Horror House of Gluten

If you want to really give yourself the willies, read up on the horror that is modern wheat.

To start with, its development reads like a hammer house of horror. Modern wheat is a mutant of 42 chromosomes to the 14 of old varieties, developed over years of genetic modification. It makes me think of those old paintings of rectangular cows, or Frankenstein. You can't see it, but you're eating Frankenwheat.

This Frankenwheat contains a whole load of new proteins that our bodies can't assimilate. If they can't be assimilated through our digestive process, they pass directly into the intestine where they are free to wreak havoc.

If you're one of the 1% suffering from Coeliac disease, it's like having Frankenstein on crack rampaging around your belly wielding a flail and inflaming your insides. Not nice. Torture, actually.

You might think that if you're not totally intolerant, you're okay. Unfortunately, a new study from the US shows that modern wheat is toxic for all of us. Even if you're in tip top good health, eating wheat products merely increases the permeability of your intestine by perturbing the intestinal hormone zonuline, with dire results.

Not only does your intestine struggle to assimilate the nutrients you're so keenly consuming (rather than stuffing your face with crisps, hotdogs and doughnuts), but it can't stop certain proteins getting into the blood stream to act as front-line terrorists triggering auto-immune diseases and upping the risk of cancer.

Two of these malevolent buggers are prolamines and glutenines which together form the infamous protein gluten. Don't be duped. Modern gluten is bad Bad BAD. More and more people are suffering from its effects, including diarrhea, bloating, depression, joint pain, etc.

So cutting out gluten could happily cure your digestive problems, make you feel happier, less open to infections and give you more energy.

Does that croissant/slice of toast/baguette sarnie/pizza/spag bol/cake look quite as appetising now?

Even if you're in glowing health, eating a gluten-free diet reduces the production of proinflammatory cytokines, and by consequence, makes you less at risk from the effects of inflammation (heart disease, cancer, depression, etc.).

Having given myself the willies, and tried to frighten the boys, with a marked lack of success, I decided to try eating as little gluten as possible. I'm not a gluten-free nazi, but when I'm in my own home, I'm just not eating normal bread, pizza, cake or wheat pasta. Funnily enough, my boys are bored with my bread machine bread (although not the pizza dough it makes...) and are thus eating less bread because they want me to buy baguettes, and I'll buy no more than one of those a day, if that.

Instead, I eat Pain des Fleurs buckwheat crackers, lentil pasta, and I've started making my own bread. It doesn't look anything like the dry yellow stuff you see under plastic in the gluten-free aisles in supermarkets, and tastes surprisingly good.

Stylish inside and out

In France, there's a stylish seasonal magazine on gluten-free cooking and 'art de vivre' called Niépi that my yoga teacher told me about. She lent me the latest copy where I discovered the recipe for egg-free, gluten-free bread. I have nothing against eggs, but thought I'd give it a go for the hell of it.

The recipe called for 40 minutes in the oven. If a skewer came out clean, it was cooked. My skewer did not come out clean after 40 minutes, or 50 minutes. I got cross at 55 minutes and shook it out of its silicone mould and stuffed it back in the oven, heat turned off.

It never actually finished cooking, but was sufficiently cooked to eat. When I tried it again a few days later in a metal Teflon mould, the result was even less cooked at 50 minutes. Does anyone have a suggestion about how long it actually takes?

Here is attempt one, looking pretty normal:

Gluten-free, egg-free bread (a bit undercooked)

It's made with rice flour, tapioca starch, buckwheat flour, flaxseeds, chia seeds, psyllium etc. My DB enjoyed too and took the recipe to see if he could make it in his bread machine as he has no oven.

Attempt two came out with an over-inflated top - I think I kneaded it too much, and I forgot the apple cider vinegar. And it was really undercooked. A mystery!

I found and tried a couple of other recipes in the mag, liked one of them so much I decided to splash out 20 Euro and buy all the electronic back copies.

All I need now is a Kindle Fire to read them on...

UPDATE 15/6/15
I emailed the Niépi people and they told me that gluten-free flour is not calibrated in the same way as wheat flour (Types 55,65,110 etc.) and so they absorb moisture to different degrees. It was suggested I reduce the amount of water, and leave the loaf in the oven on the rack once it had finished cooking. I tried this, and the third loaf came out perfectly. It rose properly and cooked properly, and tastes very good. Result!

Sourdough Studies

Bread and Nutella is one of my eldest's favourite snacks, and he eats a couple of large sarnies every day for lunch. Luckily for him he has an extremely efficient digestive system and is pretty active because he should be nothing but wobbly bits the amount of Nutella he eats. I stopped buying it for a time to try and wean him off it, even tried making my own raw version which was a disaster.

