My recipe for bread using hay (with a warning)

I am proposing the use of oat hay because it is roughage, very high in fibre and offers a light and interesting texture to the bread I make. I bought a bale of hay from a horse supplier and it was extra-ordinarily cheap. I understand the hay I bought has been cleaned of dust and dirt and is for the use of horses .
The internet shows that hay can contain aspergillas - a fungus, and mites and an assortment of bacteria
I take the view that I am cooking my bread and that should deal with that - also I examine the hay before I put it in the coffee grinder to make it into a mixable fluff to see that it looks clean.
I understand that storing of hay under some conditions can cause it to ignite spontaneously and cause a fire. I do not know the allergy issues which relate to hay.

Like many I can afford bread from any shop, boutique or bog standard white gunge. However both have the problem of high gluten and starch, and low and most insoluble fibre with the added worry that many have a burnt crust rich in cancer promoting acrylamides. For these reasons I propose you try the following:-

This is a modestly leavened bread using two modes for this - a small amount of yeast to react with its low rye flour content and bicarbonate to assist in aiding a raise in the psyllium in the mix.The rye is the only gluten containing  component and represents about 0.7% by weight of the finished product

The bread tastes good in it’s own right but is just super if very lightly toasted. The texture is chewy and invites the keeping of it in the mouth for some time with the attendant benefit of saliva for digestion. It slices really well..

The following is one of many attempts to solve these problems from a home made bread with the minimum of effort and cost.

Using a microwave with safe glass moulds produces a pleasant crust which is not burnt and therefore eliminated the acrylamides issue. A pyrex mould is good for this, tough as old boots and cheap to buy. I think silicone rubber bread moulds are pretty safe but I’m not dead sure on this, silicon derivatives usually being very stable and un-reactive - they certainly work well!

There is no kneading involved and the recipe makes three really hefty loaves.

After decanting the mix into the moulds they are put in a warm oven or place to rise.

I cook one in the microwave then and there and put the other two ‘gently’ into the freezer for later  when they can be thawed and microwaved straight off.

I carefully slice the cooked loaf as soon as it is cooled and freeze most of it. This frees up fridge space and ensures that it doesn’t dry out. Popping a frozen slice or two in the toaster defrosts it and then I can give it a light toasting if that’s what I want.

I am unable physically to handle or stir a large mix so I use a machine mixer  friends lent me for this - a fit person perhaps will find this unnecessary but you will need a really big bowl. I repeat - there is no need to knead.

The mixer they lent me is an ancient  Kenwood Chef Food Mixer which I think is a typical household mixer.

I checked on the internet and these second hand can be bought for a fraction of the new cost.

I make three loaves but naturally just divide quantities to suit the mixer you have.

1.

Thoroughly mix the following dry in the bowl of your miixer do this very slowly at first so it doesn’t spiral into the air and cause a mess.

1 kg of jumbo oats

200 gm of Rye flour

100 gm of oat bran

30 gm of oat hay ( this is optional but needs to be refined somewhat using a coffee grinder or such till it becomes fluff like ie no stalks to choke on! - the point of using it is to offer the loaf lightness and roughage)

3 heaped dessertspoons of psyllium

A sachet of dry yeast granules (around 60gm)

3 heaped teaspoons of salt ( I use 2 of lo salt and one of common salt - lo salt is very high in potassium)

3 heaped teaspoons of bicarbonate of soda

Any herbs or spice of your choice - rosemary is good, dried basil is good too and very inexpensive.

2.

Add 1400 ml of warm water bit by biggish bit and mix .

3.

Decant into  greased glass or silicone rubber fmoulds leave to rise for half and hour

4.

Cook at full power in the microwave

for 10 mins where the oven is rated 1000 watts

for 12 mins where the oven is rated  850 watts

--- if you choose to use a conventional oven I'd reckon about half an hour in a preheated oven at 200 or 160 fan assisted.

Protein And Your Immune System

The basic building blocks of food are proteins, fats and carbohydrates. The last two have considerable  notoriety in our present food culture. Protein and its building blocks less so and I suspect that this is because much less is known or maybe not that less is known but less to what remains to be known.

Although a generalisation I think it is fair to say that proteins and amino acids are the only things that our immune system can react to. And react can be an understatement when one considers the anaphylactic reactions we can have to peanuts, certain fish and shell fish and stings from insects especially bees. When you think about the latter it is hard to believe that the poison the bee deposits when it stings is only a tenth of a milligram.

