Bread Redemption

This is a story about rediscovering a staple food, rediscovering tradition and understanding why best ingredients just work, and ultimately, a story about making peace with one of the best and oldest food in humanity long walk.

In the begining of the year I was overweight, I was weighting 200 pounds distributed in my 6,2 feet height, what gave me roughly 44 pounds of fat.

I didn’t wanted that anymore, so I decided to start a low carb diet, for months I did it and lost a lot of weight (33 pounds to be exact), even I was astounished by the effect on me this diet had, the problem was, to keep myself in this diet and not relapse, I read a lot of articles about what was called bad food, and in all of them, to my surprise bread was present.

I never understood, bread has been an staple food since humanity is around, how can it be bad for you?

After I lost the weight I wanted to keep on the diet, because I understood it was generaly healthier for me, the problem was bread; Bread is a confort food for me, ever since I was a kid and my dad woke me up for school, there was always hot bread on the table. When I was motivated by the weight loss, I could deal with that, but now I couldn’t anymore, besides, I was really pissed off, bread just can’t be bad, can it?

So I started studying, I just had to figure out why bread is now bad, could this guru’s of low carb be lying?exagerating? or there is something to it?

The first thing I looked into was method, for me bread was pure method, the ingredients were always the same right? flour, water salt and yest,( I was wrong as you’ll see in a few sessions) so I looked into ancient ways to bake bread, how they did it in the origins of bread

The thing is, the method is so different, is almost NOT the same product.

Industrial yeast did not exist until the 19th century, there was only what we call today sourdough starters, so in the old days, the only bread was sourdough bread, fermented over the course of days, could this be the missing piece in my bread puzzle?

Luckily to answear my question, netflix has a great documentary about bread, is part of Michael Pollan “Cooked” series, in an episode called “air”, Pollan came to a similar conclusion as mine, and even showed a baker doing it the old ways,this guy was keen with old methods and insisted sourdough was the way to a better more nutritious bread, his name is Richard Burdon and that is him.

Bourdon, only does sourdough, and let the dough ferment for days before baking, and his point is, because the bacteria fermenting the bread does some part of the digestion, his bread is more digestible than what we have today in common bakeries.

He is apparentely backed by science.

The discover of industrial yeast was an enourmous achievement, it allowed bread to be really cheap and avaliable to everyone, but, as usually happens in discoveries like that, we lost something in the process, the time it takes for the bread to rise is now a couple of hours, but we lost all the pre digestion the bacteria did for us, and ended up with an inferior and more dangerous product healthwise, with higher gluten percentage and glicemic index.

When I started this study, I had an ideia, that the problem must be only the method because all bread use the same ingredients, and as I already admited, I was wrong, not all flour is the same, and some flours are better than others.

I’m not only talking about integral and white, im talking about which white and which integral.

In the ancient ways flour was really simple, you took the wheat to a stone grinder, grind it and put it in a bag for later use, today most flours in Brazil(my country) and in the US are not even close to this method.

The flour is washed to get a more stable product, resulting in white flour, and worse, they add a bunch of things to make its shelf life longer, and even to make it whiter, yes in Brazil they bleach the flour to get a whiter prettier product.

But wait, the disaster is not over yet, because the washing was taking away every nutrient, the US government decided at the time to force manufacturers to add back some of the nutrients like iron, sounds like a good ideia right?

Turns out it isn’t, the way they add back those ingredients, make them biologically unavaliable, meaning the body can’t find a good way to use them, so what we get is a flour that besides having no nutrients, has this added nutrients that our body can’t use and has to deal with.

If we look to the french for example, they do not add anything in their flour, not vitamins, not bleach, nothing, it is closer to the original product, what could in parts explain why they are thinner than the average american while eating enourmous amounts of bread and other flour based foods.

If we dig deeper into this flour mess, eventually we understant that even the wheat grain is not the same, take for example Einkorn grain, is called nature’s first wheat, very likely what was used in the beginning of bread, Einkorn contains higher levels of protein, essential fatty acids, phosphorous, potassium, pyridoxine (B6), lutein and beta-carotene (lutein) when compared to modern wheat, Einkorn flour is kind of making a come back but it is still hard to find it, and it is really expensive.

When we add all the information, it is easy to understand how bread can be a staple food, carrying humanity for thousands of years and still be a bad food today, it is just not the same bread!

Compared to ancient bread, what we eat today is less nutritious, less digestable, and yes, it has less flavour and less complexity to it, modern bread is but a shadow of ancient bread, that’s why it is making us ill.

For the people that love bread and want to keep eating it, try sourdough, a lot of places sell it, at least, you will already get a better and healthier product. If you can why not bake your own? It is not very easy I admit, but the results will be amazing, you can make it sourdough with french flour or, dare I say, with Einkorn flour, for a much superior product, in every way. Other advantages include amazing smell in the house and hot bread whenever you want.

The way to make peace with bread is to return to the way it was made in the old days, the way it should still be made, with a lot of respect for the product for the time it takes to ferment the right way and for the ingredients.

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