Granary Bread ??

[Deleted User]

Still scratching my head over this one ...

Hubby asked me to get him a loaf of granary bread today and I popped into Sainsbury's ... only to be told that the term Granary (as applied to bread) is now owned by Hovis and no-one else can use it !! (They've had to relabel theirs Harvest Grain).

To me, granary bread is just another type of bread (along with white, wholemeal, wheatmeal, rye, seeded, etc.) How on earth can a company "own" a term like that ?? And who allowed them to ?

It just seems bonkers to me

nuatha

Corona wrote: »

Still scratching my head over this one ...

Hubby asked me to get him a loaf of granary bread today and I popped into Sainsbury's ... only to be told that the term Granary (as applied to bread) is now owned by Hovis and no-one else can use it !! (They've had to relabel theirs Harvest Grain).

To me, granary bread is just another type of bread (along with white, wholemeal, wheatmeal, rye, seeded, etc.) How on earth can a company "own" a term like that ?? And who allowed them to ?

It just seems bonkers to me

RHM produced the flour originally (its a blend of brown flour with malted wheat grains) and trade marked the name. There are other manufacturers offering similar products but obviously using different names. If Sainsburys have stopped buying Granary flour then they no longer have the right to use the Granary name.
Its the same as Hovis, which is just a wheatgerm flour but has been a registered trademark since 1890, though Granary only dates from the mid '80s.
HTH

Callie22

Granary is a trade name that Rank-Hovis created to describe a white bread flour with added malt and malted grains. They created that particular blend and 'Granary' has always been their own particular trade-name for that kind of flour, although the name has come to be used generically to describe any bread made from that kind of malted grain flour (like we say 'Hoover' when we mean a vacuum cleaner ...)

My mum's a baker and used to buy her flour from Rank-Hovis before they stopped selling direct to small bakeries, and I know that when she was looking for a new supplier she had to get used to the different names that all of the other flour companies gave to this type of flour blend - malted wheat, malted grain etc etc. The other big name for this type of blend is 'Harvester', you'll often see that around. They're all pretty much the same although Rank-Hovis' Granary flour tends to make a sweeter bread.