The Genetically Unmodified Bread of Life – Wholemeal Bread Recipe

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