Increasingly we seem to learn that there is mainly only disadvantage in the heavy processing and even the fortifying of foods. The more we learn about what whole foods have to offer, the more we seem to figure out that our refined-then-”enriched” versions are weak or even detrimental in comparison. A recent study of folic acid fortification shows flaws in the thinking that a vitamin is a vitamin is a vitamin no matter what the form or context.

Whole grains and greens are rich in folate, a B vitamin which has shown to be protective against colon cancer and other bowel issues and is just generally important for overall health. Folate deficiencies also cause fetal neural tube defects and thus pregnant women are urged to take a folic acid supplement. Folic acid is the supplement form of folate, and (doctors urging aside) does not impart the same positive results for cancer risk and whole-food derive folate. In fact as a recent NY Times article outlines, folic acid enriched foods may increase cancer risk.

This particular study lucked out with an easy control group (nutritional studies are difficult because control groups are hard to maintain) for folic acid consumption because Norway do not enrich their food with it like we do here in the US (lucky for the researchers and the Norwegians too apparently)

Turns out that folic acid enriched foods, mainly grains and cereals…um eaten particularly by children, increase cancer risk. So…no advantage there at all.

(Careful readers will note that the study of B vitamin consumption was originally aimed at understanding the relationship between B vitamins and heart disease, not cancer. In the previous post, on sick ancient Egyptians, this relationship was brought up as the likely cause of ancient cardio problems as the Egyptian Elite ate refined grains and were deficient in B vitamins that keep in check an amino acid that breaks down cell walls (which cholesterol goes in to fix…) I will not be at all surprised if the findings for b vitamins supplements (versus the stuff in whole foods) fails to show an impact on heart disease, but that will not be a good enough reason to discount the relationship until they look at food in the form it should be eaten. Maybe a start in the right direction to show the relationship to cancer)

Okay, so food in its most whole form provides all the nutrition we need without the fiddling from food scientists. Lesson: Avoid food with health claims and stick to those that have no package at all. That said, there are ways to “enrich” whole foods yourself and that is by pairing them with foods that help your body absorb all the goodness. And yes, this point loops back to the point about good fat and it being important and not causing heart disease.

I recently read author Nina Planck’s Real Food, What to Eat and Why. Of all of the points she made, I think the rundown of the usefulness of good quality whole fats in the diet was the most important. So I am just going to quote her verbatim: You can keep this all in mind with any catchy “holiday health hints” or such that tell you not to eat your turkey skin or eat low-fat dairy.

Eating protein with fat makes nutritional sense, because all food, and protein in particular , requires fat for proper digestion. As we saw with “rabbit starvation, without fat in the diet, digestion fails and you starve, but not for lack of calories. What is true of meat is true of all fat-and-protein pairs. They go together. Consider, for example, two near-perfect foods: eggs and milk. Both foods are a complete nutritional package, designed for a growing organism’s exclusive nutrition, and must contain everything the body needs to assimilate the nutrients they contain. The fats in the egg yolk aid digestion of the protein in the white, and lecithin in the yolk aid metabolism of its cholesterol. The butterfat in milk facilitates protein digestion, and saturated fat in particular is required to absorb the calcium. Calcium, in turn, requires vitamins A and D to be properly assimilated, and they are found only in the butterfat. Finally vitamin A is required for production of bile salts that enable the body to digest protein. Without the butterfat, then, you don’t get the best of the protein, fat-soluble vitamins, or calcium from milk. That’s why I don’t eat, and cannot recommend, egg white omelets and skim milk. They are low-quality, incomplete foods.

In each classic pair, fats help the body assimilate, use, or convert essential nutrient.

Fat and protein
Roast chicken (with the skin)
Eggs (with the yolks)

Fat and vitamins
Vitamins A, D,E and K are fat-soluble, eat them with fat

Fat and Beta-Carotene
Buttered carrots
Collards with fatback
Spinach salad with bacon
Flank steak with arugula
Beef with broccoli

Saturated fat and Omega-3 fats
Fish with butter or cream sauce

Saturated fat and calcium
Whole milk
Yogurt, cheese, and sour cream made from whole milk.

Each new piece of research reminds me that the most we should do with food is grow it in healthy soil, and prepare it in a way that our bodies can best use it. For some things that means raw (like dairy and fruit), eaten cooked or raw with some useful fats (like most veggies and meats), or fermented (particularly cabbage and other meant-to-ferment veggies as well as grains, ie sourdough, and some legumes ie soy)

Here are some particularly delicious whole meals:

                          

I started the process with some confusion. The recipe in Nourishing Traditions states: ” If you are using raw milk, place the milk in a clean glass container and allow it to stand at room temperature 1-4 days until it separates”. Now, to me there are two things that are unclear about these instructions. The first is whether or not the glass container should be covered if not sealed. I really could not find an acceptable answer searching the web, so I decided to screw a lit on the jar and see what happens. Because there were no explicit directions to keep the process from the air I often opened the lid to see and smell what was going on. The lid would get taught with pressure from the activity in the jar so I would release that, which I think was a good thing to do.

