Fresh Whole Wheat Flour
The quick answer: Whole grain flour should be fresh.
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San Francisco Bread
We’re going up to San Francisco in the morning. The Beautiful Wife will shop for Christmas ornaments with the other women of the family I grew up in. It’s a tradition. She tries to buy ornaments as gifts for the kids that recognize some achievement of the year. I like that idea, that when you decorate your tree with these collected ornaments you revisit the important steps of your life. And San Francisco is ground zero for serious bread baking, which fits into this post.
Sourdough Whole Wheat
America is finally done with Wonder Bread. The company went out of business—I guess people stopped buying. So here’s the next thing in healthful bread: Whole Wheat Sourdough. You know why whole wheat is best. So now we’ll talk about the benefits of sourdough.
Mike Pollan, the best nutrition writer of our time, came out with a book this year: Cooked, A Natural History of Transformation. It’s not as good as In Defense of Food, but it does have an interesting section on the use of sourdough.
People have eaten sourdough breads for 98% of recorded history. But in the last century we turned to modern single-specie yeasts because they were fast. Well it seems the slow action (it can take hours) of traditional sourdough yeasts had hidden benefits:
- The long fermentation of sourdough breaks down the phytic acid in grains that locks up the minerals. We need these minerals, for example, to build strong bones and avoid osteoporosis. With sourdough breads the calcium and phosphorus are more bio-available.
- The long fermentation more thoroughly breaks down the gluten proteins that are problematic for some people.
- There’s another benefit, sourdough breads have lower Glycemic Index (GI), important for prevention of diabetes.
That’s pretty much the message of 86 pages of Pollan’s writing. The last bakery I went into, I asked to speak with the manager. I had a question: Do you offer sourdough whole grain bread, and if not, when? He was baffled by my question.
But I’m encouraged to find a bakery here in California—Old Town Baking—that provides Whole Wheat Sourdough to the local Sprouts store. It’s a nice heavy bread with a tangy taste. The Beautiful Wife loves it toasted with a sharp cheese melted on top. (I should mention that it’s not 100% whole grain, just about ¾; there’s about ¼ of enriched flour.)
Fresh Whole-wheat Flour
So I have a question for Old Town Baking: How fresh is your whole grain wheat? This is the next frontier in flour because whole-wheat flour doesn’t keep well. It’s best if you grind it at the time of use because the omega-3 fats and some vitamins are attacked by oxygen in the air once the protective husk is removed.
That’s the holy grail now—sourdough whole wheat bread make with freshly ground flour. You can do this at home if you keep a sourdough starter. That’s our next step.
Healthy Changes for Grains
Grains are one of our 13 rotating topics and this is what we’ve said in the Healthy Changes so far:
#10: Bread should be whole grain with more natural fiber (see the nutrition panel) than added sugar.
#23: Eat a variety of whole grains.
#36: Use fresh whole-grain flours.
I think we’ll modify this week’s post when we have more experience cooking with sourdough starters. Maybe it’ll say: Bake your bread using sourdough starter and fresh-ground grains. I like this, that we keep improving the Healthy Changes.
Thursday, November 7, 2013 at 7:22PM | by Skip Hellewell | 12 Comments | 4 References | Share Article | Email Article
Reader Comments (12)
A friend of mine went on a journey to discover healthier wheat bread after trying to resolve the problem of gluten-intolerance and wheat sensitivities in her own home and the Word of Wisdom's very strong recommendation that wheat is for man. It lead her to natural yeast baking (sourdough). She has published one book and a second one is on the way. Her website is http://www.thebreadgeek.com/ , She also teaches classes in Utah.
I love this info on sourdough! For the past year we have only eaten sourdough as our bread....essentially for the reasons you have listed. I have experimented with lots of recipes but finally found my go-to. I wanted something easy and that tasted like it came from a bakery. It delivers every time. It is 1/3 whole wheat and 2/3 white wheat and I'm ok with that. It has a long rise time and white flour doesn't contain phytic acid because it doesn't have the bran on it. I have yet to find a 100% whole wheat sourdough that turns out great.
I also make sourdough waffles, pancakes and English muffins.
Sourdough is so easy to maintain, it's forgiving and easy to use. I highly recommend it!
Thank you for this information. I did not know about the health benefits of sourdough bread. I've never baked any sourdough products before, so that will be my new challenge. I'm hoping others will share recipes or resources.
