Author: Columnist at Tarragindi News

By Jack Mercer – Rabbit Hole Fisherman 

Why supermarket bread stays soft is a question many shoppers never ask, but the answer involves starch molecules, enzymes, preservatives and packaging. Buy a loaf of supermarket bread on Monday and it may still make a respectable sandwich on Friday. A crusty loaf from a traditional bakery can be considerably less cooperative. There is also the documented story of bread partially baked overseas, frozen and shipped to Australian supermarkets for finishing in an oven.

In This Story

• The strange science of stale bread
• What makes sliced bread stay soft?
• The numbers on the packet
• Stale bread and mouldy bread are different problems
• Why bakery bread can behave differently
• When ‘freshly baked’ bread had already been partly baked overseas
• Does the manufacturing method affect nutrition?
• The fridge is not necessarily your bread’s friend
• What to look for when buying bread
• A loaf designed for the way we live

Bread has an unfortunate habit of being at its best just when you’re least likely to appreciate it.

A warm loaf from a bakery, with its crisp crust and soft centre, can be magnificent on the afternoon it was baked. By the following morning, the crust has lost some of its appeal. Another day or two and the bread may be better suited to toast, particularly if it has been left exposed to the air.

Meanwhile, the sliced loaf in its plastic bag is getting on with the business of making school lunches. Several days after purchase, the slices may still be soft enough to fold around a filling without breaking.

Both products began with flour and water. Both were baked. Yet they behave quite differently once they leave the oven.

For a start, bread can become stale without losing much water at all.

The strange science of stale bread

Most people assume bread goes stale because it dries out. Moisture loss certainly contributes to changes in bread, particularly when a loaf is left unwrapped. But it doesn’t adequately explain what happens to the soft interior of bread as it ages.

Much of the explanation lies in starch.

Wheat flour contains two principal forms of starch molecule, amylose and amylopectin. During baking, starch granules absorb water and undergo changes that help create the soft structure of the finished loaf. As the bread cools and ages, some of those changes begin to reverse.

Starch molecules gradually reorganise into more ordered structures, a process known as retrogradation. Amylopectin retrogradation is particularly important in the firming of bread during storage. Water also moves within the bread’s structure, affecting the relationship between starch, proteins and other components.

The result is familiar to anyone who has tried to make a sandwich with yesterday’s crusty loaf. The crumb becomes firmer, even though the bread hasn’t necessarily lost enough moisture to explain the change.

Researchers have been studying this process for decades. A 2003 scientific review by J.A. Gray and J.N. BeMiller examined the molecular basis of bread staling, while a further review published in 2014 explored the roles of starch retrogradation and water redistribution.

This helps explain why stale bread often improves when toasted. Heating can temporarily reverse some of the changes associated with starch retrogradation, making the bread seem softer and more appealing. The improvement doesn’t last indefinitely. Leave the toast sitting around and it soon develops problems of its own.

Bread manufacturers have spent considerable time finding ways to slow the original firming process.

What makes sliced bread stay soft?

The standard supermarket sandwich loaf is designed for a particular job. It needs to be soft, easy to slice, consistent from one purchase to the next and capable of remaining acceptable throughout its stated shelf life.

Those requirements influence everything from the flour and recipe to the mixing, baking, cooling and packaging.

One important difference can be the use of emulsifiers. Emulsifiers help ingredients interact in ways that influence dough handling, crumb structure and softness. Some can also affect the changes in starch that occur as bread ages.

Then there are enzymes. Enzymes are proteins that accelerate particular chemical reactions. Bakers have long relied on enzymes naturally present in flour, and modern commercial baking can also use added enzymes to achieve specific results.

Certain amylase enzymes act on starch during breadmaking. Depending on the enzyme and how it is used, this can influence loaf volume, crumb characteristics and the rate at which bread firms during storage.

The science is more complicated than simply adding something that keeps bread moist. A formulation has to work through mixing, fermentation, baking and storage. Ingredients that improve one characteristic may affect another. Manufacturers therefore select combinations suited to the bread they want to produce.

A soft sandwich loaf is a different product from a crusty baguette, and the recipe reflects that.

The numbers on the packet

Food additive numbers can make a bread label look more complicated than it really is. Australian food-labelling rules generally require additives to be identified by their function and either their name or number.