For the risks of playing around with bacteria activity in an non-sterile kitchen the lack of specificity in the instructions for this process is frustrating. But I decided to trust the fact that people have been doing this with milk for thousands of years, since I have such additional advances as hand-washing and flush toilets, I think I should be fine.

Here is the beginning of separation. But it being winter room temp was pretty low and the process was going slower than it seemed like it should. We also decided to move the jar to the top of the fridge where it is warmer. This move helped to move things along and after day four actual changes were happening. But I have to admit I was pretty unsure about the whole thing.
That brings up the second issue with the directions we weren’t sure what degree of separation we were looking for. Did we wait for the first signs or for distinct layers? I don’t know why recipes like this decide to error on the side of less information, it doesn’t seem conducive to the success of one’s instructions.

We decided to wait longer. (Or rather one of us did, and I decided to go along.)

We waited for something to happen that, it turns out,just doesn’t happen. You can see that there are three distinct parts, the cream on top, the liquid (whey) and the now solid-ish milk. But it doesn’t become three different layers one on top of the other like we imagined, in fact it doesn’t even have to get as far along as we let it. In fact I was pretty sure that this was too far. I opened it up to smell.

Up until now the stuff had had a sour aroma, but nothing bad-smelling, kind of a mix of Parmesan and yogurt. But then at this point it smelled stronger and off and I got worried. Plus I saw circles on top which looked suspect to me. So I gave up. On this batch anyway.

I went and bought a new half gallon of raw milk (this is not the part of the blog where I am saving money) and started over with the jar on top of the fridge. I decided to let it go just to the point where separation begins, not letting it get too far along. Four days later I saw some separation, smelled it and called it good. The milk is more solid, there is liquid and cream, but nothing has really changed places.

At this point it smelled a fresh sour (which apparently is not a contradiction) and very pleasing.

I dumped out the jar into my towel (I chose a pretty thin one) lined strainer. Immediately I could see that much more separation had happened than it looked from the outside. All the solid milk collected in the strainer and almost three cups of why poured out the bottom immediately. I put this in the fridge, while the remainder dripped out.

Without squeezing tie up the bag and let it drip.

The picture in Nourishing Traditions shows doing this over a tall wide-mouthed container, like a pitcher. I don’t have anything like this so I arranged this set up to get the necessary height and the width needed. For a while this dripped steadily. It can stay and drip almost all day. In fact it took a while for it to stop dripping entirely. Those last drips hang on and are slow to reform, but they are there and keep coming longer than my patience could handle.

I decided the drips were slow enough and far enough apart to open ‘er up.

The rest of the whey went in jars in the fridge to be used later (stay tuned!). And this beginning of cheese went in a glass container covered with plastic wrap.:

At this point you can do any number of things, though I don’t recommend eating as is. Just a reminder for those inspired to do this yourself. I started with whole raw milk. Not available in most states. You can make whey with yogurt but I don’t know how the cheese part come out. Or, start with pasteurized milk and culture it (this is instead of leaving it out to separate and culture on its own) or get it to curd with buttermilk or something acidic, linke vinegar. There are lots of resources for making cheese at home that is not raw and from milk that is homogenized.

Here is what I did with mine:

In a food processor with a couple squirts of flax oil and salt you can mix just about anything to make a raw, cultured and amazingly healthy cream cheese. If the flavor is a little ripe for you keep it in the fridge and let it mellow, my second batch was much calmer.

This one is smoked salmon and parsley. Spread on a sourdough bagel from the farmer’s market, I felt pretty legit.

                          

The answers to these questions usually lead me to either more whole or bulk foods, which tend to be cheaper (especially with the farmer’s markets) or to something that is more expensive than any of the other choices. This usually happens with dairy products, the best example being the price I pay for milk.

We have chosen to buy only raw milk, which is unpasteurized, from grass-fed cows. The grass-fed milk has Omega three fats and the raw is good for our guts. (see post below)We could decide that because of our budget we could buy twice as much regular organic milk for the price of the raw, and maybe four times as much of the conventional type. But first we prefer to vote with our (few) dollars- I simply can’t support the industry that produces the mass amounts of conventional milk- bad for the land, cows, and me- I don’t really need that much milk that isn’t contributing anything beneficial to me except some protein and added vitamin d (all available elsewhere). We simply buy a half gallon per week. I will also opt for less or none of something else to be able to buy this delicious milk.