I've been baking sourdough bread, waffles, tortillas, etc. for about two years now. I feel like it's much better for digestion. It was overwhelming at first, but I soon realized just how much abuse a sourdough starter can take (I keep it in the fridge and sometimes I don't feed it for weeks) and it is now part of my routine. Here is the easiest, tastiest whole wheat sourdough recipe I've found (from gnowfglins.com, an awesome sourdough resource):
1 1/2 c. sourdough starter
3 c. water
1 1/2 T. real salt
about 6 1/2 c. whole wheat flour (ground at home is best)
Mix everything together. The consistency you want is much softer than a traditional bread dough but it should hold a little bit of a shape (thicker than a batter). Cover loosely with plastic wrap and put in the fridge overnight. When you are ready to bake, shape the dough carefully into a round loaf (you want to keep as many of the air bubbles as possible) on a baking sheet lined with parchment or silpat, coat with flax, sesame and sunflower seeds (optional), put in the oven and turn it on to 400 (the dough rises as the oven preheats. If you want a chewy crust you can cover the dough with a large bowl for the first 20 minutes. Bake for about 45 minutes, depending on the loaf size and shape. You want a nice dark crust. I usually make two loaves with the dough. The dough will keep in the fridge for several days, although it gets more sour and flat with time. The dough also makes a great pizza crust, which is nice because it's quick and ready to go in the fridge.
I forgot to link to the recipe I use:
http://kellythekitchenkop.com/2013/07/the-best-sourdough-bread-recipe-no-knead-sourdough-expert-with-step-by-step-instructions.html
It's also no-knead which I'm all about! The post is fairly lengthy and worth reading the first time around but I promise it's an easy recipe. Also, I don't have any of the fancy kitchen equipment..I just use regular things from my kitchen. Happy baking!
I have made sourdough bread with freshly ground whole wheat or spelt flour. My family loves it! It is hard to keep up with the sourdough starter, though. If I can figure out a good schedule for a starter, then I will probably be more successful with it. The breads were delicious. I even made a cinnamon bread with it- and shared it with my extended family. They loved it, too! I noticed that I don't get acid reflux when I eat sourdough bread that I make like I do when I eat bread with store bought yeast.
Hurray for this post on sourdough! I recently started researching using sourdough for whole grain breads but was discouraged in the end. Many of the recipes used a mixture of whole grains and white flour and then there was the issue of the sourdough starter. It sounds like you need to bake with it often or you end up discarding most of it and with only two of us in our household I don't have the need to bake bread that often. So in the end I decided it was too much hassle for what sounded like not a lot of nutritional benefit. Please, if someone has better answers I would love to give the sourdough method a try. Do have a good sourdough starter recipe and bread recipe you are will to share? I would also appreciate more tips and methods for success with sourdough.
Karen, I have read about keeping the sourdough start in the fridge and pulling it out once a week for feeding and using it. Then you only have to bake bread once a week (or less often, but still feeding it once a week). I am trying to work out a schedule that will be good for me, as I would bake bread at least twice per week.
What starter do you use? Did all of you grow your own? I tried a couple and did not like the flavor. This post makes me want to try again.
I got my starter from the Cultures For Health website. I chose the San Francisco starter and it's been great. They have video tutorials on their website that I found very helpful to watch before starting.
I have left my starter in the fridge for a month without feeding it and it still survived!
Working with sourdough is truly less intimidating than it sounds. I'd say it took me 2 weeks to really figure out what I'm doing and it's been a breeze since. Also fun to try new things with.
Swallentine, I had a starter from a friend that was really sour and my kids didn't like it. Neither did it, for that matter. She had left it unattended in the fridge for months and then tried to revive it. Then I bought the Desem sourdough start from Cultures for Health. I used that for a while and the bread was much more mild and my children and relatives loved it. We traveled a lot and it got too sour for me to even try to revive. I just sent away for a free start from Caleb Warnock. He has a blog and you can sign up to get a free start that is dried if you send a SASE to him. Mine arrived, so I just need to get it started. His is supposed to be pretty mild as well.
I baked with a sourdough starter for a couple years. I got it from a friend's dad who first got his starter 30 years ago from someone who claimed it was a hundred years old. I thought that was pretty awesome. Some things I really loved about it. Sourdough pancakes and waffles are so delicious. I also made crackers that were really good. I never did love the bread I baked though. I had to bake a couple times a week because it would go stale and crumbly quickly. And frankly, I love a slightly sweet and tender loaf and that just doesn't happen with whole wheat sourdough. Maybe I just needed to improve my baking skills. My life got busy and I let the starter die because I couldn't keep up making everything from scratch. I would like to try again, maybe when my kids aren't so little. Convenience is just so tempting! It would be nice to have a community baker who was skilled in making breads that are the best for us. I would definitely be a customer.