Bread Dread: Are you Really Gluten Intolerant?

[Guest guest]

At 04:18 AM 3/1/2008, you wrote:

Very interresting....thanks



passing this along fyi..............

 

 

 

Bread Dread: Are you Really Gluten

Intolerant?

By

 

Clive Lawler

 

 

http://nourishedmagazine.com.au/blog/articles/bread-dread-are-you-really-gluten-intolerant

 

 

The following story is, unfortunately, true.

 

Before the 1950’s, most bakeries in Australia,

indeed the world, ran 2 shifts of workers because the dough was fermented

throughout the night, long and slow. That bread was made from plain,

unbleached wheat flour, and now, seen in retrospect, was superior to most

breads of today.

 

I would often visit our local bakery with my uncle,

who home-delivered bread for many years. During the 50’s, the US-based

bakery giant Tip Top came to Brisbane, and started to buy up all the

small bakeries it could; other giants competed with them, meaning that in

very quick time we had only 2 or 3 bakers in the entire city, ditto in

all parts of Australia.

 

One of the very first actions these corporate bakers

were to take was to introduce the fast loaf (3 hours from start to

finish), effectively eliminating the need for half, or one entire shift,

of their labour force. This was actually required by a new law called The

Bread Act.

 

This seemingly innocuous cost-cutting decision would

relentlessly impact and compromise the health of each and every bread

lover since – that’s virtually everybody since the 50’s – and would

cause countless deaths, bestow myriad miseries, as it continues to do.

The first act of a major tragedy that still plays, everywhere,

everyday.

 

Very basic bread that had once been fermented for a

healthy 8 hours or more was now brewing in just 2 hours! Yeast levels

were increased, accelerants and proving agents introduced. Glutens,

starches and malts were not given the remotest opportunity to convert to

their digestible potentials, in a sickly anti-nutrient-laden, gluepot

stew. Breads are still made this way, even the so-called health

breads!

 

Fast-made bread is one of the most destructive

implementations into the modern diet. It has become normal fare, and

poorly-prepared and poorly-digested wheat is the chief contributor to the

current plague of “gluten-intoleranceâ€, obesity, diabetes, candida

diseases and many allergenic conditions.

 

Gluten (once properly fermented) is a wonderful

vegetable protein. It is actually a mix of the two elastic proteins,

gliadin and glutenin. So-called gluten-intolerant adults and kids are

eating my long-ferment bread with amazement at, delight in, the taste,

the clarity and the painless, satisfactory satiety.

 

Sure, be intolerant of gluten in its under-prepared,

expedient form. It most certainly is toxic. Such sensitivity is wise and

self-preserving, but do not condemn gluten and wheat via this premise. We

are not gluten-intolerant; we are allergic to the accelerating haste of

modern life!

 

Wheat is, yes, potentially one of the most highly

allergenic foods on the planet, but like soya beans, converts to a truly

great food once it is fermented long enough.

 

All current breads, pastas, pizzas, cakes, biscuits,

and on and on and on, contain complex proteins which have not been given

the requisite fermentation time to convert to their excellent, digestible

alter-egos.

Wheat also contains a difficult starch and a highly allergenic maltose,

but within that same complexity, when correctly fermented, there lies

varied and splendid nutrients – 18 amino acids (proteins), complex

carbohydrate (a supeer efficient source of energy), B vitamins, iron,

zinc, selenium and magnesium, and maltase.

 

From a demon to a god in one ferment.

 

The catastrophic changes in bakery procedures were a

disaster that went largely unnoticed in the 50’s, except by my

baker/uncle and a few other observant souls. He became aware that from

that fateful change onwards, many of his customers began to grow ill. Amy

MacGrath made the same observation in her book “One Man’s

Poison.â€

 

Of course the 50’s also saw the introduction of

mass pasteurisation of milk and other food perversions, so there were

several developing culprits. This period marked the beginning of the end

for bread and milk as healthy, nutritious staples, and signalled the

onset of the demise of food in general.

 

Today, the absolute extreme of this perfidy is found

in Hot Bread kitchens, which produce loaves of very toxic,

allergy-inducing crud, in just 40 minutes from start of dough to baked

finish!

 

Long Ferment

Bread

The longer the ferment, the less yeast is required.

Over time, even the smallest amount of yeast will slowly grow and spread

throughout a dough. The addition of ginger powder (instead of sugar) to

the original mix helps to create a strident growth network for even and

healthy leavening to occur.

 

Sourdough leaven is a fine option to baker’s yeast,

but bear in mind that sourdough is also yeast, also a leavening agent.

It’s just that in sourdough the yeasts are attracted, gathered wild

from the atmosphere.

 

Remember, whether you employ baker’s yeast or

sourdough as the leaven, the actual dough fermenting time must be longer

than 6 hours!

 

I have not only gluten-intolerants enjoying my

wheat/granulated yeast bread, but also yeast-sensitive folk are also

reporting no reaction – not 100% success of course, but enough to suggest

that, just as proteins and starches transform in the long ferment

process, the yeast positively alters also.

 

The tremendous upsurge in cases of gluten,

carbohydrate and lactose sensitivity is a totally modern phenomena, and

finds its origins in quick, economically convenient, and incorrect food

preparation - forging a delusional, diversionary path that we have

charted in just the last 50 years, far far away from traditional

lines.

 

Bran is

Bullshit!

Actually, far, far better to eat bullshit than bran!

True.

 

Bran is the outer husk of any grain or seed, it is

indigestible, and its high phytate content robs our bodies of nutrients,

especially minerals, and stifles digestion. If we are eating well, we

don’t need such gross fibrous brooms to “sweep out†our

bowels.

