The Yummiest Place on Earth
Okay it's time to ditch all that spongy mass manufactured stuff you've been poisoning your body with and eat some real food. Was that too harsh? Okay. Lets start over.
Today we're going to do a little "all you need to know" on bread. This blog is not long enough to extensively cover all of the info on bread out there so I'll give you some essentials and I'll even give you a sneak peek at the ending of this story. Ready? If you are buying commercially produced bread and baked goods, you are eating a highly processed, additive laden food. Okay, you say. Duh. I know its not the best but what else am I supposed to do, my kids don't like anything else. And my response is YAY! I have the solution!
Many people are malnourished without being calorie deficient. In the last 10 years the world has become more saavy about how food effects our minds and bodies. Slowly things are changing. With the internet and a plethora of books on the subject, as well as a nation burdened with numerous health issues and an obesity epidemic, people are starting to wake up and smell the coffee (or green tea!).
Here are 5 reasons to stay away from commercially produced bread and baked goods:
1. Creepy chemicals you can't pronounce or are only identifiable by a number. Real bread contains whole grain flour, salt, eggs, water, a little sugar, maybe some yeast. I can't remember any challah recipes containing potassium bromate, which has been linked to numerous health problems.
2. A refining process that strips the grain of any actual nutrients and then adds back some stuff that resembled those nutrients and then to top it off, added some molasses so the bread is brown looking and insinuates that it is healthier. Okay that was a total run-on sentence but I'm getting a little worked up over here.
3. The bread of today in no way resembles the bread of 80, 120, or 1000 years ago. The bread on supermarket shelves is like some evil, overfed mutant blob that has come to take over humanity. Run, run for your lives! Our bodies can't evolve fast enough to digest this stuff gracefully.
4. Have you ever eaten some white bread and felt like you could eat half a loaf? That would be your body not recognizing that it is receiving nutrition and therefore it wants more. Its your body begging for real food. On a cellular level your body is demanding nutrition and just keeps hoping the next bite will be the real thing.
5. Here's an experiment: Buy a load of commercially produced bread and see how long it takes for it to turn moldy or dry out. It'll dry out first but it'll take a solid week. I've never managed to be patient enough to wait for mold...or perhaps that kind of bread never molds?
Okay so now that we've got some info in our heads lets move forward with some action! I buy almost all of the bread my family consumes from the Natural Choice Bakery on Agrippas. I love this bakery. I love the special oven for baking all the bread. Each piece handled individually by the bread maker, each sambousa hand assembled. This is how food is meant to be. I go there every two weeks and I stock up on spelt pitas, burekas, and crackers. I immediately freeze the pitas and burekas. On school mornings I defrost them for half an hour in a sealed container on the counter top. These pitas contain no preservatives and dry out easily. If you store and defrost them in this manner they will be just as yummy as the day they were baked. The burekas are retoasted in our sandwich maker for a quick breakfast or snack.
Now despite all my ranting up there, I am not anti-white flour. I believe in moderation and I believe in authentic croissants. Yup you heard me. Franks Delights in Talpiot has a delicious almond croissant. And I am not about to take a fine crafted, French pastry like a croissant and say it'll taste better with spelt flour. I think its important that whatever food you choose to consume should be the highest quality and pure, simple ingredients. Food shouldn't be an activity but it can be a wonderful experience when done with the right frame of mind.
B'tay avon and lilah tov!
#bread #naturalchoicebakery #healthyfood #whiteflour #speltflour