The number itself doesn’t tell you whether an ingredient is dangerous. It is part of a recognised identification system. Food Standards Australia New Zealand regulates which additives may be used in particular foods and under what conditions.

One preservative associated with commercial breadmaking is calcium propionate, identified as additive 282. Its principal purpose is to inhibit the growth of certain moulds and other microorganisms.

That is a different job from the one performed by ingredients intended to keep bread soft. The distinction is essential to understanding why some loaves last longer than others.

Stale bread and mouldy bread are different problems

A loaf can become stale without showing any mould. Equally, bread can remain relatively soft while conditions allow mould to develop.

Staling is largely concerned with physical and chemical changes in the bread. Mould growth is a microbiological problem.

Bread can support a range of moulds when environmental conditions permit their growth. Mould spores are common in the environment. They can reach bread after baking through contact with air, equipment, packaging materials or other surfaces.

Baking destroys many microorganisms present in the dough, but the bread is subsequently cooled, sliced, handled and packaged. Each stage has to be managed hygienically.

Preservatives such as calcium propionate can help inhibit mould growth, although their effectiveness depends on the formulation and storage conditions. Not every loaf contains the same preservatives, and some breads are manufactured without added chemical preservatives.

Packaging also matters. A sealed plastic bag helps limit moisture loss and provides a barrier against contamination after packing. It doesn’t make the bread sterile, and it doesn’t guarantee that mould will never develop.

Temperature, humidity, handling and the product’s composition all affect how long it remains acceptable. The softest loaf isn’t necessarily the one that will resist mould for the longest period.

Why bakery bread can behave differently

A traditional crusty loaf is often designed around characteristics that don’t suit a packaged sandwich loaf. A baker may want a pronounced crust, an open crumb structure and flavours developed through fermentation.

Those characteristics influence the finished bread’s texture and how it changes during storage. A crisp crust depends partly on differences in moisture between the outside and inside of the loaf. Over time, moisture moves through the bread and the crust loses some of its crispness.

A plastic bag may help retain moisture and keep the crumb soft, but it can also soften the crust. Leave the loaf unwrapped and the crust may fare better initially, while the interior loses moisture more readily. Neither storage method produces the ideal result for every type of bread.

Fermentation also influences flavour. Yeast produces carbon dioxide, which helps dough rise, along with compounds that contribute to the aroma and flavour of bread. Longer fermentation and sourdough processes can produce different flavour profiles and changes in dough properties, depending on the ingredients and conditions used.

Commercial breadmaking isn’t necessarily devoid of fermentation, nor is every independent bakery using a long fermentation process. The methods vary considerably. But a bread designed to remain soft in a plastic bag for several days will generally have different priorities from a loaf intended to be eaten with dinner shortly after baking.

When ‘freshly baked’ bread had already been partly baked overseas

More than a decade ago, an unusual Australian court case revealed how complicated the journey from bakery to bread shelf could become.

In 2013, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission took legal action over the marketing of certain bread products sold through Coles supermarkets. Some products had been partially baked and frozen before arriving at the supermarkets, then finished in in-store ovens. Contemporary reporting identified Ireland as the origin of certain products.

This process is known as par-baking. A manufacturer completes part of the baking process, cools and freezes the bread, and transports it for finishing elsewhere. Centralised production can offer consistency and make it possible to finish bread close to the time of sale.

The court case concerned the descriptions used to market the products, rather than a finding that par-baking was unsafe. In June 2014, the Federal Court found that particular claims, including descriptions suggesting bread was freshly baked in-store, were misleading in the circumstances. In April 2015, penalties totalling $2.5 million were imposed.

This is a historical episode, not evidence about how any particular supermarket operates today. Nor do the verified findings establish that bread was flown specifically to Brisbane or that tax considerations drove the arrangement.

It does, however, illustrate an important distinction. A loaf can emerge from a supermarket oven that morning without having been mixed, shaped or initially baked on the premises. For a shopper who wants bread made from scratch at the store, that difference matters.

Does the manufacturing method affect nutrition?

It’s easy to assume that bread containing fewer ingredients must be healthier. Sometimes a simpler formulation may suit a consumer’s preferences, but ingredient count alone is a poor measure of nutritional quality.

A white loaf made with flour, water, yeast and salt can still be relatively low in dietary fibre. A commercially manufactured wholegrain loaf may contain additional ingredients while providing considerably more fibre.

