Читать книгу The Irish Farmers’ Market Cookbook - Clodagh McKenna - Страница 8

Really good bread is a healthy, easily digestible, source of energy and one of the most nutritionally balanced foods available. It is full of carbohydrate, fibre, protein, calcium and B vitamins. I don’t mean the supermarket loaves that stick to the back of your teeth and line your stomach like glue. I mean great artisan bread with a beautiful texture, made from the finest flour and baked with true skill and care.

There is a world of difference in the taste and nutritional value of a good loaf and a bad one. So what makes the difference? The answer lies in the flour used, the milling and the way the bread is baked. Wheat grain is made up of bran (the outer layer), the endosperm, which contains the starch, and the germ, which contains the proteins, vitamins, oil and most of the flavour. When flour is stone ground it is a relatively gentle process that leaves most of the nutrients intact. Flour was ground this way for centuries before two things happened: white bread and mass production. Refined white flour might make better looking bread, but most of the goodness is extracted. The large factories that now produce 80% of our bread use a system that does an enormous amount of grinding under huge pressure. The flour ends up fractured and absorbs water like a sponge, which the factories love because water provides volume and weight. This system also uses double the yeast to make up for the short fermentation time, which makes the bread less digestible. Then there are the high levels of salt added to enhance the flavour, not to mention the additives, the improvers, the genetically modified enzymes, the hydrogenated fat, the preservatives…This cheap mass-produced white sliced bread is as nutritionally valuable as your inner sole.

The good news is we have always had a great tradition of quality bakers in Ireland. You will be astounded by the variety of artisan breads available at the farmers’ markets. Declan Ryan, who runs Arbutus Bakery, is typical of the passionate, skilled brigade of dedicated artisan bakers selling their loaves at the farmers’ markets. He uses the finest French and Irish stone-ground flours to produce a range of West Cork soda bread, rye, wholemeal, white sourdough and continental breads. Everything is hand-kneaded and slow-proofed to make crusty, chewy, flavoursome breads. And that’s what sorts the wheat from the chaff: passion, skill, care and respect for the ingredients. When you’ve eaten a really good loaf you won’t go back, and with so much choice you won’t have to.