Bread is the staff of life.

Thanks very much for your insight and for sharing your breads ! They look very hearty and rustic, not unlike the loaves we made in the French countryside on the farm. I imagine that they are extremely nourishing.

However, I have to differ with you on a couple of points regarding the recipe you posted. The many peasant-bakers with whom I have worked in France, as well as many other sources across the internet (echoes of which I am sure can be found lurking here in the forums), have taught me that acidic fermentation through the activity of a natural sourdough starter (levain) is necessary to render certain nutrients in the wheat grain bioavailable. That is to say, while through analysis we can discover that a kernel of wheat contains X amount of a certain mineral, whether or not that mineral will be usable by our bodies remains up for debate ; much like many multi-vitamins indisputably contain loads of vitamins, it is uncertain whether they are of any use when they pass through our digestive tract. The use of commercial yeast (and warm water) produces a fermentative process that is far less acidic than that produced by a natural sourdough starter, and thus there is the possibility that there will be some trouble vis-à-vis the phytic acid (which, as far as I understand, renders unavailable many of the nutrients in wheat).

Additionally, the process described will produce a fermentation that will be rather rapid, giving the flour little time to hydrate fully and soften the bran particles. Bran particles can, in fact, be somewhat difficult to digest if not milled and hydrated properly. Additionally, not all non-whole-wheat flours are completely bran-free - in France, there is T150 flour (intégrale) which contains almost 100% of the grain, and also T110 (complète) and T80 (bise), which contain lesser quantities of bran, but still some of the bran (only the finer parts that make it through the sifter). Thus, they remain whole wheat flours of a sort and can be hydrated for less time than whole wheat flours. But 100% whole wheat needs more time to soak up the water and soften the bran (from personal experience, some freshly milled whole wheat can do a number on the digestive canal).

However, I do agree that freshly milled wheat flour does bring something nutritionally special to the table that aged flours simply lack. Without mentioning percentages or statistics, there is a certain vitality in breads made with freshly ground wheat that makes them truly nourishing. There is an interesting book called "Man Versus Toothache" in which the author describes his observations of the lack of dental problems in a certain part of Western Texas in the 20th century, which he ascribes to a diet of freshly ground whole wheat. He himself adopted this diet and claims that it gave him a new life (this work is available for download from the Soil and Health Library).

In any case, thanks very much for your post. Certainly some good food for thought. 

Yep, As per previous comment I think bread making has very much moved on in the last 50 yrs or so.

It seems plain to see now that long fermentation is the pre-requisite for good healthy nutritious bread.  There really shouldn't be any recipes imo for "Quick" bread as that works entirely against Nature.  Everything we do should be in tune with Nature's ways and principles and fermentation as a process, is absolutely key for a great many things.  Not just bread but all manner of other things.  For example I ferment vegetables to make things like Saurkraut.  Really simple and cheap to do, just mix shredded cabbage with whatever else you like (I like fennel and caraway seeds) and add salt to ensure the good bacteria triumphs over any bad bacteria and then leave on a shelf for 4 weeks or so for Nature to do her thing.   The result is a super nutritious and tasty product which has 10 times the levels of good lacto-bacteria that you find in those little bio yoghurts.

In terms of bread I would say that much of today's commercial bread is damaging to health but that's for a variety of reasons which include:

- the addition of flour improvers, chemicals and other unnecessary ingredients

- the forced speed with which it is made to rise

- the lack of any reasonable fermentation

A good loaf of bread should, imo, take many hours to make, sometimes even days but as a minimum I'd say at least 4-8 hours.  Without this time to properly ferment the grain you are imo making an inferior product.

Note that sourdough starters have been in existence for 1000s of years.  There is a reason for that !

It is very true that the "(wo)man in the street" is in dire need of dietary succor and whole wheat bread--or at least something more nutritious than the Wonder Bread or its more auspicious looking iterations that line the supermarket shelves (even the breads that have the appearance of nutritiousness are of dubious quality)--is a great base for a healthy diet. And I think that your approach to breadmaking does hit at the heart of what is required : people taking the preparation of their own food into their own hands, and this recipe is certainly easy enough and low-commitment enough (from a time perspective) to appeal to the greater mass of people, most of whom--let's admit it--are going to recoil at the thought of a bread recipe that takes a day, several days, or even weeks.

The problem is that your average Joe or Josephine isn't going to make the necessary investment in a mill that can produce a flour that will make them want to eat a whole wheat bread, and local flour mills that produce fresh flour are now few and far between. So he or she will go to the supermarket and pick up a bag of whole wheat flour that's been sitting on the shelf for who knows how long, and typically with all of the germ removed (and should s/he buy non-organic, lots of pesticides on the bran). I can't say in good conscience that the bread s/he will make with this flour could qualify as "healthy," even though we might say it is "more" healthy or "less" unhealthy than the bagged bread he picks up off the shelf ; it's ironic that the healthfulness of bread nowadays depends in large part on what one DOESN'T put into the dough mix.

I had read the work of TL Cleave a few years back ; I think I'll give it another look at your recommendation. 

I had actually made the converse statement : in NOT adding all the dough conditioners and other chemicals designed to furnish flour with the fortitude to withstand intensive mechanical beating, we arrive, I believe, at a more nourishing and nutritious bread. I don't believe that white flour is inherently dangerous, since it must be owned that everything that one finds in a white bread would also be present in a whole wheat bread, too ; that is to say, whole wheat flour in its unrefined form contains all the sugars and refined carbohydrates of white flour. The bran and germ have simply been removed. However, in the case of stone-ground flour, it is darn-near impossible to remove all traces of bran and germ, so that even the most refined stone-ground flour will still have some of those goodies floating around (millstones also have a tendency to crush the germ into the starch, creating a nice buttery texture to the flour).