 

Bran robs us of nutrients in another way also:

Because bran is an irritant to the bowel, its radical stimulation of the

peristaltic motion means that any foods accompanying the bran get shunted

along far too rapidly in the bowel, severely restricting the crucial

extraction of minerals and vitamins which would occur in a normal (slow)

passage through the colon.

 

Not even to their pigs would the Chinese give bran,

from any grain (rice included).

 

In 1542 England, the government-published “Dyetary

of Health†stated “bread having too much bran is not laudableâ€. At

that time, the rich ate plain bread, the poor ate the waste, the

brown.

 

Bran is now lauded as a lifesaver, is present in so

many of today’s foods. A huge market has been created for what was, for

thousands of years, and deservedly so, rubbish.

 

Don’t toss it out though, it’s ideal for the

compost heap or chipboard manufacture.

 

I have experimented with fermenting bran-rich

wholemeal flour doughs for over 24 hours and still the resulting bread is

indigestible.

 

The germ of grains too, like bran, is loaded with

anti-nutrients.

 

Wheat germ oil is an excellent food, but prone to

rapid rancidification, and this is true of the whole germ of any grain –

not to be eaten raw, even if it’s super fresh – makes no difference,

‘cause the anti-nutrient phytates are still present.

 

This is what wholemeal means - that the bran and

sometimes the germ too are left in the flour.

 

So you see, this is my case(not yet rested) - that

whole don’t necessarily mean wholesome!

 

The ancient, tried and true slow-ferment baking way

rejected outright the germ and bran of grains. It fermented doughs

overnight, and delivered nourishing, allergen-free, 100% digestible bread

from unbleached, long-fermented plain flour, just like my uncle did, and

just like many of today’s tradition-savvy Italian and French bakers

do.

 

I was surprised to find, considering that they go to

so much trouble with sourdough processes and good ingredients, that the

two most popular health breads available in the Byron Bay/ Brisbane area

(from Sol and Goanna bakeries) have dough-fermenting times of an

inadequate 2 to 3 hours. No fault of theirs, they just don’t know about

it, but nevertheless the bread retains the damaging phytates and

insufficiently converted glutens and carbs, etc. There is one Sydney

bakehouse, Sonoma, which ferments its bread for 32 hours, and my daughter

tells me it is superb. Another realized baker is Crystal Waters on the

Sunshine Coast in Queensland.

 

Ask your bakers how long they leave their bread dough

sit, or is it stand?

 

You may be surprised.

 

Cereal

Killers

“Puffed†cereals are particularly irksome because

of the high heat and pressure processing, but flakes and other shaped

cereals are no better, including the so-called health versions. Studies

have shown that these heat-extruded grain preparations can have an even

more adverse effect on the blood sugar than refined sugar.

 

Nevertheless, in television advertising, they are

totally misrepresented as almost wonder foods, supported by sports stars

with false and fabricated health claims.

 

All mueslis, cereals, fast-rise breads, puffed

rice/corn cakes, pizza bases, pastas, pastries and biscuits contain

under-prepared grains, and most contain dextro-malt, lecithin or glucose

in one or more of their many disguises – hence numerous toxic,

mineral-denying, anti-nutrient alllergens plus indigestible proteins and

carbs, etc. are being ingested. Yet most of these extremely popular foods

can also be made from the same, but carefully fermented grains. It just

takes time.

 

From the early 1960’s onwards, as a result of

championing brown rice and wholemeal everything, we have given many

deleterious substances totally unwarranted and misleading kudos. And we

are suffering, en masse.

 

Billions of Asian (and other) peoples have eaten, for

millennia, not whole, not brown, but white rice, exclusively!

 

How do proponents of brown rice get around this

amazing statistic? Do they seriously think that these ancient societies

got it wrong?

 

Give us a break!

 

The first cereal-gathering people would have tried

eating and cooking grains many different ways, over aeons, as their

stomachs’ and bodies’ reactions refined their attitudes to each

grain. The white rice diet of Asia is the result of such ageless

observation and tradition, from both dietary and medical

standpoints.

 

If brown rice were healthier, they’d be eating

it!

 

 

This article is a chapter in Clive’s book,

“

Whole Don’t Mean Wholesome: a love of fermentation and all things

slooow“

[Guest guest]

This is interesting about the fermentation but I would have to

disagree about the whole grains. It said the ancients did not eat

whole grain but ate unbleached flours. That is news to me. Nowhere

that I know of did (or does) this take place. Even in India, where

Western methods are encroaching, they make chappatis out of whole

grain wheat. Ayurveds are adamant about using whole grains. I am

sure that this is true for the rest of the world.

 

GB

 

> It just takes time.

> From the early 1960’s onwards, as a result of championing brown

rice and

> wholemeal everything, we have given many deleterious substances

totally

> unwarranted and misleading kudos. And we are suffering, en masse.

> Billions of Asian (and other) peoples have eaten, for millennia,

not whole,

> not brown, but white rice, exclusively!

> How do proponents of brown rice get around this amazing statistic?

Do they

> seriously think that these ancient societies got it wrong?

> Give us a break!

> The first cereal-gathering people would have tried eating and

cooking grains

> many different ways, over aeons, as their stomachs’ and

bodies’ reactions

> refined their attitudes to each grain. The white rice diet of Asia

is the

> result of such ageless observation and tradition, from both dietary

and medical

> standpoints.

> If brown rice were healthier, they’d be eating it!

> This article is a chapter in Clive’s book, “_Whole Don’t Mean

Wholesome: a

> love of fermentation and all things slooow_

> (http://nourishingstore.com.au/products-page/?product_id=13) “