What is the difference between artisan bread and regular bread? Artisan bread uses traditional methods, only uses natural ingredients, takes longer to make, cannot be made on a large scale, or is made by an artisan.
Artisan Bread Uses Traditional Methods: We can find many comments that artisan bread is better than regular bread because it is made using traditional methods. Some said that artisan bread should only contain four ingredients. It should only have flour, water, salt, and yeast and even then, they said that yeast might be left out. We found enough of other information that said that traditional methods meant that it had to be an authentic recipe. In addition, artisan bread is different from regular bread because it has an irregular shape and there is no cookie cutter process to making artisan bread.
There are artisans making bread that say the bread is not artisan bread if it is made on a large scale or it is not handmade. Kneading the dough is obviously an important part of making any bread and there are many claims by small artisan bakeries that say the dough must be kneaded by hand to be considered artisan.
However, we were able to find other artisan bakeries that say, that it does not matter if it is a hand or with a machine process because there are very few artisan bakers who have not embraced the time and energy. We all know of plenty of artisan breads that are made on a large scale and are not handmade. No one can or will put a number on it and no one can define what limited quantity or large scale is. This claim to separate artisan bread from regular bread seems to be the weakest differentiation of all the claims that we found.
Artisan Bread Only Uses Natural Ingredients: Some claim that artisan bread is made with only four ingredients of flour, salt, water, and yeast. Some bakeries say that the type of flour that is used is what makes a bread artisan verses flour that is used in all other bread.
The most common claim under the heading of natural ingredients separating artisan bread from regular bread is that artisan bread does not use chemicals. We can see, all bread has a chemical reaction. The leavening or rising of the dough is the yeast letting off a carbon dioxide gas that is trapped in the dough. The flour has gluten in it that essentially feeds the yeast and helps create the gas. Fermentation is really a chemical process.
So, what is the difference between artisan bread and regular bread? We believe that artisanal is sometimes used in marketing and advertising as a catchword to describe or imply some relation with the crafting of handmade food products.
LaBread Bakery 