I have been making Einkorn Sourdough Bread for my family for four months and I have gotten a lot of questions about it, so here is the scoop.
When we found out my Kindergartner had some surprising health issues (more on this later), I immediately started looking for solutions. I believe that food is medicine and food creates healing, so that is where I started. We are conditioned to start with a prescription when we have health problems, forgetting the old adage and cliche that, “we are what we eat”.
I started with bread. Who doesn’t love an amazing slice of bread? And better yet, a-fresh-out-of the-oven slice of bread. And then add some butter, and heaven has come to earth. Bread is popular around the planet and one of the world’s oldest foods. It is closely tied to religious expression and symbolizes a piece of most cultures of the world. Bread has been eaten in every country for 1000’s of years and every culture has their own version of how they do bread. Here are some fun, fast facts:
Bakers were powerful credit brokers during the Middle Ages in France. They often loaned out bread as currency, and by law, a bakery has to make all the bread from scratch in order to have the right to be called a bakery.
In Egypt, bread was also used as a type of currency, and they would often place it in the tombs of their dead.
King Louis IV said, “He who controls a nation’s bread is a greater ruler than he who controls their souls.”
Scandinavian traditions hold that if a boy and girl eat from the same loaf, they are bound to fall in love.
A family of four could live 10 years off the bread produced by one acre of wheat.
Jesus referred to himself as the “bread of life” and Christians around the world partake of a small morsel of bread and wine in remembrance of Him.
The first meal consumed on the moon was bread and wine.
Everyone loves bread and I believe it is supposed to be good for us and apart of a healthy diet. But it’s not anymore. It makes you fat, most diets programs cut it out, it has too many carbs, it is difficult to digest and 18 million Americans are sensitive to gluten. Unfortunately, modern wheat makes people sick. In the United States, bread sales have gone down 11.3% in the past five years as more and more people cut it out of their diet. What happened?
A lot has happened to our beloved bread, especially in the US. It started with the modern steel roller mill in the late 1800’s, and then the “Green Revolution” in the 1950’s forever changed what wheat used to be. Technological advances have allowed bread to become mass-produced to such an extent that it has lost all of its nutrient qualities. Ancient wheat and modern wheat are two vastly different products, producing vastly different results in the overall health of people today.
“This thing being sold to us called wheat—it ain’t wheat. It’s this stocky little high-yield plant, a distant relative of the wheat our mothers used to bake muffins, genetically and biochemically light-years removed from the wheat of just 40 years ago.” - Dr. William Davis, author of Wheat Belly.
“We have mutant seeds, grown in synthetic soil, bathed in chemicals. They're deconstructed, pulverized to fine dust, bleached and chemically treated to create a barren industrial filler that no other creature on the planet will eat. And we wonder why it might be making us sick?” - quote from an article from GrainStorm.com. (See the full article here: https://grainstorm.com/pages/modern-wheat)
My mom introduced me to a new flour I have never heard of: einkorn.
- It is the most ancient species of wheat and all wheats are a descendant of wild einkorn.
- It contains 30% more nutrients & protein than modern wheat.
- It contains 15% less starch (lower carbs).
- It lacks certain gluten proteins that can be difficult to digest.
- It remains as the only wheat that has never been hybridized.
Einkorn is not an easy wheat to grow or mill, and its yields are very low (1/5 of modern wheat yields), so it has never been a popular wheat, to the point that it almost went extinct. Because of its unpopularity, its seeds were not harvested or bred for improvements, so this relic grain has remained as nature intended.
My mom has been baking with einkorn for several months, and when we found out about my son’s health challenges, I asked her to come over on a Sunday afternoon to teach me how to make einkorn sourdough bread, which has 3 ingredients: einkorn flour, water and salt. My mom and a good friend donated some of their sourdough starter to me and our journey began. Here is the link for where I get the einkorn wheat and the cookbook I use: https://jovialfoods.com/
I now make two or more loaves every Sunday and it is the only bread our family eats. This is one small piece of our wellness journey, among many other things that I will share this year. Stick with me as we explore allll.the.things.
Blessings to you,
Leah
Enjoy this podcast with demos and how-to's for making Einkorn Sourdough bread: https://youtu.be/xsxLxpbG-NA
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