Bread is one of the oldest prepared foods and dates back more than 30,000 years. It is also a staple food and for many cultures a meal is not a meal if it doesn’t involve a good loaf.
If you have experienced ‘real’ home-made bread you will understand why. That crispy crust and soft inside are irresistible, and a freshly baked loaf is hard to resist.
Sadly, what is mass-produced for supermarkets these days is worlds apart from this and far from good for you. To make a fantastic loaf of wholesome bread you need just four ingredients:
• Flour
• Yeast
• Water
• Salt
Sure, you can add more to it, but essentially, that is all you need. Have you ever looked at the ingredients list on a branded, sliced supermarket version? How many things did you see? Do you even know what they are?
In 1961, a new bread making process was developed, using intense mechanical working of dough to dramatically reduce the fermentation period and the time taken to produce a loaf. This process allows for the use of a lower quality, less nutritional grain, not great! Even worse though, is that since then industrial bakers have started using chemical additives that speed up the process completely and can even be used to produce imitations of artisan and sourdough breads.
Effectively what all this means is that in a lot of cases (as many as 80 per cent) modern chemistry has taken over from the skill and time it takes to produce a delicious, nutritionally worthwhile loaf.
But making your own bread can be easy and you know exactly what goes into it! Something like a soda bread can be baked and on the table in less than an hour. Yes, traditional bread takes a little patience, but there really is nothing more satisfying, and it makes your house smell delicious!
There is no doubt that making your own bread is the way to go: why not join The Devilled Egg for a few bread making tutorials alongside fish filleting, desserts making and many more.