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Stonemilled sourdough serendipity
Barrie Lewis reflects on what has helped to influence the Real Bread he makes.
I find it interesting how chance meetings can shape one’s life. Perhaps the first significant one in my Real Bread journey was the day, while I was studying in Chicago, a fellow student invited me to his home. His wife was milling wheat before making her own sourdough bread. The aroma from that flour as it was being milled - ahh, never to be forgotten! There was no separation of endosperm, bran and germ; the flavour and texture of the whole grains in her bread were sublime. The industrial loaves in the States at that time were absolutely awful, so her lunch found a place in my heart.
Fresh flour
The seed was sown but lay dormant for ten years until a patient (I’m a chiropractor) arrived with a very sore lower back, having lifted umpteen 70kg bags of wheat. We became friends and he and his family consulted me for many years. We talked and eventually a bag of wheat arrived.
Life is a journey and the dots connect. At the time a nephew was returning from Germany, from where he brought me a stone mill - which I must say still grinds daily, some thirty years later. None of this ‘planned obsolescence’ back in those days.
Going back to that first bag of wheat from my friend with the painful slipped disc, sadly it went to waste. Here in South Africa, flour weevils are a problem and they took over – though our hens were delighted! Google has its critics but it led to me discovering that freezing wheat for two weeks will kill all the weevils and their eggs. We now order 300kg of wheat every year to make bread, and also sell some freshly-milled wholemeal flour at our local farmers’ market.
Cometh the sour
I was milling and baking with my own wholemeal flour but still using dried yeast. Then came the third salient encounter. I was invited to give a presentation about beekeeping, my other hobby, at an aloe festival. At the end of the day we drove around to the other highlights and found a woman who had the most interesting loaf, for sale at half price. I could see it was special, something quite different to the loaves I made. Someone else had ordered a sourdough starter and hadn’t come to collect it. We purchased a loaf and the starter. It was the beginning of a step up to a whole new realm of bread making for me and it changed my life. I could now eat bread for supper without the awful bellyache I experienced after eating factory loaves.
Another significant step in our Real Bread journey was an introduction to ‘blue zones’. These are areas where living beyond 80 is reportedly the norm and Blue Zones® claim that peope are ten times more likely to reach a century than the USA average. The bread that people eat in ‘blue zones’ tends to be made from wholegrain flours and/or by the sourdough process, and emulating their diet and lifestyle has helped our wellness.
Appetite for new knowledge
I’m still learning. Only recently I learned from a synergistic hobby (brewing mead) that, in the early part of fermentation, yeast demands an aerobic environment - plenty of oxygen. While shaking the must gives the mead a leg up, vigorously forking a sourdough starter after feeding it improves the texture of my bread astonishingly. After the initial vigorous growth of the yeast, the process becomes largely anaerobic in both a sourdough starter and mead must. The yeasts produce carbon dioxide, alcohol (small amounts in the sourdough, much more in the mead), while the lactic acid bacteria produce acids.
Oh, I forgot one other moment that must be mentioned. Reading the daily rag on a flight from London to Amsterdam, I came across an article about Andrew Whitley’s Bread Matters. It was another of those lightbulb moments: I had to get that book! I did and it was another life-changer. Andrew led me into the science that lies behind making the perfect loaf.
In a hurry, I confess to using a bread machine. It takes just five minutes every morning to mill the flour and add water, honey, butter, sourdough starter, half a teaspoon of dried yeast and salt. It’s not what the Campaign calls genuine sourdouigh, but it’s still Real Bread.
Life is a journey. I have now bought an industrial mill and am about to start supplying flour and maize meal to a local creche. According to UNICEF, around 50% of children in rural areas in South Africa ‘will likely not reach their full growth and developmental potential because of the irreversible physical and cognitive damage caused by persistent nutritional deprivations.’ I believe that ultra-refined grains are a large part of the malady.
Changing to wholemeal sourdough bread is one of the lifestyle changes that has helped me lose 10kg and to get on top of my insulin resistance and raised blood glucose. Further reading has suggested that the bran/fibre in wholegrains, and making bread by sourdough process, might reduce the rate of starch digestion and absorption of the resulting glucose.
For me, and many other people, whole grains and sourdough are the perfect fit.
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Published Tuesday 21 January 2025
Real Bread Campaign: The Real Bread Campaign finds and shares ways to make bread better for us, better for our communities and better for the planet. Whether your interest is local food, community-focussed small enterprises, honest labelling, therapeutic baking, or simply tasty toast, everyone is invited to become a Campaign supporter.