Our Daily Bread
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| A loaf of bread from the recipe that follows. |
Good morning! Today I want to share the current bread recipe that I am
using to make bread about once a week. It makes two loaves and we go
through that in about nine days for a family of five (one being a baby and
breadless at this point). That said, my kids don't really eat toast and
don't have sandwiches every day, so if your kids or family or you do,
then you may need to make more bread. Luckily, this method is easy
enough to be done frequently.
Here is the bread recipe that I favor at the moment. It can turn out too dry if you overcook it so be careful. It may take a few times to find out exactly how your bread takes to your particular oven. Also, this bread does need time to rise and knead -two things often given a bad rap by our "always in a hurry" culture. I promise, I am just as busy as all of you and I have found that making bread is not nearly as time consuming and terrible as it is made out to be (or at least as it was portrayed to me by a friend or two.) All in all, this recipe takes me about 15 minutes to assemble the dough and let the yeast activate, and then I let it rise while I do other things. I come back to it, throw it into some bread pans and let is rise again -while I go do other things. Then, it is ready to put in the oven and it is done baking in about a half hour. Seriously, about 20 minutes of hands on time is all it takes -the rest is letting is sit on the counter while you do other things. Not hard and MORE than worth it -as you may want to read about in the post I included on my personal research about wheat, gluten intolerance, and food responsibility. My mom always ground her own wheat and made our bread and it is one of my fondest memories in childhood -walking through the front door or waking up to the smell of baking bread -nothing beats it! This recipe is adapted and tweaked a bit from a Martha Stewart recipe from her Baking Handbook.
Honey Whole Wheat Bread
Ingredients:
3 1/2 C warm water
3 TBSP honey
2 envelopes active dry yeast (1/4 oz each)
1 1/2 lbs (abt 4 cups) bread flour plus more for dusting
1 1/2 lbs (abt 4cups) whole wheat flour
5 oz (1cup) wheat germ
2 TBSP coarse salt
vegetable oil or spray for pans and plastic wrap
1 large egg yolk
1 TBSP heavy cream
Directions:
1. Combine warm water with honey and yeast in a large liquid measuring cup. Stir until yeast is dissolved and let stand until foamy -about five minutes. While yeast is rising, in a large bowl whisk 5 oz (4cups) bread flour, wheat flour, wheat germ, and salt. Make a well in the center. Pour yeast and honey mixture into well. Stir with a wooden spoon until it comes together -it will still be quite stiff and not uniform. Sprinkle remaining 1/2cup bread flour onto counter. Turn out dough onto floured surface and gently knead in the remaining flour. Knead until the dough has come together into a uniform, elastic-like ball. This takes me about 7 minutes because my flour is soft, it may take you longer if your flour is tough. (I like the physical element of this pushing and pulling on the dough). Place in a well oiled/sprayed bowl and cover with sprayed/oiled plastic wrap. Let rise in covered bowl until doubled in size -about 1-1 1/2 hours.
2. Heat oven to 400 degrees. Brush or spray two loaf pans with oil.spray. Turn out dough and divide in half. Shape each half into an oval shape and make at least one side flat and without cracks or creases. Fold more flawed side in on itself. Roll the dough into a log shape and then tuck the ends of the log underneath. Pull dough a bit on the edges to make a smooth surface where ends are tucked under. Be gentle with the dough. Place dough into loaf pans, cover with same oiled/sprayed plastic wrap, and let rise another 30 minutes until doubled in size.
3. Remove plastic wrap. Combine egg and heavy cream in a bowl. take a sharp knife, and in one motion sweep length-wise over the top of the bread. Brush bread with cream and egg mixture. Bake for 18 minutes, and then rotate in oven from back to front. Bake in oven until the top sounds a bit hollow when tapped -about 13-14 minutes more for my oven. * The original recipe calls for 18 minutes, rotating pans, and then 18 minutes more. I found this to be far too long for my oven so I had to decrease the time. You may have to play around with your oven time as well.
4. Let cool in pans, turn out and enjoy!
What is the Deal with Gluten?