The amount and type of grain matter. So do sodium levels, serving sizes and the bread’s overall nutritional composition. The Australian Dietary Guidelines recommend choosing mostly wholegrain or high-fibre grain foods.

That advice provides a more useful starting point than deciding whether a loaf is healthy simply because it came from an independent bakery or a supermarket. The presence of a permitted food additive also doesn’t automatically make a bread nutritionally inferior.

Consumers may prefer products without certain additives, but that preference should be distinguished from evidence that a permitted ingredient is harmful at the levels used.

A practical comparison between two loaves should begin with their nutrition information panels: dietary fibre per 100 grams, sodium, the proportion of wholegrain ingredients where stated, and ingredients relevant to individual dietary needs.

The fridge is not necessarily your bread’s friend

Putting bread in the refrigerator can make it firm more quickly. The cool temperatures of ordinary refrigeration can accelerate some of the starch changes associated with staling.

That doesn’t mean refrigeration is always the wrong choice. In hot or humid conditions, it may help manage mould growth, depending on the bread and how it is stored. But there is a trade-off between slowing microbial spoilage and maintaining the texture of the crumb.

For bread that won’t be eaten soon, freezing is often useful. Freezing greatly slows deterioration, and individual slices can be removed as needed. A loaf can be divided into portions before freezing, reducing the need to thaw more than will be eaten. The manufacturer’s storage instructions remain the appropriate starting point.

What to look for when buying bread

Most shoppers don’t need to become food scientists to make a sensible choice. The label provides useful information about ingredients, additives, nutrition and storage. The type of bread tells you something about the texture and eating experience it was designed to deliver.

A packaged sandwich loaf may be ideal for lunches, while a crusty bakery loaf might be preferable with soup or dinner. Neither is inherently the better product for every purpose.

When softness matters, ingredients and packaging can help explain why some loaves retain it longer. For readers avoiding particular preservatives, check the ingredient declaration. On nutritional quality, fibre, wholegrain content and sodium deserve more attention than the number of unfamiliar words on the packet.

If a loaf develops visible mould, discard it rather than simply cutting away the affected portion. Mould can extend beyond the visible growth in porous foods such as bread.

A loaf designed for the way we live

The modern sliced loaf is a product of changing household habits as much as developments in food science. Families want bread that can be bought during a weekly shop, stored conveniently and used over several days.

Commercial bakers have developed methods that help meet those expectations, drawing on a detailed understanding of dough, starch, fermentation, microorganisms and packaging.

Traditional bakery bread often offers something different, particularly when the baker concentrates on crust, fermentation and flavour rather than prolonged softness.

The differences become easier to understand once you recognise that bread begins changing as soon as it leaves the oven. Some of those changes are part of what makes a freshly baked loaf enjoyable. Others eventually make it stale.

The supermarket loaf hasn’t escaped the chemistry of bread. Its recipe, processing and packaging have been designed to manage that chemistry for longer.

And the old Irish bread case is a reminder that a loaf’s history doesn’t necessarily begin where a customer sees it coming out of the oven.

By Jack Mercer – Rabbit Hole Fisherman

Leave a fresh beetroot in the kitchen long enough and it will eventually be
fit for the compost. Put it through a cannery, however, and it can spend years
in a cupboard without refrigeration. The explanation takes us from a French
inventor working more than 200 years ago to some surprisingly sophisticated
food science. And it turns out that the vinegar in your beetroot is doing more
than making your sandwiches taste better.

In This Story

• The man who preserved food before we understood germs
• What happens to a beetroot in a cannery?
• The vinegar has a second job
• Why doesn’t it turn into red porridge?
• Is the old beetroot still nutritious?
• The date on the bottom isn’t always an expiry date
• A familiar name from North Brisbane
• The next time you find an old tin

There’s a peculiar sort of archaeology that takes place in the average
Australian pantry. Somewhere behind the pasta, the half-used packets of rice
and the bottle of sauce nobody particularly likes, you find a tin of beetroot
that appears to have been purchased during a previous era of your household’s
history.

Perhaps it was intended for a barbecue. Perhaps somebody was going through a
phase of making proper hamburgers, the Australian kind with beetroot and an egg
threatening to slide out the side.

Either way, the tin has been forgotten.

You turn it over, look at the date and discover that the manufacturer expected
it to last considerably longer than you remembered.

The beetroot was harvested, cooked, packed and sealed years ago. Yet,
assuming the food was properly processed and the can has remained intact and
appropriately stored, it may still be perfectly suitable for lunch.