I try to offset some of the damage by baking almost whole-wheat bread or wheat and spelt, which he devours. Then, in January I decided I'd start a sourdough starter to make sourdough bread. Sourdough bread is available here and goes by the name pain au levain. Unfortunately, it's quite costly and I really wanted to suss out the technique.

Why bother? Well, there are numerous health benefits to eating sourdough bread over normal bread. It increases beneficial lactic acid which helps break down phytates which inhibit absorption of the vitamins and minerals in the flour. It is easier to digest because the fermentation of the dough predigests the starches in the flour. It breaks down the protein gluten into amino acids, making it more digestible. It stays fresh longer because it produces its own acetic acid - no need for chemical preservatives, and has a low GI index so doesn't cause undesirable spikes in insulin.

All good reasons to make my own bread. The only problem is that it takes time, and trying to fit bread-making into working full time has been causing me a bit of a headache.

I made my first attempt last weekend. I took the sourdough starter out of the fridge let it come to room temperature, then added it to flour, water and salt. I kneaded for about 5 minutes, let it rise for 24 hours in the bowl, then emptied it onto the baking sheet and baked it for 45 minutes. This is what I got:

First ever sourdough loaf... destined for the blender...

It was a few centimetres high, dense, and as hard as nails. After fighting it with the bread-knife, I gave up and put it in the blender to make tasty breadcrumbs.

It should have looked something like this:

I have a long way to go to make this...

Undeterred, because there's an art to making sourdough and getting it right takes time and experimentation, I tried again this weekend. First though, I emailed the experts at culturesforhealth.com because I wanted to know where I'd gone wrong. I got a reply the next day and found out that I had probably not kneaded the dough for long enough, and my sourdough starter needed pre-feeding if it had come out of the fridge.

I watched a video on their site and discovered that:
1. I needed to feed the starter three times over a period of 18 hours if it had come out of the fridge.
2. I had to knead the dough for 20 minutes.
3. I needed a thermometer to know when the bread was baked - 98°C or 210°F (cue trip to Carrouf).

Armed with this information, I fed my starter three times, made the dough and kneaded it for 20 minutes. Then I cut the dough in two and place each loaf on a baking tray to rise free-style. Mine rose horizontally.

I left it overnight which was too long because the next morning, it had spread so far, it had cracked and split. No need to make extra cuts, then... Into the oven they went, and barely rose any more so came out after half an hour (and 98°C) almost the same height as when they went in.

They looked better though:

Second attempt - still on the flat side

 

They tasted very good too. I made a horizontal open sandwich with olive oil, garlic rubbed on the cut side and tomatoes. My son also made a horizontal sarnie, with ham and salad and said it was okay but he preferred the normal bread. My quest is not over yet. He had really liked the pain au levain I got from the baker's down the road, so I'm determined to keep trying... I bought a silicon bread tin yesterday to make a more loaf-shaped loaf. No room to spread in one those, that'll show it...

You can do a number of things with flat sourdough bread - sarnies, panini, and this, which I'm making tonight - stuffed sourdough bread. You make cuts across the bread making sure not to cut all the way through, then stuff the cuts with cheese - I bought a large goats' cheese pelardon from the market yesterday. Combine butter (or olive oil), green onion (or normal), garlic and poppy seeds together and pour over the bread. Sprinkle with grated cheese (like gruyère) and bake wrapped in foil for 15 mins. Uncover and bake for another 10 mins.

We'll need those sourdough digestive capabilities after that!

Pain de Pee

I was listening to the radio this morning and heard something that so disgusted me I thought I'd feel queasy all day.

It was on Fun Radio, early morning Manu à la Radio, he of the Ligne Anti-Relous. I can't remember what the context was, but I think it was to do with the poll of the day and Manu mentioned something about miettes de pain and pee and the others in the studio all made disgusted noises. So Manu explained all for the innocents of the audience who were not aware of fetishist behaviours in public toilets.

Some men (presumably) leave bits of bread in urinals in public toilets like those of the Jardins du Luxembourg in the morning and collect them again in the evening. And yes, they eat them. This, apparently, is recognised fetishist behaviour, and just writing it is making me feel all queasy again.

I suppose it's along the same lines as a golden shower, but somehow different and even more grotesque. Poor buggers if that's what gets them going. I mean, can you imagine it?!

If you're reading this while munching, bon appetit! And my apologies...