Baking is absolutely beautiful. There is something so organic and primitive about activating yeast, mixing ground flours, and kneading dough. The smell of the process alone is enough to make me fond of all things baked. Admittedly, I have always been more of a cook -mostly because I am not patient. However, the past two years I fell head over 'heels' (pun intended) for baking. The process is as lovely to me as the final products.
In addition to this new found passion for baking, I did research (surprise, surprise) on the health qualms and benefits of bread. SO many are not gluten intolerant and trying to find alternatives to their usual wheat-filled foods. I found some very interesting, but not so surprising results as to why we are so gluten intolerant at this point in time. If people had been gluten intolerant centuries ago, they would have all starved because bread was their staple diet! States the article, "Not so long ago, whole-grain flour, with its rich germ, and its abundance of fiber, was at the apex of healthful eating." So this leads one to realize that the wheat they were eating back then is entirely different from the wheat we eat now -and as usual the product we have now is far less nutritious and downright unhealthy.
The article starts off talking about a man in Santa Monica who sells his bread at the local farmers market. His stand is strewn with signs touting statements like: "Don't eat your whole grains if you don't know how!" and "Roman soldiers had only sourdough to get protein." The signs aside, his bread sells out every week and his customers come back as loyally as one would for their pharmacy for a prescription. They all claim that his bread is not only delicious beyond anything they have had before, but that his bread heals them. Why would this be the case? Because this breadmaker, Jack Bezian, uses heirloom wheat and a potent probiotic, fermented yeast. He states, "If you eat a living product, you are going to stay alive. If you eat a dead product, you are going to die." Blunt, but simple and true enough.
In America, we are so afraid of germs, bacteria, and essentially living food, that we do all we can to obliterate the daylights out of it. We pasteurize our dairy, we refine our grains, we pour toxic chemicals all over our produce to kill germs, and we chug antibiotics (literally translating to anti-life) for illnesses that would otherwise (not always) often resolve on their own. Sure, we can kill off the bacteria by doing this, but mother nature always finds a way to one up us by producing something more potent, more powerful, and resistant to whatever it is we just figured out how to kill. Also, if we have rid our guts and bodies of these bacterias, then our immune systems are not familiar with them and therefore have no practice fighting or even using them to our benefit. Now, I am not saying lets all lick mold and eat anything off the ground -there are of course, bacterias and germs that are harmful. No brainer. But when we go on a molecular killing spree we are also killing off the good bacteria -and that is proving to be as dangerous as becoming sick from the bad. Of course, probiotics are all the rage now and I swear by them for myself and my family, but we often think of probiotics in terms of dairy alone -largely due to the mainstream(and unethical) companies that tout their artificially-flavored, gmo based slop as 'good for you and your gut' -a claim that couldn't be further from the truth. (Sidenote -try to look for powder formed probiotics or real yogurt, with real organic sourced ingredients, and sans the usual 3tsp of sugar or sweetener to give you the health you are looking for -not the mass produced cup of crap laced with probiotics- rant end.)
Another problem in modern food-science is that they have even changed the basic molecular nature of yeast. The yeast in mass produced bread is actually synthetic and artificial. Transglutaminase is an artificial form of bacterial yeast. Peter Green, a gastroenterologist at Columbia University and author of Celiac Disease: A Hidden Epidemic, is studying this artificial substance and has found that it reacts and binds with wheat differently than live yeast, which possibly sparks an increase in autoimmune response in the body. Don't bother looking for this artificial ingredient on your Wonder Bread or your Sarah Lee, or even your Arrow Root, because the FDA (who I highly recommend to always second guess) considers this ingredient GRAS or Generally Recognized as Safe. Funny that the FDA never tested the ingredient long term to back up this claim. Because the FDA gave it a green light, companies are not required to list it as an ingredient. Creepy, huh? I don't like being dooped.
