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News - The unpalatable truth about supermarket bread

The History of Bread.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_bread

Bread, the first fast food.

http://hubpages.com/hub/Bread-The-First-Fast-Food

Modern versus traditional breads. (This will put you off mass produced bread).

http://www.grain.org/seedling/?id=471

Recipes and available flours,

http://www.bacheldremill.co.uk/recipes
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/

I make lots of bread and use herbs and spices, nuts, seeds, tomatoes,onions, fruit, cheese etc. and use a good flour. A small piece of homemade bread with good ingredients does not send my blood sugars into orbit.

Like Rushy, I also find the Burgen Bread works for me, sometimes I only use half a slice depending on what else I am eating.

I love bread and the smell is just great.
 
Interesting, it brings up the chorleywood process. As I wrote in the other thread on bread in the non low carb forum I'm convinced this process is what makes UK bread so 'fluffy' and the gi of most of it much higher than the bread I eat here in France (not white baguette but breads such as pain de cammpagne which is mixed wheat and rye, multi cereal or nut breads). If I buy a new sort even in the supermarket I won't buy anything that has contains much other than grains, yeast or sourdough, perhaps a bit of salt, and water.
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You can't make 'healthy' sandwiches here though. The packaged bread, is worse than in the UK.It's labelled pain de mie (either americain or pain anglais.) and normally contains a list of chemicals a mile long, often contains hydrogenised fat and seems to have a shelf life of 3 months or more :shock:
 
If you want to make a reasonable sandwich with a descent not too high bread, then make it yourself. No, I'm not advocating getting covered in flour and sticky from kneading etc, I'm suggesting buying an automatic bread making machine and using a healthier flour of your choice.

I was a bread junkie for many years until being diagnosed as a T2. I gave up bread at first then used to sneak in a bread binge when it all got too much for me.
Now I make my own with a wholemeal flour and thoroughly enjoy a carefully cut sandwich (1/2 round) on a daily basis without ingesting all the rubbish from a packet loaf.
I bought my bread maker (a Cookworks job) from Argos and judging by the price of a half way descent shop loaf, I reckon it has paid for itself within 6 months AND i get fresh bread any time I choose. My wife does not like wholemeal bread so she chooses a different flour and makes a white loaf. You do not have to make a large loaf and the instructions give differing weights of ingredients for different sizes of loaf. Simply weigh it all out, trip it in and switch on. You can even add extras when the machine beeps if you wish to make 'special' bread such as added onion or tomato etc to flavour the bread for a change.
 
We enjoy home-made bread too. Our machine came from Amazon, a Panasonic SD 255 and it is great.
However.... dunno if it is me or the pills but I began to find the aroma objectionable when it was cooking. The rest of the family did not have the same reaction. I used to come downstairs to work and the smell would make me feel nauseous. I know it sounds daft but I reckon it is the metformin, it screws up your appetite and whatnot. A subtle effect but...
To avoid this we make the dough in the machine, pop that in the airing cupboard etc to let it rise and then cook it in the oven... the smell is OK that way. For a while I thought it was some residue in the breadmaker that was causing the odd smell but now I doubt it.
That was a while ago and now we are going to try it the usual way to see if I still react that way.
Whatever the case, a breadmaker is a great addition to the kitchen and in the light of the supermarket bread situation it is more than worth the initial cost. 8)
 
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