Fresh beetroot is considerably less accommodating. It can survive for a while
under good storage conditions, but leave it long enough and moisture loss,
microbial growth and the vegetable’s own biological processes will eventually
take their toll.

The canned version has somehow escaped most of that trouble.

To understand how, it’s worth meeting a Frenchman who was trying to solve much
the same problem before anyone had a satisfactory explanation for why food
spoiled.

The man who preserved food before we understood germs

Nicolas Appert was a French confectioner and food preserver who spent years
experimenting with ways to stop food deteriorating. His work attracted the
attention of a government with a practical problem: armies and navies needed
provisions that could survive long journeys without becoming inedible.

In 1810, Appert published his findings in a book describing methods for
preserving animal and vegetable foods.

His approach involved putting food into containers, sealing them and heating
them. He worked with glass vessels, not the familiar supermarket tins that
would become widespread later.

The remarkable part is the timing.

Louis Pasteur’s work explaining the role of microorganisms in fermentation and
spoilage was still decades away. Appert had discovered a practical preservation
method without knowing precisely what was happening to the microscopic
organisms responsible for much of the deterioration.

He knew that the method worked, even if the science behind it remained
incomplete.

The method was far from perfect by modern standards, and early preservation
systems had limitations that later research would expose. Nevertheless, Appert
had helped establish the principles on which an enormous food industry would
eventually be built.

Within the same year, the English inventor Peter Durand received a patent for
food preservation using tin-plated iron containers. Metal cans gradually became
a practical alternative to glass, particularly for transporting provisions.

Two centuries later, a supermarket tin of beetroot owes something to both men.

What Appert couldn’t have explained is that heating food under controlled
conditions can destroy or inactivate microorganisms, while a properly sealed
container helps prevent fresh contamination.

Modern canneries have spent generations refining that process. The temperatures,
heating times, container designs and food formulations are all carefully
considered, because getting the balance wrong can produce anything from
unpleasantly mushy vegetables to a serious food-safety problem.

What happens to a beetroot in a cannery?

Imagine the beetroot arriving from the farm. It carries soil, has a tough outer
skin and looks very little like the neat red cubes that eventually appear on a
supermarket shelf.

Commercial preparation generally involves cleaning, trimming, cooking or other
preparation, and cutting the beetroot into the form required for the finished
product. The details vary between factories and products, and the order of
operations isn’t identical everywhere.

The prepared vegetable is packed with its liquid, and the food and container
undergo a validated preservation process.

That word, validated, matters. Food processors need evidence that the chosen
treatment will control the relevant microorganisms under the conditions in
which the food will be sold and stored.

Heating a vegetable until it is tender enough for dinner is one thing.
Producing a container of food that can remain safe on a supermarket shelf for
an extended period is another.

The seal is just as important as the heat treatment. A properly processed
product could be contaminated again if microorganisms were able to enter
through a faulty container.

Once sealed and processed correctly, the contents are protected from the
ordinary environmental contamination that helps make fresh food deteriorate.

There is a catch, though. Different foods require different treatment, and the
distinction has a great deal to do with acidity.

The vinegar has a second job

Australian beetroot has a long association with vinegar and sweetness. For
anyone who grew up eating beetroot on hamburgers or beside a plate of cold
meat, the sharp, sweet liquid is as familiar as the vegetable itself.

Look at the ingredients of a typical canned beetroot product and you may find
beetroot, water, sugar, salt and an acid such as acetic acid.

Acetic acid is the principal acid in vinegar. It contributes the tangy taste,
but it also changes the environment in which microorganisms would have to
survive and grow.

Food scientists measure acidity using the pH scale. A lower pH indicates
greater acidity, and one particularly important dividing line in food
preservation is pH 4.6.

The number matters because of Clostridium botulinum, a bacterium capable of
producing an extremely dangerous toxin under suitable conditions.

Its spores are unusually resistant to heat. In low-acid foods, simply boiling
the contents at ordinary atmospheric pressure cannot be relied upon to control
them.

Properly acidified foods, with an equilibrium pH of 4.6 or below, help prevent
the growth and toxin production of this organism when they are also properly
processed and sealed. The required processing method still depends on the
complete product and its formulation.

This is why a can of beetroot in an acidic liquid and a can of plain sweetcorn
may need quite different preservation processes.