Such responses are mediated through one of our immune mechanisms.

Food tolerances or intolerances are in the same kettle of fish and as best I can make out form the strategy of certain diets and food advice books -  Eat right for your type.

The drift of that publication is that you can protect your immune system by eating the right proteins based on your blood group.

So while we strive to avoid sugar and refined carbohydrates and a small number of damaging or worrying fats and oils,  the spectrum of proteins that we are able to purchase, or are exposed to, raises a much more difficult problem simply because there are so many.

Since it is our immune system that is responsible for us fighting inflammation and cancer it is important that we watch what protein we eat.

Is there such a thing as a truly healthy biscuit?

If there is I don’t know about it. The problem lies in the makeup of the biscuit. Wheat flour: refined, and high in carbohydrate and gluten is the backbone, with sugar and fat in various quantities cooked at high heat to produce an essentially water free and crunchy product. It might surround a sugar or chocolate paste or be coated in the same or contain dried fruit .

To be healthy or rather healthier it should be of flour that is gluten free, high in fibre, barely sweet and cooked slowly so its oil or fat content is left as a residual but also so it is not burned and producing acrylamides at the surface.

As regards sweetening I would like to see the concept of ‘barely sweet’ become commonplace - a sweetness that declares itself as such but only just.

Such a sweetness can be achieved in cooking if one soaks dried fruit in as much water by volume and uses both in the making of the biscuits. This is not good sweetness in the health sense but the fruit ( I like to use sultanas and some shops sell them ungraded in size very cheaplyl ) itself is less sweet from being soaked - say for 24-48 hrs and that soaking water has been correspondingly sweetened.

The fruit, dried somewhat from the slow cooking, also offers a pleasant chewiness so use lots of it.

As regards fat I would be inclined to use butter but only if the cooking temperature is lowish and the duration long. This should produce a texture and colour somewhat like a pale shortbread. If one wants to bake quickly I would use rice bran oil as this has a high smoke point and will not be too damaged by the extra heat.

Being high in fibre, let’s say 15-20%, it will be less likely when in the mouth to become gooey and adhere to the teeth - biscuits incidentally are one of the worst foods ever to destroy teeth - due to this clinginess I have mentioned.

One of the pleasures of eating a biscuit with tea or coffee is to dunk it and not have it fall off. The shortbread texture should allow rapid ingress of the liquid but the fibre, fat and the lesser carbohydrate should offer resistance to the dunked section falling off.

As for shelf life this should be good as the fat content acts as a not too toxic preservative.

As for amounts just experiment - you will not go to jail if it goes wrong and you will always be able to eat the result whatever happens - but importantly always note down the amounts you use and oven time etc so you know where you are next time.

Are we swamping ourselve with nutrients?

I wonder if we allow ourselves to be swamped with nutrients.

Nutrients essentially are those substances required in micro amounts to facilitate the bulk of the chemical reactions that keep us alive. There are two areas where we might indeed over do the intake of these.

  The longest in existence has been Big Pharma and one has only to look at chemist and health shop shelves to be gob-smacked by the plethora of them on sale. If I take the case of vitamin C, the daily need is probably in the region of 50 milligrams. A massive range of vitamin C will be on show including fizzy versions of 1000mg. Big Pharma hopes you will take the view that  the ‘more the better’ and fails to let you know that having taken such a dose most of it will be discharged when next you go to pass water and of course charges you a pretty penny for the privilege. I would venture 200 mg of a slow release vit C preparation would be many times better for you and your pocket. Many other vitamin preparations are there to confuse but generally are expensive and unnecessary in the amounts on offer. Information on daily recommended doses is all one needs.

  The other source is that obtained from graunching vegetables and fruit in machinery like the bullet. What it can produce, is certainly shown to produce, is a nutritional hit of vitamins and minerals. However the ingested slurry, no matter how much fibre its constituents have, will never have the same effect on the gut as eating the constituents. The fibre will be downgraded by virtue of its mechanical liquidising and offer no beneficial bulk or irritant effect to the gut musculature. As for the nutrients therein, the ‘hit’ is not what the body was made to cope with, let alone absorb and use economically.

As I’ve said before liquidising is easily seen as unnatural.

The one place I have to admit it is good is its brief use in graunching or cracking seeds such as those in pomegranate kernels or linseed where access to their nutrition centres by grinding them in ones’ teeth would take ages.