Anyway, back to the bread man in Cali. The customers of Jack Bezian make claims that his bread has helped them maintain weight, energy, healthy hair and skin, digestion, and there area handful of people with GLUTEN INTOLERANCE who buy and eat multiple loaves of his bread each week! Why is this? Because several studies have shown (although the studies have been small) that gluten intolerant people can tolerate and even benefit from intensely fermented wheat. (Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, 2007). One reason is perhaps that when wheat bread is thoroughly fermented by yeast, the gluten levels dropped from 75,000 parts to 12 -a level that is legally considered gluten free. Interesting, right? Fermentation is natures way of processing without intense heat while keeping the beneficial bacteria for your body in tact! Nature (God) knows what they are doing!!! Another result from this fermentation is a substantial increase in the amount of amino acids, enzymes, and over 200 flavor compounds -no wonder fermented food tastes so delicious and strong!
So now that we have gone over why the quality and type of yeast and processing of starter cultures matters, let us go over why the change in our wheat and grain matters. Just two hundred years ago, there were over 20,000 documented kinds of wheat that were grown, traded, and sold openly. The current market in the US has narrowed that available classes of wheat to 6 http://www.smallgrains.org/whfacts/6classwh.htm. Granted, each class has many varieties, but most of those are genetically modified for high yield, resistance to pests, and for the ability of the grain itself to endure harsh processing. If we are eating something that is grown to withstand structural integrity on a massive, industrialized mill and also withstand the high heat used to 'speed bake' these commercial loaves, then how are we expecting our bodies to digest it? When we do force ourselves to digest this tough, manufactured substance on a daily basis, we are going to see health implications. Our bodies are designed to work with natural ingredients to absorb what we need and omit what we don't. When we are fed poor quality, nutrient lacking, anti-decompsitional tough food -we are also going to gain an intolerance to it. Even in Europe, the European Union strictly regulates its wheat market. A farmer, Anders Borgen, who is interviewed in the article lives in Denmark and is a plant pathologist. He grows over 2,000 varieties of wheat on his farm organically, yet he is allowed to sell none of them commercially. (Granted the article does say that the Danish government quietly applauds Anders' efforts and has encouraged him to continue his process in hope that the future will hold a different tune for heirloom going mainstream.) Only varieties that produce high yield are allowed in the commercial market. Sure, mass populations require mass food -that in itself is NOT the problem. The problem is when those masses lose the desire, ability, and knowledge of how to be responsible for their own food production. Can you imagine if everyone in New York city or London would grow even a little bit of food in their homes in indoor containers or window boxes? We all have room for big screen t.v.'s and massive couches that take up a whole room, but not room for an indoor herb garden or indoor lemon tree? It is amazing what can be grown inside, on decks, and in small spaces (a whole different post waiting to happen on this amazing subject -hopefully by my mother who is a specialist in this area). And those of us with massive lawns that we waste water on, pollute with chemical fertilizers that get into the soil and water runoff, and that use a lawnmower while puffing out all the more pollutants? (sidenote- we have a huge lawn, too, but in our defense we have no sprinklers because our climate provides enough water, we rent so wen can't alter the landscape much, and we mow with a low-emissions mower) :-/... Yeah, there is really no viable excuse as to why we should not be growing food in at least some of that lawn clad space. (see book link for: http://www.amazon.com/Food-Not-Lawns-Neighborhood-Community/dp/193339207X).
