Baking Bread.....


Is Your Bread Slowly Killing You?          

 by Beth Scott
 

If you eat white (or any kind of store bought) bread, there are a few things you should know before you put that next slice in your mouth.

For example, did you know that the inclusion of hydrogenated oils, artificial preservatives, emulsifiers, additives and other chemicals in bread became standard practice in the mid 1950's?

At this same time whole wheat flour was replaced by bleached, enriched white flour. In this process, grain is bleached and sterilized with chemicals to make it white and soft. It is then artificially "enriched" by adding vitamins, minerals and other materials destroyed in the chemical process.

Despite what you may have been told, trying to “enrich” something with the very vitamins and minerals that were removed from it in the first place doesn’t make it anywhere near as healthy as the natural, unrefined version.

When you think about it, it doesn’t even make much sense.

It's also a growing practice in many bakeries to replace white flour with substances like alum, ground rice, and whiting. Alum is the most commonly used of all these substances, because it gives the bread a whiter color and causes the flour to absorb and retain a larger amount of water than it would otherwise hold.

This enables the factories to produce bread imitating that made from a higher quality flour. This tainting of your bread with potentially harmful chemicals such as potassium bromate, emulsifiers (both commonly used in bread production), and alum is definitely not in the best interests of your health.

Do you know why your store bought bread has such a long shelf life?

It’s because of a particular emulsifier used in making the bread. It’s mainly used as a softening agent and tends to deceive buyers as to the real age of their bread.

This emulsifier can hide the fact that your bread is deteriorating (it certainly doesn’t stop the process) for a few extra weeks, but the harm it does to your body (and the potential harm in eating the stale bread) makes the cost of this ‘convenience’ very high.

Is it possible for you to protect yourself and your loved ones against unhealthy and harmful bread?

Well, buying any bread from a store is certainly not the right choice to make. Even if you buy commercially produced whole wheat bread you're not getting healthy food.

Much of what passes for whole wheat bread is actually white bread colored with caramel. If the first ingredient in a loaf of whole wheat bread is unbleached enriched flour, then you're not truly buying whole wheat bread at all, just white bread (loaded with chemicals) that is disguised as whole wheat bread.

There is only one true solution to ensure that you avoid these problems. And that is to bake your own healthy whole wheat bread. This is nowhere near as difficult as it sounds. In fact it’s dead set simple.

All you need is a good proven recipe, and an expert guide to show you the way. I’ll be happy to provide you with both.

About the Author:
Beth Scott learned her craft baking bread for a family of eight using recipes handed down from generation to generation. She teaches you how to bake your own healthy whole wheat bread, with a step-by-step guide that includes detailed pictures. Visit her Healthy Bread Baking website for more information.