location. The bread will likely to baked on the day before, or overnight. Overnight may be more likely if they are trying to reduce costs (off peak/overnight electricity being cheaper).
The bread might have different characteristics due to method of baking or when the bread is bagged. The rest will be the same.
Best before and use by are totally different. Best before is just an indication quality of product may deteriorate after that date but still ok to eat. Itās usually used on products with longer shelf life. Use by indicates product may not be suitable to consume after this date. Though I eat consume plenty of stuff after use by date, your eyes, nose and taste buds are your guide! Too much food is thrown away when itās perfectly fine to eat.
I wouldnāt say ātotallyā different, but they do serve different purposes.
Although itās unusual to see a āpackaged onā or ābaked onā date, both Use By and Best Before can give you some idea of that date, if you know what that productās shelf life is supposed to be.
And unfortunately, eyes, nose, and taste buds donāt necessarily detect pathogens / toxins in food. If itās mouldy or decaying, yes. But some foods can look, taste, and smell fine while containing toxins and/or live pathogens that will give you a nasty dose of food poisoning.
Cooked rice and pasta are prone to this. āFried rice syndromeā used to be a common term for the type of food poisoning they can cause, because fried rice was often the culprit. Itās made from pre-cooked rice thatās been allowed to cool and dry out so the grains are separate. Restaurants often left the cooked rice overnight on the bench (not in a fridge) for making fried rice the next day, and the result for customers was food poisoning.
To avoid wastage of food I select a āBest Beforeā date within the time frame I would be using the product.
The Best Before tag gives a parameter for the best flavour and quality of a product. I wouldnāt be playing Russian roulette and use a food long past the stamped date by relying on my āknowledgeā of the length of time it should approximately last nor rely on taste, smell etc. which is highly individual and can be altered by medications or health issuesā¦
Well Iāve never had any ill effects from consuming products that are out of their use by dates. Having said that I am scrupulous about kitchen hygiene and keeping foods at correct temperature and stored correctly. Rice for fried rice dries out perfectly well in the fridge overnight. TBH a lot of problems start with poor kitchen hygiene.
Just out of curiosity @Jon01, the Bread and Butter Project you mentioned is a charity, a wholesale bakery founded in 2013 which invests all profits in training and employment for refugees whoād like to become bakers. To survive the disruption of the Covid pandemic it branched out into partnership with Woolies. I wonder if now it has gone back to being a wholesaler, I canāt find information from the web.
Hi, yes I know about its claim as a charity. On that issue, I wonder how testable are such claims? Itās like a retailer saying theyāll donate say 20c from every specific item sold, to charity. Does the public really know if any of that is true? What I found odd regarding the B&BP was that I only saw in-store bakeries at Woolies Metro stores and not the big stores. As for the taste of the baguettes, which I no longer buy, I was at a dinner recently where these were served. And what @PhilT wrote is spot on! It was bought the day it was delivered to the store and served the same evening. It was >1 day old and unlike most sourdough breads I have tried, it did not taste great 1-2 days after baking.
