Low Fat Bread

Gabe • bread • chisel • gabe • homecooking • meatballs

So bread usually has a fairly high fat content.  Who knew?

Besides cooking, another  of my significant hobbies is Lifting/Body Building.  I am not usually very serious about it besides going to the gym most days, but one of the things that I have been wanting to do for a long time is to go through the routine that real body builders do to prep for shows or photo shoots.  The portion of that routine that is applicable to this blog, is that my calorie intake is cut in half, and I have to choose foods very carefully to make sure I am getting all the normal vitamins, enough protein, and a very low level of fat.  In generally the fat that I consume has to come with 10x the grams in protein, so I cannot afford to sauté vegetables, or eat tortillas or bread because even an extra gram or 4 of fat coming in with my carbs makes it much harder to achieve the amount of protein that I need.  Did you know your general loaf of bread has 30-50g of fat?  The Bread Bible has weight fractions for fat at the end of each recipe and usually it is 40% or so of the weight in flour.  Geeze.  There goes my daily sandwiches.

The routine has interacted with my cooking in both negative and positive ways.  On the downside, I know what good food tastes like, so I spend a lot of time making my limited meals taste good.  Most meatheads are happy with some brown rice, steamed veggies and a baked chicken breast.  Not this iron-jock, oh no.  I’ve done sushi with stevia, overstuffed tacos, stirfry (chicken stock sauté,) worked the numbers for pork, fish, beef, chicken, turkey, and even the sugar/carb rich fruits.  But the thing I missed most was bread.  I’d mournfully walk the bakery aisles, checking each bag of wheat and rye for less than a gram of fat per slice with no luck.  I searched through the Bread Bible, expecting to have to hit my mile-high baking book next, but finally the hearth breads came through.  Heart of Wheat Bread.   With no oil required, no butter, the right type of flour selected I came through with about 93% reduction in fat per loaf, only 2 grams!  Furthermore, based on the type of flour, most of my carbs were still complex (another of the stipulations in my routine), so I can switch in bread for my daily oatmeal, brown rice or quinoa from time to time.

This recipe is from The Bread Bible, page 310-314.

Ingredients

• 470g bread flour
• 3 tbls wheat germ
• 5/8 tsp instant yeast
• 1¼ tsp honey
• 322g room temperature water
• 1 ½ tsp salt

Procedure

To make the sponge, whisk together in a large bowl 160g flour, wheat germ, 3/8 tsp yeast, honey and water, until very smooth.  Scrape down the batter from the side of the bowl and cover with saran wrap.  Combine the rest of the flour and yeast in a small bowl and whisk together.  Scoop it onto the sponge and cover tightly with saran wrap and allow it to sit for at least 4 hours.  This is the dough starter, and allows the yeast to ferment and develop some flavor.

Sprinkle the salt on top and mix together with lightly floured hands.  Knead the dough in the bowl until it comes together then knead on a counter for a few minutes to get the gluten structure started.  A bench scraper is great to keep the bits of dough that stick to the counter involved in the kneading action.   Let the dough rest for 20 minutes to become slightly less sticky.    Continue kneading the bread for several more minutes until the dough becomes very smooth and elastic, although it will still be sticky.   Dust a bowl with flour and put the dough in gently.   Tightly wrap saran wrap over the top of the bowl and let the dough rise until doubled, about 45 minutes depending on elevation and how healthy your yeast is.  The Bread Bible suggests marking the bowl with tape to tell when it doubles.  When the dough is doubled, pull it out and give it one business letter turn (Stretch the dough into a rectangle, then gently fold it into thirds like a letter to fit into a business envelope.)  Place the dough back into the bowl in the same method as before and let rise until doubled again.

Pull the dough out of the bowl and onto a baking sheet with slipat and shape it into a ball about 6” in diameter, and 2.5” high.  Let it rise until doubled again, about an hour.  Preheat the oven to 475⁰F when the dough has begun rising, and put a baking stone in the oven.

With a sharp knife cut three incisions across thetop of the loaf and mist some water onto the bread.  Put a cup of ice cubes in a cast iron pan and quickly place the bread and baking sheet on top of the baking stone, and the cast iron pan on the bottom of the oven and close the door immediately.  Bake for 10 minutes then lower the temperature to 425⁰F.  Bake for 25 minutes or until the crust is golden brown and a skewer can be inserted and come out clean.  The dough should be rotated 1800 about halfway through baking.  After baking, let the bread cool for at least 10 minutes before slicing.  Ideally, it will cool completely.

So I started out just hoping to get edible bread, but Wow! This bread was probably the best I have ever made.  It helps that all my bread is coming out better sine I got a scale, and I had not had bread in over two weeks, but still.  The crust was crisp and firm, and the interior was light and airy and not too dense.  The flavor was hearty but not heavy on the tongue like many wheat breads can be.  I think instead of basic white bread, this will be my goto bread when I just need a loaf on a weekend.

Notes

• Two days after making this bread I found a loaf in the store that was tasty and had about the same fat content.  Thank God.  Or Udi’s.  Whatever
• I have two more weeks of eating like this.  Brutal.
• I served this with a few wheat noodles, sugarless marinara, and a ton of turkey meatballs.  Heaven.
• Some substitutions I have found that may be used after this is over.  Stevia = Sugar.  Chicken Broth to wilt vegetables.  PAM instead of oil for a light sauté.
• God I miss cheese.  And butter.  And mayonnaise.
• Wheat germ can be purchased at whole foods or other high end groceries.  It does add a touch of fat.  For baking flour I used King Arthur unbleached white bread flour, it lists 0g of fat per ¼ cup, but as most other flour has some fat, I’m sure 12 portions of that might have a couple grams of fat in it.

-Gabe