Baking Bread vs Eating Your Yoga Mat
Azodicarbonamide (ADA) has been making
a lot of headlines lately. It seems that the public has gotten clued
in to the presence of the stuff in a lot of the food products they
consume, especially breads. The real shock and awe came when it was
discovered that Subway, the poster place for healthy eating, used the
substance in its “fresh baked” bread.
In its industrial uses, ADA is employed
as a blowing agent in the production of foamed plastics, such as shoe
soles and yoga mats. Of course, in Europe and much of the rest of the
world, the use of ADA in plastic products that come in contact with
food has been banned because of its potential carcinogenic
properties. So naturally, American manufacturers actually add
the stuff to food. And the food industry lapdogs at the FDA and the
USDA have granted it GRAS (Generally Recognized As Safe) status. This
in spite of the fact that ADA is banned as a food additive in Europe
and Australia and the World Health Organization and the UK's Health
and Safety Executive have found it to be responsible for a variety of
respiratory issues when inhaled.
But, darn it all, when you add it to
flour as a bleaching agent, ADA just makes dough so nice and stretchy
and rubbery and strong. Just what my body needs: to process slices of
ham and cheese wrapped in the equivalent of a couple of baked foam
shoe soles. How utterly healthy is that?
You know how they ask you for your
bread preference when you order at Subway? The girl at my local store
was confused when I asked for my sandwich on “plastic Italian
bread.” When I explained the ADA angle and pulled up a couple of
articles on my phone to support my assertion, she was positively
dumbfounded. “I've eaten here myself for years,” she exclaimed,
“because I thought it was so healthy.” And as I went off to munch
on my plastic-enhanced repast, I could see the girl running around to
other employees with her phone in her hand.
To be fair, the articles I showed her
dealt with Subway's announcement that it would be removing the
ADA from its bread products, but why was it there in the first place?
Especially when the chain has successfully managed to bake its bread
without ADA in places where the substance is banned. It is most
imperatively not an
essential ingredient in the bread making process. So why do we
Americans get to be the corporate guinea pigs? Never mind biting
the hand that feeds you; just
poison it instead.
Of
course, Subway is not alone. A list has been circulating online of
more than five hundred products you probably consume on a regular
basis that contain ADA. How about that store brand White Enriched
Bread or White Enriched Hamburger Buns you buy at Kroger? Or those
Little Debbie or Mrs. Freshley Honey Buns? Plastic New York Garlic
Breadsticks anyone? Or any of sixteen products Pillsbury stashes in
the dairy case. Say it isn't so, Sara Lee! But it is. Smuckers is all
concerned about our kids' health, so they lower the sugar in their
“Uncrustables” – and leave the ADA. The whole list can be found
on the Environmental Working Group's website here:
http://www.ewg.org/research/nearly-500-ways-make-yoga-mat-sandwich
Now, admittedly
there's not much I can do to avoid hidden ADA at places like Subway
or, say, a ball park that uses ADA-laced Ball Park hot dog buns. But
I can certainly avoid bringing it into my home, and I have done so
for many, many years through the simple expedient of baking my own
bread.
Oh,
the anguished cries of the outraged consumer are deafening! “You
idiot! How dare you suggest that
I have the time to
bake my own bread?” “Baking bread is expensive, you
stupid Communist.” “What makes you think I can bake
bread, you elitist food snob?”
Sorry. Baking bread
is not expensive, it's not time consuming, and it's not difficult.
Think about it! Before commercial industrial bakeries began bagging
up soft, gummy loaves of sliced pseudo bread-like substances, people
baked bread at home all the time. Real bread! With real flavor and
texture! And real ingredients. Ingredients that did not include
enough additives and preservatives to embalm an Egyptian pharaoh.
I can count on one
hand the number of loaves of “store-bought” bread I have
purchased in the last ten years. Let me clarify, because I do
occasionally buy specialty breads in the store's bakery or deli. But
I only buy the aforementioned plastic bread in a plastic bag when I
have absolutely no other choice; and I make sure to always have other
choices.
Yeah,
like most baby boomers, I grew up on a diet of Wonder Bread. My mom,
who could actually bake bread that was truly wonderful
when she wanted to, got sucked in by marketers and advertisers to the
whole “convenience” thing. And all the claims that store-bought
bread was “enriched” and “healthy” and “nutritious” just
helped sell it to a gullible populace even more. So Mom's homemade
bread got to be a rare treat. When I got older, I asked her why she
stopped baking bread. “I don't have the hand strength to be able to
knead it anymore,” was her explanation. And at the time it was a
good one. Mom didn't have any kind of super mixer in her kitchen
arsenal. And, although it was great for cake batter and cookie dough,
heavy bread dough would have torn up her good old Sunbeam Mixmaster.
