It’s a triumph of engineering chemistry. It’s not only gluten free, it’s yeast free as well. The presence of E464, hydroxypropyl methylcellulose, usually shortened to hypromellose, is described by the manufacturers as “a stabiliser”. That’s a bit disingenuous. Hypromellose is thixotropic - at high temperature and concentration it changes from a liquid to a semi solid. That’s why it’s used in a lot of gluten free bread, because it can capture the bubbles of CO2 produced by the yeast, just like gluten does, and gives the bread it’s texture.
Also, like silica gel, it absorbs water, so if there’s a lot in the bread, it fairly quickly becomes damp, and forms a fine substrate for mould growth. That’s why each slice is packed in airtight wrapping.
Now this Lodough stuff doesn’t contain any yeast, so where do the bubbles come from? Not baking soda, that’s not an ingredient. So it must come from industrial CO2 inserted at some stage in the process.
And you can’t toast it - they tell you not to because it is highly flammable. Hypromellose is like cellulose - highly flammable, so there must be a hell of a lot in this stuff.
Finally, all that hypromellose will be particularly fartogenic. Coeliacs shouldn’t try it for that reason, it could irritate the gut.