Corn is generally a low-acid food. Commercial processors must account for that
when determining the necessary heat treatment, which may involve temperatures
above the boiling point of water under ordinary atmospheric pressure.

Acidified beetroot can be processed under different conditions, provided its
acidity and other safety requirements are properly controlled.

That distinction is also why recipes for preserving vegetables at home cannot
safely be improvised by guessing how much vinegar to add or how long to boil a
jar.

In a commercial cannery, the process must be designed around the actual food
being packed.

And what about the sugar?

It certainly contributes to the flavour. At high enough concentrations, sugar
can also help preserve food by reducing the water available for microorganisms
to use. Jam is a familiar example.

But the sugar content of ordinary canned beetroot shouldn’t be assumed to
provide that sort of protection on its own. The same applies to salt. Both
ingredients can influence the finished product, but their presence doesn’t
remove the need for an appropriate preservation process.

For a food that looks so uncomplicated on the plate, quite a lot depends on
getting the chemistry right.

Why doesn’t it turn into red porridge?

There is another puzzle here, especially for anyone who has ever left vegetables
boiling on the stove while distracted by something more interesting.

Heat softens vegetables. Too much heat can leave them barely recognisable.

Yet canned beetroot usually emerges in reasonably distinct slices or cubes,
soft enough to eat but firm enough to hold together.

Plant tissue gets much of its structure from cell walls and the substances that
help bind cells together, including pectin. Cooking alters those structures,
which is why a raw beetroot feels so different from a cooked one.

Food processors must balance the treatment needed for safety against the texture
customers expect. The balance varies with the vegetable, its size, its
preparation and the product’s formulation.

Some processed vegetables use permitted firming agents to help preserve their
texture. Others rely on the natural properties of the vegetable and the way it
is processed.

A glance at the ingredients can help establish which applies to a particular
product.

Beetroot is also rather generous with its colour. The red liquid that stains
your fingers, the chopping board and occasionally your shirt contains pigments
called betalains, which give the vegetable much of its characteristic
appearance.

These pigments can move into the surrounding liquid and are affected by
processing conditions, including heat and acidity.

So the liquid in the can isn’t simply a flavouring mixture that happens to be
red. Some of that colour has come from the beetroot itself.

It also explains why the vegetable and the liquid may change in appearance over
time without that change necessarily indicating spoilage.

Is the old beetroot still nutritious?

The common assumption that fresh vegetables must always be nutritionally
superior to canned ones doesn’t survive much scrutiny.

There are differences, certainly, but they depend on the vegetable, the nutrient
and what happens to the food between harvest and consumption.

Heat-sensitive vitamins can be reduced during processing. Vitamin C is one
example, although the extent of any loss depends on the conditions involved.

Minerals are generally more stable under heat, while some water-soluble nutrients
may move from the vegetable into its packing liquid.

Fresh produce has its own complications. Nutrient levels can change during
transport, storage and cooking, particularly when vegetables spend extended
periods between harvest and the dinner table.

Canning also has a substantial practical advantage: it makes vegetables
available when fresh produce is expensive, out of season or inconvenient to
prepare.

None of that means a three-year-old tin contains precisely the same nutrients as
it did when it left the factory. Some components may deteriorate during storage,
and flavour, texture and colour can change.

Food safety and eating quality follow different clocks.

A properly preserved product may remain microbiologically safe after its flavour
or appearance has begun to decline.

The date on the container helps consumers understand the manufacturer’s
expectations, although there are some subtleties to Australian date-labelling
rules.

The date on the bottom isn’t always an expiry date

Australian food labels distinguish between best-before and use-by dates.

A best-before date generally concerns the period during which food is expected
to retain its quality, assuming appropriate storage. A product can sometimes
remain safe and suitable after that date, although its quality may have
declined.

A use-by date has a different meaning. Food carrying one should not be eaten
after that date.

Some shelf-stable foods with a shelf life of two years or more are exempt from
mandatory date marking under the Food Standards Code, although manufacturers
may still choose to provide one.

The condition of the can matters independently of any printed date.

A container that is swollen, leaking, badly rusted or damaged around a seam may
no longer be safe. Serious damage can compromise the barrier that protects the
food from contamination.

Nor is it wise to rely on a sniff or a tentative taste to determine whether
suspicious canned food is safe. Some dangerous contamination cannot be
reliably identified that way.