So she mixed and kneaded bread dough by hand, a task even I would
hesitate to undertake today. Well.......sometimes I do, but I have
lots of other options.
Option number one
is a decent stand mixer. And, yes, “decent” and “expensive”
are usually synonymous. I have a KitchenAid 5-Quart Tilt-Head in my
home kitchen that will handle just about anything I throw in it. And
I'm still trying to regenerate the arm and the leg it cost me. But
when I consider that the hundred-dollar Sunbeam Mixmaster I bought at
Walmart lasted one day in my restaurant kitchen, I realize that it
was worth the investment. I've turned out a ton of baked goods from
that thing, not to mention the meat I've ground and the ice cream
I've made with its attachments.
If you prefer a
unitasker, a bread machine is a good option. I have two of them. For
the record, though, I don't actually “make bread” in them. I
don't like the squarish loaves they produce. But they are superb when
used on the “dough” setting. I can dump my ingredients in the
hopper and go off and do other things while the machine makes the
dough. Then I come back and take over the remainder of the process
myself. I make the bread; the machine just makes the dough. Kind of
like having a tiny Hobart on my home kitchen counter.
Food processors can
be used for some types of bread dough. Pizza dough, for instance, is
a breeze in a food processor. If I'm trying to impress somebody, I
let them watch me make pizza dough by hand. Otherwise, into the food
processor it goes.
Let's
talk ingredients. Read the wrapper on that loaf you bought at the
store: Enriched Wheat Flour (Flour, Barley Malt, Niacin,
Iron, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Water, Corn
Syrup, Yeast, Soybean Oil (Non-Hydrogenated), Salt, Contains 2%Or
Less of The Following: Wheat Gluten, Soy Flour, Dough Conditioners
(Monoglycerides, Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Enzymes, Ascorbic Acid,
Azodicarbonamide), Yeast Nutrients (Ammonium Sulfate, Monocalcium
Phosphate), Calcium Peroxide, Calcium Propionate (A Preservative),
Calcium Sulfate, Soy Lecithin. Contains: Wheat, Soybeans. May Contain
Traces of: Milk, Egg, Hazelnuts.
Here's
what I put in mine: unbleached bread flour, water, milk,
butter, sugar, salt, and yeast.
Now let's discuss
cost. A five-pound bag of the good stuff, King Arthur Unbleached
Bread Flour, costs me between four and five dollars, depending on
where I buy it. I can get six loaves of bread out of a five-pound bag
of flour. I buy my yeast in one-pound packages for about two dollars.
Add in milk, butter, sugar, and salt and I can make a loaf of bread
for about a buck. At anywhere between two and four dollars a loaf for
store-bought breads, who's coming out on top?
Ah, but time is the
deal-breaker. Who's got time to bake bread? Let's see.........it
takes me almost five minutes to prepare the ingredients and dump them
in the machine. Then I go sit at my computer and check email for
thirty minutes while the dough is making. I invest thirty seconds in
walking to the kitchen to turn off the machine after the dough cycle
so it won't continue baking the bread. Then I go watch an episode of
something on TV while the dough rises. It takes another grueling
minute or two to remove the dough from the machine and put it in a
loaf pan. I rest up by watching something short, like “Jeopardy.”
By the time Alex is done, the dough is ready to put in the oven that
I set to preheat during a commercial. By the time Pat and Vanna are
through spinning the “Wheel of Fortune,” my bread is ready to
take out of the oven. Whew! I don't know how I manage to slave away
like that.
And
once you get the hang of a basic loaf of bread, the rest is easy. I
make a huge variety of breads and rolls. Besides basic sandwich
bread, I make French baguettes, Italian bread, cheese bread,
breadsticks, dinner rolls......you name it. And it doesn't all have
to be white bread. Whole wheat and whole grain breads are just as
easy. Some breads are a little more involved than others and some
require special pans, but the point is, you can do
it all at home for far less cost and with infinitely better quality.
Skip the KitchenAid if you can't afford it. A good bread machine will
cost about a hundred bucks and will last for years and years. Heck,
if you're not as picky as I am about the shape of the loaf, let the
machine do the whole process. It'll still be better than than that
chemistry set in a bag that disguises itself as bread in the grocery
store.
In
today's world, you can't entirely eliminate artificially enhanced,
preservative-laden, chemically processed food from your diet. It's
everywhere. Subway. Who'd a thought? But you can
take steps to make sure it doesn't dominate your
diet. And baking your own bread at home is a good place to start. And
besides, once you get started, you'll be really popular with your
friends and neighbors.
Good to know that I am not the only one feeling the same way about bread - thank you
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