Yes, You Can Have Your Bread And Eat It Too

Reader Contribution by Lois Hoffman
Published on April 23, 2020
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Photo by AdobeStock/innazagorulko

Many folks, being stuck at home and not being able to find bread in stores, have resorted to baking their own. There is nothing better than the aroma of bread coming out of the oven. The taste is just as divine.

It is also so much better for you than the commercial bread with all of its preservatives. Actual truth, we have an experiment with a loaf of bread that has been setting on a shelf since January of 2019 and is not molded yet. Yep, you read that right, over 15 months old. It really makes you want to eat loaves with all those preservatives!

However, I have always noticed that homemade bread, although made with healthy, wholesome ingredients, almost makes me feel worse than the up-town stuff. It is like the dough is just setting in my stomach, causing bloating. I thought this was just me until Ron mentioned the same thing recently.

Nope, it is definitely not in our heads. Even though homemade has healthier ingredients, there is still a culprit. With a little digging, I found that grains have special protective layers on the outside called phytic acid. Its job is to hold all the nutrients inside the grain. When whole grain is broken down into flour, some nutrients are released but the phytic acid is also present. Not only that, but the acid also snatches up other material in our digestive tract that it uses for food, thus wrecking havoc in our intestines.

The gluten in flour has gotten a bad rap in recent years, but there is more to the story. It’s not that the gluten is present, but rather that it is not broken down, hence the job of yeast. Yeast is a good thing, it literally breaks down the starches in grains which essentially pre-digests the bread, making it easier for us to digest.

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