This works out for a lot of the products which I choose to pay more for. I can still fit them into my budget by simply buying less. When deciding to put some ground grass-fed beef in some spaghetti sauce I can ask the butcher counter for 1/4 lbs. A whopping buck and a half and plenty of organic meaty sauce for two (Spaghetti sauce is one of the first things I decided I would never buy from a jar)

With nice cheeses I do the same. I ask the cheese counter to cut the cheese down to the price I’m willing to pay- and savor what I get.

This doesn’t mean I just buy smaller amounts more often as we only go to the store once a week. We also only buy one or two non-meal items a week (snacks etc)

If there is hesitation to buy less, and opt for the cheaper less sustainable products, think how much food goes to waste. Is all the food bought actually prepared and eaten? If not, you should buy less regardless of what you buy.

Also, there isn’t much debate on the fact that we eat too much in general. There are more than just personal cost savings in reducing the amount of food we consume.

Cutting down on food waste by using what all you buy and buying less to begin with will save the amount spent on the better food.

                          

I don’t have a good dedicated baking book (Baking Illustrated takes the cake (har har), and is on my list of cookbooks once I get an income again) so I started with Joy of Cooking, usually a pretty standard place to start. My jewel cookbook is The Art of Simple Cooking by the great Alice Waters. She has written an exceedingly helpful and comprehensive resource for just the type of cooking I want to be second nature; simple, fresh, versatile, and completely delicious. She limits her treatment of bread however. She explains that she is not a baker and has access to better baked good than she could produce- I can only imagine she means place like the Cheese Board, Acme, and Semi Freddy which, delightfully, I have access to a well (though only geographically anyway, not monetarily). She has a fine recipe for foccacia and pizza and other more quick breads and desserts.

So back to the Joy of Cooking it is. The most straightforward recipe is for “White Bread”, which doesn’t sound so appealing- but it’s what I had.

I have bulk yeast so I first had to figure out how much yeast is in a “packet”, since that’s so standard. 2- 1/4 teaspoons.

I also looked into flax meal, which I had on hand. I wanted to something to boost the texture, flavor, and all around wholesomeness, since I had only all purpose flour and some whole wheat pastry.

So I got to mixing the first ingredients, I added less sugar than called for (I added under 1 tbsp) and then stopped at salt- 1 tbsp!?!? That just seemed really excessive. I checked other bread recipes online with their ratio of salt to flour- and most used only 1-1/2 tsp, so I went with that.

I scalded 1c of milk. Here’s another place I stopped. We are lucky enough to be able to buy raw milk, and we love it. It’s the most expensive item in our grocery list, but so worth it. All that life helping my belly process stuff and the taste is unbeatable- we decided if we couldn’t afford to buy it raw, we won’t buy it at all. So, why use this special product in cooking- cooking it defeats the purpose of the extra expense. I did it anyway, but it’s something I need to think about. I’d like to just use buttermilk (keeps so well, and I love it) or water if possible.

With the wet yeast mixture I added about 5 cups of a all purpose/whole wheat pastry mixture and about 3/4 cup flax meal. Since it’s usually an egg or oil sub, I wasn’t really sure about the result of using it like another type of flour. I definitely added another cup or so of the WW pastry in the kneading process.

As I was mixing the dough I was worried it would end up too light, given the daintiness of my flours and the addition of the flax (homemade bread always seems like it should be dense and filling). But the dough took on a nice heaviness and elasticity in the kneading, so I decided not to worry.

(credit to mom on the handmade towel, and note the oven is off for the rising)

I misread the instructions a bit and let the whole thing rise to double twice and then put it into two loaves, at which point I wasn’t sure if I should let them double again or just bake them. So I left them in the slightly warmed oven (I had started to pre-heat and bake and then changed my mind) covered for about twenty minutes.

In skimming the different recipes out there, it seemed there was some debate about pre-heating. I decided I would take a chance, since I was now getting impatient, and just put the loaves in while the oven got hot and let them bake from there. I did follow the JoC instructions to cook at 450 for 10 mins, then lower to 350.

I put in a little pyrex dish of water to help the crust harden, but after more research, I think a bigger pan of hot water does a better job.

It seemed to work out okay and they were certainly dense. A little bland I guess but a nice, very homey texture.

(this is one of the two)

I’ll continue to try some different approaches, in fact I think next time I will try this one. I like the idea of having a ready to go starter to bake as needed, ensuring no waste and convenience for the next few batches (and apparently you can freeze yeast dough,which I have never been sure about). I used to listen to the Splendid Table program weekly before I moved (not sure when/if we get it here in Berkeley, and the recipes and discussion is worthwhile-though I am always a little put off by the sponsorship by Super-Target)

The bread joined this swordfish and chard/maitake dinner…and went on to many more.