Hi all,
I have a couple of questions about sourdough as I have seen it mentioned several times in relation to ‘good’ fermented foods –
All the sourdough recipes I have seen use white bread flour and this is supposed to be a ‘no-no’ as far as the BSD and Clever Guts diets go;
Although sourdough is naturally fermented, bread is baked at a very high temperature so I’m not sure how the prebiotics can survive to enhance gut health.
Does anyone have any thoughts or info on this?
SSB
Hi,
It is a very good point about sourdough that it gets baked at high temperature. There are however numerous benefits when the dough is fermented over longer and using ‘wild yeast’ and lactic bacteria. These partially digest/alter the gluten in the flour, which suppose to make the baked good easier to digest. Furthermore when using good quality flour (organic stoneground flour for example), the fermentation process renders the minerals and vitamins in the flour bioavailable. There is some research suggesting that sourdough bread is acceptable to otherwise gluten intolerant people.
The fermentation will make white flour product superior to anything shop bought yeasted . Bread made with rye, spelt or kamut is another option. Even gluten free sourdough exists. Bread is basic food and should only ever be made from 4, time honoured ingredients : flour, water, salt and time.
Thank you Bellado – I always used to make sourdough bread with my own fermented starter but I’ve been on th BSD for while so haven’t made bread which is a shame because I love making it and my OH loves eating it!
I might get another starter going and give it another go using organic whole meal flour – OH prefers w/m anyway.
SSB
A good article
Fermented foods and live probiotic foods overlap, but are not one and the same.
Humans have been making breads with stoneground wholegrain flours for millenia before white became fashionable. 🙂
Stoneground flour has larger particles than modern super fine flours, so is supposed to digest more slowly and have a gentler effect on the blood sugar. How a slow fermented loaf differs from a regular loaf in that respect would be an interesting Google search.
Thank you Firefox,
I suppose I’m wondering whether bread has any place at all in my diet. Even wholemeal bread has a high carb load and comparatively low nutritional content so is it better to get carbs through fruit and veg and just ditch the starchy carbs completely? I had some wholegrain bread for the first time in a long time yesterday and ended up feeling bloated and uncomfortable. I’m pretty sure I am neither coeliac nor gluten intolerant, I just think bread is possibly unnecessary – except as a vehicle for other things – oh yes, and it does taste good!
SSB
I made this yesterday, my third attempt at a gluten free sourdough recipe and the best so far by a mile!
http://www.bakingmagique.com/2015/02/seeded-gluten-free-sourdough-bread/
I proved mine in a sieve lined with a rice floured tea towel as I haven’t got a proving basket. It worked great!
I wouldn’t eat it every day but I would think sharing one loaf over a weekend would be acceptable to us trying to watch our carb intake?
SaltySeaBird: certainly we don’t need the nutrients found in bread or other wholewheat foods, and can get them from other wholefoods.
However starchy carbs are a big family – encompassing many beans, lentils, root vegetables, true grains and pseudo grains.
When trying to meet the restrictions of two healthy eating plans there is a real danger that we end up with a diet that is neither varied (core principle of the Clever Guts diet) nor balanced nutritionally.
We can easily end up low on one or more minerals, the ratio of anti inflammatory omega-3 to inflammatory omega-6 is off, too much extracted fat/ oil, or too high an intake of animal protein.
Certainly have smaller portions of starchy carbs, certainly include the lower carb and brighter coloured wholefoods from each group (eg. edamame, beetroot, black beans), certainly swap some starches for mineral and fibre rich plant alternatives (eg. ground flaxseeds, chia seeds, hazelnuts, cocoa).
SaltySeaBird: many UK and US citizens are low on magnesium, vitamin D and omega-3s (pref. long chain). These are all very important in diabetes, insulin resistance, obesity, mental health and numerous other inflammatory conditions.
This is largely due to restrictions in personal taste: we don’t eat much oily fish (sardines/ mackerel/ herring) with some bones, other seafood esp. molluscs (mussels/ snails/ oysters), seeds (flax/ pumpkin/ chia), cocoa or low sugar dark chocolate, bran (rice/ wheat), organic eggs from seed-fed and insect-eating birds (less soy, corn, grains).
When we go lower carb we tend to increase meat from land animals, o-6 rich/ o-3 poor nuts, calcium rich/ magnesium poor dairy, green vegetables, processed carb alternatives. This often worsens existing nutritional imbalances.
I have not read the ‘Blood Sugar Diet’ but hope it emphasises variety and the much neglected food groups I listed! Certainly these types of wholefood played a key role in the stone age and Mediterranean diets, and are arguably more what our microbiome evolved on.
HTH!
Hi Firefox – I agree absolutely that a varied diet which doesn’t attempt to exclude whole good ground is the ideal – I was really thinking specifically of grains, rather than other sources of starchy carbs. However, our bodies perform best when fat is the primary fuel and in modern society carbs – starchy, healthy or otherwise seem to be an overused form of fuel – in days gone by when good food sources were limited and people had heavy, manual jobs, this was not a bad thing – carbs are ‘ballast’ when other food is scarce. But a review of the hunter-gatherer tribes (modern day and primal) indicates that low carb – high fat – moderate protein is a healthy combination e.g the Hadza tribes MM writes about.
I also agree that we have a very ‘sanitised’ and limited diet – even when we attempt to eat healthily – skin and bone are removed from meat and fish and only muscle meat is eaten when in fact, organ meat is far more nutritious. As an example, the Plains Indian tribes ate most parts of a hunted animal but the muscle meat was considered inferior.
There is a very good book called Death by Food Pyramid by Denise Minger which takes an objective and scientific look at the modern diet and also the shoddy science and political interference which has resulted in the terrible food advice banded around by various governments – it is truly shocking!
SSB
SaltySeaBird: the US political and healthcare systems are quite different to the UK ones.
Yet the powers-that-be came up with remarkably similar healthy eating guidelines, based on a combination of the evidence at the time and practical/ realistic considerations. These are updated as and when the body of evidence changes (UK last in 2015 IIRC).
*Agree wholeheartedly* farmed muscle meat can be shockingly low in micronutrients: chicken breast and chicken livers are chalk and cheese! As a (non practicing) lifestyle health pro I’d also love to see a lot more emphasis in the healthy eating guidelines on beans and lentils, not just wholegrains.
Research on macronutrients in hunter-gatherer society diets is VERY interesting, but often not directly applicable to European Caucasians since we have been eating farmed foods for generations, and so many of us are sedentary. Lactose tolerance, the microbiome … we are not what we were genetically in the palaeolithic.
I think part of the problem is the public perception and official definitions of ‘low fat’ (overly low) and ‘low carb’ (actually encompasses moderate carb) are at odds. We also forget –
or aren’t aware – that fibres and many other ‘indigestible’ prebiotics are actually carbohydrates.
Having said all that many of us on this forum are not the ‘norm’. Much more knowledge and hopefully a much better diet!
Recoveringfatty: a quarter of a loaf sounds like quite a lot of carbs in one day. One to two slices of bread is a modest serving, depending on size/ weight. That would help you maintain a wide variety of different foods over the day and over the week. You might input the sourdough recipe into My Fitness Pal, and the day as a whole?
Hi Firefox7275
Good idea about putting the recipe through MFP. I might give it a go.