The sensible approach is to follow the manufacturer’s instructions and discard
cans showing warning signs.

Once a can is opened, its long shelf life is over. The contents are exposed to
the environment and need appropriate refrigeration and handling, just like
other perishable foods.

The technology that kept the beetroot stable for years depended on the food
remaining in its correctly processed, sealed container.

A familiar name from North Brisbane

For Queensland readers, Golden Circle provides a local connection to the
history of food preservation.

Its cannery opened at Northgate in North Brisbane in 1947, at a time when
processing locally grown fruit and vegetables was a substantial part of the
state’s manufacturing economy.

The Northgate factory continues operating, and Kraft Heinz says it now produces
over 150,000 tonnes a year of canned pineapple, fruit juices and cordials.

Golden Circle’s history is a reminder that the ordinary canned foods we keep in
our cupboards come from an industry requiring considerable engineering, technical
knowledge and agricultural organisation.

There is a separate story to be told about how Australian food manufacturing has
changed. For the moment, though, the tin of beetroot offers enough to think
about without following it all the way through the international food trade.

The next time you find an old tin

Appert’s early experiments required an extraordinary amount of patience. He had
to work out which combinations of heating, sealing and storage actually kept
food from spoiling, long before microbiologists could explain the results.

Today, a commercial processor can measure acidity, specify heating conditions,
test seals and validate a preservation process using knowledge that would have
been unavailable to him.

The result is so commonplace that most of us scarcely notice it.

We buy beetroot, put it in the cupboard and forget about it until the next
barbecue.

The tin might have been sitting there for three years, but the real question
isn’t how the beetroot has managed to survive for so long.

It’s how much work went into making sure it could.

By Jack Mercer – Rabbit Hole Fisherman

There are two little words on supermarket cheese packets that most of us barely notice: “Greek style”. They look like marketing copy, but they do more than that. They quietly tell you what kind of cheese you’re actually buying, and where the argument over names, origin and identity begins.

In This Story

• Feta isn’t just a recipe
• Turn the packet over
• Why does the milk matter?
• Then there is the brine
• Who gets to use the word “Feta”?
• Which brings us back to “Greek-style”

Next time you buy feta, don’t put it straight into the trolley. Pick up two packets and turn them over. One might be genuine Greek Feta PDO, made in Greece from sheep’s milk, perhaps with some goat’s milk added. The almost identical-looking block beside it might be Australian-made from cow’s milk.

Both are white and are salty. Both crumble over a salad. They both sit in the same supermarket fridge and, to most of us, both look like feta. But look at the front of the Australian packet and you may find two easily overlooked words: Greek style.

That word “style” is doing a surprising amount of work. It can separate a cheese made in Greece under rules governing its origin, milk and production from an Australian cheese inspired by it but made thousands of kilometres away, often from the milk of a different animal. And there’s another oddity: some Australian packets don’t even spell feta the same way. They call it fetta.

None of this is accidental. Behind one of the most ordinary cheeses in the supermarket is an argument involving Greek farmers, Australian cheesemakers, European food law and international trade negotiations. At the centre of it all is a deceptively simple question: who owns the word “feta”?

To answer that, we first need to understand what feta actually is.

Feta isn’t just a recipe

There is a fundamental difference between saying this cheese is made like feta and saying this cheese is Feta PDO. Within the European Union, feta is registered as a Protected Designation of Origin, or PDO, a status given to foods whose identity is tied to where they come from. Champagne is the obvious comparison. You can make excellent sparkling wine in Tasmania, South Australia or Victoria, but that doesn’t make it Champagne.

Under the European PDO rules, Feta has its own geographical and production requirements. It must be produced in specified areas of Greece, and the milk must come from sheep and goats of breeds traditionally raised in those areas and adapted to local conditions. Genuine Feta PDO can be made entirely from sheep’s milk or from sheep’s milk with goat’s milk added. What you won’t find in genuine Greek Feta PDO is cow’s milk.

The European Commission’s description of Feta PDO links the cheese to Greece’s landscape. Much of the country was historically poorly suited to widespread cattle farming, while sheep and goats could thrive in mountainous, hot and dry conditions. The animals graze on local vegetation, and that combination of breed, feed, environment and traditional cheesemaking became part of the argument that feta belongs to Greece.

Which makes a visit to an Australian supermarket rather revealing.

