Have you, like me, had enough with buying basic foods that ought to have 5 ingredients in them but instead have 15? Take bread for instance. Can you find a pre-packaged loaf of bread that doesn’t use soy or emulsifiers? It’s extremely difficult, and that worries me.
I also worry about unknowingly eating genetically modified ingredients. If you’ve seen the documentary The Future of Food, you would also be concerned about what is happening to our food supply. If you haven’t seen it, I urge you to. The issue of genetically modified food is one of the biggest facing agriculture today (and in consequence, humanity), along with climate change. Food that contains genetically modified ingredients is already out there, and we probably don’t know that we’re eating it. A recent article by Carli Ratcliff in Good Living centred around Greenpeace’s annual consumer guide, Truefood Guide. The guide gives a “red light” rating to manufacturers who either produce products that contain genetically modified ingredients or who “refuse to provide transparent information regarding the origin of their ingredients.” The Truefood Guide comes out tomorrow, and in the absence of any meaningful Australian labelling laws, it is essential reading, in order for one to be able to choose.
For the moment, I am trying to keep my family’s diet focused on ethically grown and harvested food. To me, that means organic or biodynamic, local and natural (not GM). With meat and eggs, I buy free-range/organic chicken and eggs as well as grass-fed cattle as opposed to grain-fed. I’ve given up supermarket bread since I want mine to be real bread, with real nutrients and nothing else. I’ve started buying bio-dynamic wholemeal wheat flour from Alfalfa House in Newtown and every 3 days or so, I bake a loaf for my family. I use a great little recipe which produces an absolutely delicious loaf with a crisp shell and a dense, moist interior. It involves 5 ingredients and requires no kneading. The bread mix is ready in 5 minutes, rises for around 2 hours and is then baked for 40 minutes. I’m getting into the habit of preparing the dough the night before I bake it, which means we can have warm bread for breakfast. And you know that nothing beats warm, genetically-unaltered bread for breakfast, right?
Recipe – Adapted from All Recipes
Ingredients
- 500g wholemeal flour – I use and love the biodynamic flour from Alfalfa House
- 500 ml tap water at room temperature
- 2 tsp salt
- 7 grams yeast (make sure the yeast is alive)
- 2 tbsp honey
Method
- Mix all the dry ingredients together
- Dissolve the honey in the water
- Make a well in the center of the dry ingredients
- Add the water and using a wooden spoon, mix the ingredients for 2 to 3 minutes until well mixed
- Grease a bread or cake tin (13 × 23 cm loaf tin)
- Put the dough in the cake tin, cover it with greased paper and a wet kitchen towel and leave it to rise overnight or until it is doubled in size
- Preheat the oven to 200c
- Dust the dough with flour then bake for around 40 minutes. The more often you bake this bread, the more knowledgeable you will be about the correct baking time for your oven
- Remove from the oven and cool on a rack for at least 45 minutes
17 comments
There is nothing nicer than fresh, warm bread with proper butter and a drizzle of honey, for breakfast.
Well done Fouad!
I made bread yesterday. Love the process of it, and the freshness, and the certainty of it. I live not far from alfalfa house. I’ll have to get on my bike and go grab some flour.
Hi Fouad, I’ve never seen a more scrumptious looking loaf! It’s encouraging to hear that others are worried about GM – I work on the GM campaign at Greenpeace and we would love it if you could join us at the TrueFood Guide Launch on Wednesday. It’s at 10am. Are you free? Send me an email if you can come.
Fouad, that’s beautiful. Simple bread as it should be. There’s no need for GM if food’s done right.
There’s something wonderful about working with bread – you can really feel that it’s ‘alive’. My sour dough starter is so ‘alive’, in fact, that I think it’s going to take over my fridge one of these days if I keep on feeding it…
I have never baked bread before. But I kept your recipe in my mail, for future use. I love freshly baked bread, nothing beats it! I agree that you dunno what you are eating anymore, and no one knows about the lack of regulations more than the Lebanese, I think. A few months ago we had some sort of scandal about the chemicals used to grow vegetables. I wonder how long till we go back to a more natural approach to life with all what we hear!
Lovely looking bread Fouad, I can’t wait to try the recipe – especially as it’s non GM!
Delish! I’ve been too nervous to try baking bread – but I think I can probably give this one a go and also feel confident it’s non GM.
Thanks for the tip!
That recipe sounds so scrumptious! Putting it in my recipe book now to bake on the weekend.
And thanks for helping to spread the word about GM! I am also a True Food supporter so it’s great to hear from others 🙂
Hey Fouad – Baking for a GM free Australia! You know if we don’t want GM wheat in Australia perhaps we need to send every politican a slice of your delicious GM free bread!
Looks delicious Fouad! I watched Food Inc the other day and am suitably horrified by the way companies are using GM to control the food supply. Here’s to taking the power back!
Oooh looks yummy Fouad! I really care about organic and GM issues so just wanted to say good on you for going down that positive road!
Nothing quite like a home baked loaf.
🙂 Mandy
Hi Fouad.
Just a note to let you know that my husband Paul is now a great follower of your blog after I introduced him to it, and he recommends all his friends to follow. He loves his lebanese food [especially his kibbe-he is a zgartawi after all], and is always inspired by your writing.He read about your bread, and so we started on the dough this afternoon.
Keep up the good work [and words], and we shall look out for you when we shop in Flemington for asian groceries.
I was just thinking the same thing about eating bread without all the non-sense. I just want pure bread – no such thing if they are bought these days. No such thing as pure yoghurt as well etc etc everything we buy is made with emulsifiers, preservatives, u name u got it. Anyways, with that in mind, I attempted to make my first homemade wholemeal bread today and surprise surprise, it was a success! I got the recipe from the internet but modified it slightly to accomodate my ingredients shortfalls he he he If you like, you can read about my bread making and the recipe here: http://layskitchenexplorations.blogspot.com/2011/07/ola-wholemeal-bread.html
BTW, love your blog, just discovered it today and will definitely be back for more 🙂 Cheers mate.
I feed my family only grass fed beef. I also by local for free range chicken and eggs. You brought up something interesting here-
I never heard of biodynamic flour or bio dynamic anything.
I just got educated here http://www.biodynamics.net.au/what_is_biodynamics.htm
Its something Im looking for in the states- thanks, Mary
I wish I had of found your recipe on sat, I made my first loaf of bread, and the kneading nearly killed my arm…. this is fantastic!! Thanks