Are you sure you're gluten intolerant?

A recipe for a kind of Irish Soda Bread

Photo by Tomasz Filipek on Unsplash

Oh, what a tangled web we weave when we join the Ultra Processed Foods debate! Plant-based meat alternatives have come under attack recently with an onslaught of criticism that they are clearly processed, and more so, even, than some of the UPFs linked to obesity, diabetes and general poor health.

Photo by Joseph De Leo for epicurious

Not surprisingly, the sector is hitting back. Weapon of choice? Sliced white bread.

I object. This innocuous product is a fantastically useful commodity to keep close at hand in the kitchen. If you’ve run out of kitchen towel, a ready slice will instantly suck up a spill. When your First Aid kit is upstairs and you’ve nicked your finger with your blunt chef’s knife, reach for a slice of white. It makes the best kind of instant absorbent bandage.

If you actually want to eat the stuff, this is where the alt-meat sector’s PR tactics come into play. Some brands of sliced white bread, it claims, contain more artificial ingredients than do alt-meats, and with names that look like the password on my router: sodium stearoyl-2-lactylate, mono- and diglycerides of fatty acids, diacetyul tartaric acid esters of monoglycerides. Those are the emulsifiers. Then there’s the essential preservative: calcium propionate.

None of them sound to me like ingredients you would find in a traditional baker’s store cupboard.

Replicating the challenging texture of animal meat – one of the most frequent criticisms holding back an all-out switch to alt-meat – does require binders and stabilisers. But these tend to be fewer in number than the scientific ingredients in a simple loaf of sliced white bread.

At least sliced white bread doesn’t deceive. It is what it is. And makes a great crisp buttie (a sandwich of potato chips said even by his daughter to be Paul McCartney’s favourite). What I object to is less processed bread than the modern loaf with pretentions: the ‘Rustics’, the ‘Multi-seeds’, the ‘Wholemeals’, ‘Wholewheats’ & Co.

Especially so-called ‘Sourdough’.

Once upon a time, an individual bakery would create the dough for the following day’s breads and leave it to prove overnight. The master baker would return at the crack of dawn to form it into loaves. These days, that method has evolved into what’s known in the US and the UK as the Chorleywood Process, a commercially driven procedure created for large-scale bread production that develops the dough at speed. It has been exported from Britain to over 30 countries and allows the bread-making process to go from flour+yeast+water to sliced-and-packaged bread in around, at the most, three and a half hours. The old-time artisanal method takes at least twice that.

Suffering from Coeliac disease, an autoimmune disorder triggered by the protein gluten, is an excruciating and genuine affliction that calls for the life-long elimination of food and drink containing wheat, barley, rye and yeast. Gluten can also affect people with IBS. On the other hand, the feelings of bloat and gas that follow eating bread are real even for people who don't have the conditions. They are provoked by the method in which the loaf was made.

The speedy Chorleywood Process results in a structure that’s harder for the gut to break down, making digesting the bread uncomfortable for many otherwise untroubled eaters. In short, the deconstructing and fermentation process that used to take place in the bakery now takes place in your stomach. Just as challenging as can be white and brown processed sliced bread or loaves, industrially produced ‘rustic’ breads are the cause of an increase in claims of gluten intolerance.

You may not be gluten intolerant. Your intelligent stomach is intolerant of the industrial bread-making process.

Buying a loaf of supermarket sourdough won’t necessarily eliminate the potential threat. It is the most deceptive of higher-priced commercially produced artisan loaves. A genuine sourdough is raised only from live sourdough starter. Food additives including yeast or sourdough powder are introduced to supermarket ‘sourdough’ loaves to create a sourdough effect. None of the natural transformation of the flour has taken place in the development of the dough, so potentially upsetting an eater’s blood-sugar levels.

There is no legal protection for the word ‘sourdough’. It can be slapped on pretty much any commercial loaf you like and no-one will stop you. If the word ‘yeast’ or any food additives appear on the list of a sourdough loaf’s ingredients, it is not genuine sourdough. Sourdough is raised only by a live starter, using only natural ingredients and processes and zero additives.

For commercial sourdough manufacturers, the genuine sourdough process is far too slow for serious profitability. So they by-pass it.

British bakers are now pursuing legislation to give genuine sourdough ‘protected status’ labelling that guarantees their authenticity. In France, after years of additive-filled baguettes being sold freely under the name, they may now only be sold if they contain, other than the water that blends them, just three ingredients: flour, salt, yeast. Nothing else.

The Irish make a wonderful soda bread. This recipe is far from the genuine article, not containing soda but baking powder. And I threw in a handful of mixed seeds. (Also, as the photo reveals, I tore off a bite.) Nonetheless, it’s delicious, it’s easy, it doesn’t need a dough hook on some pricey machine or any kneading by hand. Nor, to the point of this Tabled, does it need to prove. While its lack of yeast means it shouldn't cause digestive problems, start with a tiny slice if you're at all concerned about the sensitivity of your stomach.

250g/8oz wholewheat/wholemeal flour
2 heaped tablespoons plain flour
1 level tablespoon brown sugar
1 teaspoon salt
1 heaped teaspoon baking powder
up to 285ml/½ pint buttermilk. If you have none, while whisking, add a very good squeeze of the juice of half a lemon to fresh milk to make a soured milk substitute. It's what I used.

Preheat oven 200C/400F.

Mix the dry ingredients in a bowl. Add enough buttermilk - it may take less than 285ml/½ pint - to make a soft dough. Shape into a round, slash the top in four if you like (as you can see, I forgot) and turn it onto a buttered and floured sheet or tin. Bake 30-40 minutes till it sounds hollow when you knock its base (test after 30) and set on a wire rack to cool. I couldn't wait to slice and spread it thickly with butter while still warm - the photo reveals a little dampness but that steamed off. Toast it only after this first seductive sampling.