Yours Bread [DRAFT]
The Bread-shaped object problem
80% of the bread Aotearoa is made using the Chorleywood Bread Process. Also called the "no time" method, the CBP involves high speed mixing and (in its modern form) a bevy of enzymes and "dough improvers." It can turn flour into a sliced and packaged product in 3 and a half hours. Bread made vis the CBP is shown to increase the symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome. The problem here is that grains have stuff in them that isn't food (phytic acid and other anti-nutrients) that inhibit proper digestion and block the body's ability to extract the good stuff. Why make such shit food? The CBP, because of its short fermentation, allows the use of low protein (read: poor quality) wheat and of course the fast turnaround and easy mechanisation make for fantastic scalability. Yep: they do it because it's cheaper.
That stuff in the supermarket is not bread, just a bad fake: a bread-shaped object.
Go slow
If grains are so bad for you then how come many human societies through the millennia have relied on them as a staple crop? First: The grains themselves contain enzymes that will begin to break down a lot of the bad stuff - it just requires the introduction of water and some time. Second: many people for many thousands of years have been leavening their bread. Leavening is the process of fermentation that makes bread rise. Before the isolation and selective breeding of Saccharomyces cerevisiae that began in the 19th century, everyone was using some kind of natural leavening - known primarily in the Anglosphere as "sourdough."
The sourdough process involves capturing a variety of resident microbes from wherever you are and creating a stable community - called a starter - that you use to ferment your bread. The variety in the average sourdough starter is vast, and each is unique, but they usually consist mainly of Saccharomyces and Candida yeasts and Lactobaccilus bacteria. You now have a whole population of microbes essentially pre-digesting the grains for you.
Many people who experience digestive trouble with industrial wheat products report less issue or none at all when consuming naturally leavened breads. This is backed up by research showing that sourdough fermentation reduces the amount of phytic acid (blocks the uptake of minerals), FODMAPs (short chain carbohydrates that are hard to digest), ATIs (α-amylase/trypsin inhibitors - trigger an immune response in some people) and gluten present in a loaf. The longer the fermentation, the more digestible the bread becomes.
A perceived drawback with this method is that you have to play by the starter's rules. Our starter is named The Manager for this reason. Even the most active starter cannot match the speed of commercial bakers yeast, let alone the CBP and - as the greedy people of this world like to remind us - time is money.
"Sourdough starter has been used to leaven bread for most of human history. It contains Lactobacillus bacteria and multiple wild yeast strains which are naturally occurring. Baking with sourdough starter requires a long fermentation which unlocks the nutrient potential of whole-grain flours.
The time taken to leaven our loaves allows for the break down of proteins (gluten) into amino acids making it easier to digest. Many of the simple sugars in the grain are pre-digested by the wild yeast during this slow fermentation, which is good for our blood sugar levels.
Lactobacillus bacteria, present in sourdough culture, play a key role improving the nutritional value of sourdough bread. In nature Phytic acid protects the mineral nutrients within plant seeds until they are ready to sprout and require this energy. But for humans, Phytic acid is considered an anti-nutrient because it binds minerals within our digestive tract. Lactobacillus bacteria create a lightly acidic pH level in our bread dough which activates the enzyme Phytase. Phytase breaks down Phytic acid, unlocking the grains’ mineral content, and making it available for our digestion.
In contrast, commercial bread making uses baker's yeast, a fast acting single yeast strain, which contains no beneficial bacteria. It was introduced to speed up bread production around 160 years ago. The use of baker’s yeast short cuts the critical longer sourdough fermentation process required to bake highly nutritious bread."