Corn bread, the obvious alternative for wheat bread may not be available for consumers as bakers find it difficult to produce in commercial quantity.
This is because there is no matching yeast to leaven cornflour. According to bakers, who spoke to The Republic, every kind of flours has its matching yeast for bread baking. As of now, there is no yeast that match corn flour. Cornflour they said, does not respond to available yeast.
Some super markets and departmental stores spoken to said that there are different kinds of yeast. One of such yeast is what bakers called ejendura. Another is Femi Pan.
Mr. Adesoji Samuel of Ajele Bakery said that yeast in the markets today are highly adulterated. He lamented that when his bakery tried cornflour with the yeast now available in the market, his experiment was a total failure. The flour would not just rise. The bread from cornflour takes hours to bake, he lamented.
Another baker who pleaded anonymity said that cornflour as of today is not suitable for break baking. He said that apart from the fact that the end product (corn break) has some kind of odour, it has no good taste and cannot pass for bread.
Consumer refused to buy it. Asked why, he said it is rather too heavy and the colour is repelling, he replied.
It was a wasted effort and resources when we tried it here. He said that unless the appropriate yeast is found it would be a difficult substitute.
Other bakers said they have not tried the cornflour as yet. At present there seems to be regular supply of wheat flour to some bakery though at sky rocketed price.
Wheat flour which was sell for N30.00 before the ban on wheat now sells for N150.00 when available that is 300% price rise.
Most bakers agree that the present high price of bread is as a result of the high cost of baking materials.