Anyway, if we could all grow a little something we could use the space for large farms better and include more of the crops that not all of us have room to grow. However, the current conditions and regulations severely deplete each of us to access to organically grown, non GMO, and body-compatible varieties of wheat. In North America, wheat undergoes 50 'quality assessments before being produced and sold concerning factors such as yield and baking performance. Of these 50 tests, NOT ONE of them are "related to nutrition" according to Cynthia Harriman of the Food and Nutrition Strategies for the Whole Grains Council of North America. In addition to looking into the restricted access to heirloom varieties of grain and wheat, I urge you to really do your homework on the reality of GMO's and their impact on society this far. The corporations producing them and making money off them will tout them not only as safe, but necissary -a claim that has plenty of scientific and geographical data to disprove. Here are some very informative articles concerning the reality of GMO's.:
http://geneticroulettemovie.com/http://www.naturalnews.com/037923_gluten_sensitivity_gmos_food_intolerance.html
Another contributing factor is the use of pesticides on our grain crops. These are very real chemicals and will very realistically affect your health. Another article interviewing Jeffery Smith, MS, in the documentary I mentioned above http://geneticroulettemovie.com/ explains this -here is a quote from it:
"One of the likely culprits, suggests Smith, is the Bt toxin (Bacillus thuringiensis),
registered with the EPA as a pesticide, making the plants (primarily
corn and cotton) expressing the bacteria, pesticides as well. The Bt
toxin effectively kills insects by exploding their stomachs by poking
holes in cells. While scientists for the biotech industry have said the
human digestive process destroys any traces of Bt toxins left in our
food, the continuing rise in digestive disorders including gluten
intolerance suggests otherwise. Smith also cites a 2011 study conducted
by the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the University of
Sherbrooke Hospital Centre in Quebec, Canada that found Bt toxins in the blood of 93 percent of pregnant women
and 80 percent of unborn babies, a condition that would not be possible
if the digestive process destroyed the toxin, as the industry suggests." (Full article: http://www.organicauthority.com/health/do-gmos-cause-gluten-intolerance.html ).
Again, we are asking our bodies to not only digest a super-strong grain, we are also asking it to deal with the load of toxins coming in with the grains DNA.
The last process that is altering our wheat is the process of refinement. This "modern assault on wheat" extends to the industrial flour mill. Traditional stone mills grind the kernels of the grain, then sift out varying amounts of bran to create different grades of flour (aka semi-refined flour). This process allows the wheat to retain the wheat's germ, which houses a great deal of the grains nutrients. Most American mills have abandon this process. The mills now smash the grain with steel hammers and rollers, then toss the bran and germ into separate piles, leaving only the starch for the consumer. Today, when a whole wheat order comes into a miller, that staff simply puts the bran and germ back into the white flour starch and ships it off. Why is this a problem? Because scientifically, this is equal to taking a car apart, then tossing its parts back into a bowl without actually reassembling the parts, and calling it a functioning car. Once again we are introducing a product that is so far removed from original form that our bodies are not meant to digest it. To be fair, stone milling depletes the grain of many nutrients, too. However, vitamin E -the germs primary nutrient -is left largely in tact through stone milling.
The important question is this: If the current system is giving people inferior food and causing genetic and even reproductive disorders, but feeding us in the masses, is it worth it? Not in my opinion because there is a way for each of us to be more responsible for growing and buying real, organic, ethical food. As Pollan so wisely said, "We have three votes a day -make them count." So what to do about this wheat perplexity that I have just outlined? Support the little guys like Jack. Seek out those stone-milled producers. Try to buy and grow your own heirloom varieties of wheat. Put more thought into your food and what process was behind its origins and make up. Eat more living food -good bacteria is essential to good health. But only organic, non-GMO products. The more support we give these companies, the more choice (freedom from monopoly controlled seeds) and health we will have. Make your own bread at home and try different recipes, wheat types, and flavors. Taking control of yours and your families health begins in the kitchen. And above all, stay far away from what my friend likes to call "soda-pop bread"! That edible food-like loaf at the supermarket is not only a fraud, it is compromising our health. What do I do personally? I buy my flour from an organic stone-milled producer that also sells their product at the grocery store. I am currently on a mission to seek out o local company doing the same thing. I also started making our bread at home two years ago and I can attest to the health benefits we have experienced as a family -better digestion being the main one. I also grow my own yeast, not always, but usually. This is a fun process in itself! Having "boogers" as my son calls them in the fridge has never been so beautiful to me because I know that my family is that much healthier because of it. I hope you have found this post on such a hot button issue informative and helpful. I share what I learn because I care. I hope that you undertake your own wheat adventure and find increased health and peace of mind (and gut) along the way. Have a great day!
Article that sparked my research:
Health Report: Our Daily Bread -Whole Living Magazine Body and Soul in Balance Issue 69 September 2012
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