Turn the packet over

At the time of writing, Coles sells a Greek Feta PDO made in Greece. Read the ingredients and the first two are pasteurised sheep’s milk and pasteurised goat’s milk. Now pick up an Australian-made Greek-style fetta.

Riverina Dairy’s Greek Style Fetta is made in Australia from milk from its own farm at Corowa in New South Wales. Its first ingredient? Pasteurised cow’s milk. It also contains cream, salt, calcium chloride, rennet and cultures. Woolworths’ own Greek Style Fetta is also Australian-made and lists pasteurised cow’s milk as its principal ingredient.

There is nothing inherently wrong with that. These are cheeses made in the feta tradition rather than as Feta PDO. But it explains why two blocks of white cheese that appear to be doing exactly the same job can taste and feel quite different. They’re not necessarily made from the same animal’s milk in the first place.

Why does the milk matter?

Cow’s milk, sheep’s milk and goat’s milk aren’t interchangeable raw materials. Their composition differs, and that affects cheesemaking, texture and flavour. Traditional Feta PDO gets much of its character from sheep’s milk, with goat’s milk sometimes contributing to the blend. The European Commission describes genuine feta as salty and slightly acidic, and notes the slightly peppery character associated with the milk used to make it.

An Australian producer using cow’s milk is starting somewhere else. That doesn’t automatically make the resulting cheese inferior. In fact, some people may prefer the smoother or milder result. Riverina Dairy, for example, deliberately adds cream to its cow’s-milk Greek-style fetta and describes the result as having a smooth, creamy mouthfeel alongside the salty tang and crumbly texture consumers expect from this style of cheese.

So when two fetas taste different, it may not simply be that one manufacturer makes “better feta”. You may actually be comparing cheeses made from different milks.

Then there is the brine

The liquid surrounding feta can look like little more than salty packaging water. It isn’t. In traditional feta production, brine is part of making and maturing the cheese.

After the milk is coagulated, the curd is placed into moulds and allowed to drain without pressure. The cheese is removed, cut and salted. Ripening then takes place in stages. During the first stage, brine is added and the cheese is held under controlled temperature and humidity. It then continues maturing under refrigeration. Under the PDO production process described by the European Commission, the total maturation period is at least two months.

That helps explain why feta isn’t simply “white cheese in salty water”. The salt, moisture, cultures, milk and maturation are all involved in producing the cheese we eventually crumble onto dinner.

And that leads to the really contentious part.

Who gets to use the word “Feta”?

For years, Australia and the European Union have disagreed over geographical indications, the names associated with products from particular places. For Australian consumers this can sound like an obscure trade negotiation happening somewhere in Brussels or Canberra. It isn’t. It reaches directly into the supermarket fridge.

Australia and the EU concluded negotiations on a free-trade agreement on 24 March 2026. As part of the negotiated outcome, Australia agreed to protect hundreds of European geographical indications. One of them is Feta.

But Australian feta makers weren’t simply forgotten. The Australian Government says existing producers with a continuous history of making and labelling feta will be able to continue using the term under a grandfathering arrangement once the agreement takes effect. To qualify as a prior user, producers will need to demonstrate continuous, good-faith use for at least five years before the agreement enters into force.

There is an important qualification here. As of October 2026, the Australia-EU agreement has not yet entered into force. Negotiations are finished, but legal checking, signature, parliamentary processes and ratification still have to occur. DFAT says signature is expected in late 2026 or early 2027, followed by the necessary domestic processes.

So this isn’t merely a historical argument. Australia is in the middle of changing the rules.

Which brings us back to “Greek-style”

Those two little words suddenly make considerably more sense. A cheese can borrow the characteristics we associate with Greek feta without claiming to be a Greek product. And the spelling “fetta” gives Australian producers another way of distinguishing their product in the marketplace.

But the most useful distinction for the person standing in front of the supermarket fridge isn’t really the spelling. It’s the ingredient list and country of origin. Pick up the Coles Greek Feta PDO and you’re looking at cheese made in Greece from sheep’s milk and goat’s milk. Pick up Riverina Dairy Greek Style Fetta and you’re looking at an Australian cheese made principally from cow’s milk, with added cream.

They may sit centimetres apart. They may both crumble beautifully over the same salad. And they may both be delicious. But they are not the same cheese.

And perhaps that is what makes the word “style” so useful. Most of us probably walk past it without noticing. Once you know what it means, it tells quite a story.