Ancient grain einkorn wheat makes clean eating sandwich bread
In every one of my cookbooks there's one recipe I never share; how to make bread because my bread making history is pitiful.
It's not that I don't like bread. Hardly. I love it; perhaps, too much.
Here's an example. Years ago, returning from a friend's graduation ceremony in downtown Chicago, my brothers and I stopped at an Italian bakery on the near West Side and bought two loaves of warm, just-baked Italian bread. By the time we got to Evanston, all that was left of those two loaves were the crumbs sprinkled over our suit pants and the car's floor.
Fairly recently, after reading cardiologist Dr. William Davis' convincing arguments against consuming today's modern, highly-hybridized wheat in his book "Wheat Belly," I decided to give up wheat.
Read: goodbye bread.
I wasn't perfect. When dining out, scratch-made commercial breads easily defeated my will power and I'd have a little; sometimes more.
The more careful I became about finding and avoiding today's wheat in all non-bread products (like soy sauce), the more I wanted bread.
I just couldn't give up wheat bread forever. Since I don't have celiac disease, gluten isn't an issue for me; it's insulin (today's wheat elevates insulin levels higher and faster than sugar). I went back to Davis' book and found that he'd laid some crumbs along a trail leading to how I could have wheat bread; wheat bread made from einkorn wheat flour.
Einkorn?
In his book, Dr. Davis related an experiment he performed on himself where he determined that his blood sugar levels went up only slightly when he consumed bread he made from an ancient, never-hybridized wheat called einkorn vs. a significant blood sugar spike after he ate organic bread he made from the same recipe only using today's highly-hybridized wheat.
First, I searched the Internet for a source of already-made einkorn bread. No such luck. I couldn't find a single source for commercial bread made with einkorn flour. Drat.
Next, thinking I could make my own bread, I searched for einkorn flour and found jovialfoods.com. I bought a two-pound bag ($7.49 - free shipping) and when it arrived I made a loaf of bread from a recipe on the flour bag for "Two-Hour Sandwich Bread."
No kneading, two short-ish rises and 30 minutes in the oven and I had a surprisingly good looking loaf of organic einkorn bread.
Once cooled, I sliced a piece. First thing I noticed is this wasn't some cottony light piece of bread. No. It had substance. The texture was more like cornbread than wheat bread and there was a goodly amount of crumbs on my cutting board.
How was it? Not too bad for a first try. It tasted flat to my palate; it needed more salt. The texture was course; not smooth like commercial breads.
But … but, it was wheat bread and visions of future sandwiches, Sunday-morning toast and possibly a light grilled cheese floated through my head.
Next time I made Jovial's Classic Einkorn Sandwich Bread recipe that required a little kneading, slightly more flour (this time I used 50/50 all-purpose and whole wheat einkorn) and a little less water. I also added 50 percent more salt. Better. Much better.
It's a lot more work than heading to the supermarket for a loaf of bread, but for me it's worth it; absolutely.
If you want to make einkorn wheat bread, here's my recipe.
• Don Mauer welcomes questions, comments and recipe makeover requests. Write to him at don@ theleanwizard.com.