When can I claim my bread is organic?

[gfron1]

I've been using unbleached, non-bromated AP for the past couple of years for my starter and bread. I'm now going to use exclusively organic flour. At what point do you think its legitimate for me to claim that the bread is organic? Ever?

[slkinsey]

It's really just a matter of math. Understand that every time you refresh your starter with organic flour, you are in effect diluting the not-organic flour. There is a law in chemistry relating to how much a substance can be diluted without losing that substance entirely. This limit is related to Avogadro's Constant (aka the number of atoms in a mole). For practical purposes, let's say a dilution of 1 part in 10^24.

Let's say that you are doing a ten-fold dilution every time you feed the starter. This is to say, for example, that you hold back approximately 5 grams of starter and feed that with 50 grams of "new food" every time you refresh (this would be a very good way to feed your starter, by the way). After 24 such feedings, you would have diluted the not-organic starter by a factor of 1 part in 10^24. This would mean that there is practically no chance that even a single molecule of the original not-organic starter remains. If you refresh the starter twice a day, figure two weeks. At this point, I would think that even the most dogmatic organic person would have to understand that there would be more "not organic" material in the starter from dust in the air than there would be from the original starter.

Edited March 2, 2009 by slkinsey (log)

[gfron1]

Thank you. And, I could probably make the claim sooner since I've noticed more and morre organic products are stating contents such as "90% organic ingredients" suggesting 10% non-organic. I'll do my math and get the new signage.

[tsquare]

Do you need to follow any state or federal regulations to make such a claim?

It might be more fitting to say "Made with 100% organic flour" if that is what you are doing, if the salt or other ingredients are do not follow suit.

BTW - dinner service? You really don't sleep, do you?

[slkinsey]

Thank you.  And, I could probably make the claim sooner since I've noticed more and morre organic products are stating contents such as "90% organic ingredients" suggesting 10% non-organic.  I'll do my math and get the new signage.

Depending on your percent inoculum (e.g., what percentage of the flour in your bread formula comes from the starter) you should be able to make a claim of 90% more or less right away. Again, this is a simple matter of math. If you start off with your "not organic" starter and refresh it with a 10-fold dilution using organic flour, then use the refreshed starter as a 20% inoculum for your bread, you already have bread that is around "98% organic" -- this is a claim you could make for bread baked that evening with a starter that began as "100% not organic" that morning (provided it is a sufficiently active culture to do all your leavening in that amount of time).

It might be more fitting to say "Made with 100% organic flour" if that is what you are doing, if the salt or other ingredients are do not follow suit.

gfron's issue is that the starter contains not-organic flour. So you can't make a claim of "100% organic flour" until you can make that claim about the starter. However, as I showed above, it doesn't take too many "organic" generations of the starter before you can make a claim of "greater than 99% organic flour."

Edited March 2, 2009 by slkinsey (log)

[gfron1]

Right, and I'm not going for "certified organic" so if I had to I could claim, "organically produced" or "with organic flour," "non-certified organic," or some such claim. I don't think my customers will split hairs with me. My salt is not organic (I'm sure someone sells such a thing), but then again, neither is my water. But by volume or weight (taking out the water), my product will be 99% organic.

[Lisa Shock]

If you want to get certified or not, understand that there are three classifications for organic products: 100% organic, organic, and, made with organic ingredients. Each has a specific legal meaning. You can read a bit more HERE.

[gfron1]

By definition then I can label as 100% organic since the category excludes salt and water.

[Chris Hennes]

That's very interesting. So it looks like gfron1 would fall into the "Organic" category for certification:

Organic – products that are at least 95 percent organic, excluding water or salt.  A label reading “organic” and the USDA organic seal can appear on the package. The 5 percent of the product that is not organic must comprise materials that are not commercially available as organic, or they can be nonagricultural materials that appear on the USDA's “National List” of approved materials.

He will be basically 100% organic if you are allowed to omit water and salt, but the page is unclear if non-"whole" foods ever get that label.

[gfron1]

And this is where organics get messy. I re-read the defs after your post Chris and completely agree with you. But in my first reading, using Sam's logic and calculations, and noting that the next category accepts salt and water as "an aside," then I'll be at 99%+ organic. If I can't take water or salt out, then are we talking weight or volume? And, there's no such thing as organic water as far as I know, so then if it is lumped in with salt, would it not therefore be logical to assume that I could remove both ingredients from my calculations?

[jackal10]

You could use spring water and sea salt...

[Chris Hennes]

My reading of the certification requirements is that they simply don't consider salt or water when they are looking at organic status. After all, what the heck is "organic" salt in a non-biochemistry sense? Remember, we're not talking about "truth in advertising" here, we're talking about actual official certification—if you don't want to use their "100% Organic" label, it is a moot point and if I was you I'd feel comfortable labeling the bread as organic based on slkinsey's arguments.