So what is so wrong with (indigestible) commercially baked bread or my own homemade bread? Isn't "wheat for man"? and isn't bread the "staff" of life? Yes and no.
The wheat in our contemporary culture is" super hybridized" for one thing. It started just after WWll with mountains of ammonia nitrate used for explosive;.what to do with it in peacetime? could it be used as a fertilizer? Yes, if scientists could make the wheat and other crops more agreeable to it.
Thus started the bio-engineering or cross breeding of the basic wheat plant. The result.....a wheat that had a shorter stalk, was resistant to pests and molds and rusts and the like and, AND it had greater gluten (protein) and higher starch. Dreams of greater crop yields and more protein to feed a hungry world became reality and the world rejoiced. The "green revolution" began. However, there was no testing on humans to determine if the newer wheat proteins could be digested or even tolerated by humanity. 60 years later, unheard of gastro-intestinal problems are being manifest in more and more adults and now children. When a doctor suspects a "food allergy" one of the first things he might recommend is to stop wheat products......for good reason.
The wheat of today is NOT the wheat of our ancestors, it is a different food, a more toxic food. And just recently, GMO wheat was discovered in Oregon fields. Many of us who have been watching Monsanto trying to push" Round-up Ready" wheat on the U.S. and Europe ( they still refuse to allow American GMO wheat into Europe) were fearful that this might happen sooner or later. We have had powerful natural food advocates fighting Monsanto and our government to keep this new, wheat out of American fields but apparently their efforts failed. Their efforts to get GMO labeling on foods has failed also. Our government is determined to support big agri-business and not the health and well being of it's citizens.
The problems with wheat is that it has "super starches" which are addictive and feed the bad yeasts in the gut and "super-proteins" which are indigestible and can cause trouble once they get into the blood stream (leaky gut syndrome) and go where undigested proteins shouldn't go like joints which triggers the body's defense mechanisms and causes inflammation known a rheumatoid arthritis and other such disorders.
The next problem with wheat is it's "overuse" in industrial and convenience foods which are cheap and taste good. Wheat starches as "modified starch" and other dirivitives, are a key ingredient in too many industrial foods. Too Much Wheat!
The problem with wheat bread is that it is made today with "quick-rise" yeasts.....synthetic yeasts were put on the market in 1984 according to Caleb Warnock, " The Art of Baking with Natural Yeast". synthetic yeasts were designed to rise quickly which was wonderful for the baking industry but the yeasts do nothing for predigesting starches and gluten so you get a wonderful smelling, great tasting, quick loaf of bread that can harm you. Our comfort food has been turned into a toxic food for a good share of us. ( I recommend reading "Wheat Belly" by Mike Davis.
The good news is that there are ways around all these problems with wheat and synthetic yeasts. The information I am giving is by no means complete and you need to do your own research while still available, but I have a process of making some baked goods that do not cause the health problems that I used to suffer from. I hope you can put to practice something here that may be useful to you.
Recipe For 1 big loaf or 2 med size loafs or 4 small ones (small loaf pans)
3 1/2 to 4 cups flour can be combinations of fresh ground wheat or spelt or white flour or sprouted wheat or spelt flour. Spelt is an ancient wheat not hybridized yet.
1 cup chlorine free water
1 cup natural yeast starter from your starter in quart jar in fridge
1-2 TBS good fat like butter or olive oil (not coconut oil as it will kill the yeasts)
1 1/2 tsp. sea salt
1 tsp. chia seeds
1 tsp. flax seeds
2 TBS raw or toasted sunflower seeds
Combine all ingredients, batter will be a little stiff. Using an electric mixer will help. I use my clean hands. If shaping into bowles like above picture, then stiff batter is good. If baking in loaf pans then a more moist batter is good.
All flour should be moistened. Shape into one big lump in large bowl and cover with plastic. Put in a cold place like fridge for at least 24 hours. 48 hours even better. Bread dough should be double in size even when cold. The longer it can stay in the cold, the more the yeasts can "work" on the starches and gluten.
Take out cold dough, and work it with your hands on a floured surface for a few minutes to warm it up and get elastic. Shape into loaves either into 2 bowles or into your greased bread pans. If doing bowles (balls) flour a piece of parchment paper and sprinkle some corn meal on it and place the bowles on that. The parchment paper could be on a cookie sheet. Lightly slice the top of each bowles a few times with a serrated knife. Whether in bread pans or on parchment, allow dough to rise again at room temperature for another 3-6 hours
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We want the yeasts to do their work outside of us not in us....not in our gut. When yeasts get to the overgrowth stage in our gut, we've got trouble. These yeasts (candida) when overgrown will cause inflammation of the gut which causes intestines to bloat and expand which allows undigested proteins and other things to escape and get into our blood stream causing all kinds of problems like lupus and rheumatoid arthritis. The bad yeasts demand food from us and their food of choice is sugar and starches. So, we crave starches and sweets to feed them, it doesn't do us any good.
When the dough has risen and the yeasts have done their work for us, we kill them with heat.
If baking bowles, we will bake at a high temperature like between 400 and 450 preheated and you will need a shallow pan on the bottom shelf of the oven to put one cup of water in so that there is some steam in this hot oven. Bake bowles for 25-30 minutes.
If using baking bread pans, then 350 degrees will do and bake for about 30-35 minutes for one big loaf or 20-25 minutes for 4 small loaves.
Give bread a few minutes outside of oven to finish baking and cool down then slice and lay on the butter or coconut oil. Bread digests better with good fats. Cheese is good on warm bread too.
