The FastDay Forum

I bet you all read the Doh! in Homer Simpsons voice.

Well what have I done again you ask? Well, I've broken my fast this morning with a high carb food (a piece of fruit cake if you must know) and now can't stop picking and grazing. I have even had a 3 egg omelette with cheese to pile on the proteins with a bit of fat to balance out or swamp the carbs, but to no avail.

I really should know better as I tend to advocate low carb and wheat avoidance in my daily life. Especially as I am wheat intolerant (not coeiliac, just that my body thinks of wheat as a poison and tries to reject it). Being wheat intolerant doesn't make me a saint and automatically cut off that part of my brain that enjoys the taste of baked products, it just makes me react to wheat with diarrhea, water retention and bloating.

Talking of water retention, I couldn't resist a day of bread making and therefore fresh out of the oven bread eating 3 days ago. So for the last two days I have weighed 6lb more than normal with massive water retention. It was so bad you couldn't see where my legs ended and my feet started and I could barely wiggle my toes they were such fat little sausages. So my weigh in today at 1.4 lbs up is no surprise as I can still see the swelling at my ankles and the foot bones still aren't showing. One day I will take photo's of no water retention and a day with, to show others what it can be like.

As for today, I will revert to fasting mode in my brain and not eat again till dinner time tonight to flush the sugar out of my blood stream or at least use it up. Also I am not allowed to eat the bread I am making in half an hour for the men in the family.

It's the muscles in your calves that move the water round your legs. I know you're a bit restricted but try elevating your feet and clenching and unclenching your calves...

Might work, might not, worth a go...

I am opting for a walk in a bit. Even if it raises the pain level I can always crash on the sofa with my feet up and the TENS machine twitching away.

Walking is better, try that then elevate, should help.

Julie - do you bake bread with baker's yeast or with natural levain (sourdough)?

I ask since I'm a sourdough baker. I can eat my bread and not bloat/retain water. But on the rare occasions that I eat regularly yeasted bread or bagels, I really notice the difference.

I baked sourdough focaccia last weekend and managed to eat the entire thing over the course of Sunday but wasn't bloated and my Monday fast was fine with weight staying steady.

I have wondered if its the yeast rather than wheat that causes me problems. I will have to try an empirical test. Lots of pasta, tortilla and pastries without yeast and see what happens, then compare it to a day of bread and doughnuts.

Might be interesting. The other thing about sourdough bread is that its fermentation stage takes a lot longer and different amino acids/enzymes are produced which makes the bread easier to digest. Apparently some of the work your gut has to do with standard bread is done in the bowl!

Anyhow although it might be less fun than a day of pasta, tortillas and pastry, the other test would be to treat yourself to a good artisan sourdough and munch through it and see if any effects. What we do in the name is science!

I make spelt sourdough. It's less bloating than commercial bread. I probably eat a fraction of the rice I used to eat & no pasta now.

Bread is super processed & isn't really fully cooked in some ways.

http://www.sustainweb.org/realbread/

[janeg]

Interesting stuff
any chance of the recipe for sourdough foccaccia please, applespider?
I'm a bread maker and haven't done sour dough as it seems a bit of a faff, but am a sucker for focaccia...
Sorry for butting in julie- hope the swelling goes down and you feel better soon

I am heading off to a food festival tomorrow. There should be an artisan baker there to try out a sourdough loaf. It will have to be just for me though as I managed to buy 4 3kg bags of catering bread mix for a ridiculously low amount of money. It will take us 6 months to use that up.
I can't afford to NOT use it.

Might be interesting. The other thing about sourdough bread is that its fermentation stage takes a lot longer and different amino acids/enzymes are produced which makes the bread easier to digest. Apparently some of the work your gut has to do with standard bread is done in the bowl!

Anyhow although it might be less fun than a day of pasta, tortillas and pastry, the other test would be to treat yourself to a good artisan sourdough and munch through it and see if any effects. What we do in the name is science!

Have a local baker down the country road in the next village who makes sourdough loaves of bread from organic rye and spelt. I wish I could eat it all year round--it is wonderful!(Unfortunately, not readily available where I live in California). Of course, the eating of it as with everything else needs to be done in moderation, haha.

any chance of the recipe for sourdough foccaccia please, applespider?
I'm a bread maker and haven't done sour dough as it seems a bit of a faff, but am a sucker for focaccia...

You'll need a starter* to make it - although honestly, it's not that much of a faff. If it was, mine wouldn't have survived for nearly 3 years. Once you've got the actual starter, you can keep it in the fridge between bakes and you just need to bring it to room temperature a day or so before you use it. I've even revived an old batch left in my mother's fridge after 6 months! And I find it more forgiving time-wise than baker's yeast if you need to do stuff since you can whack the actual dough in the fridge and slow it down.

Anyhow... sourdough focaccia - makes an 8" square (feel free to double/triple)
For the dough...
100g sourdough (100% hydration - basically fed 50g water/50g flour the night before)
250g strong white bread flour
160-180g water (it is a wet dough but you may want to add 160 and see how you go)
5g sea salt
20g olive oil

For the topping
sprigs of rosemary
more sea salt flakes
more olive oil

Basically, mix the sourdough and the water, then add the flour and the salt and mix. It is a very wet dough so don't panic. Put a little oil on your fingers before you work it to stop it sticking. Cover and leave it 10 minutes and then come back and stretch it out of the bowl and fold it over a few times. Repeat this step 3 times. Then wait 30 minutes and stretch/fold it again... and then wait an hour and do it again. See how your dough is going - this might depend on temperature - and how well the air is developed. You can leave it another hour or so but if it's warm, you might not need to.

Get a baking tin and put a good slug of olive oil into it - you want a puddle of it rather than just lightly greased. Then get your dough and shape/fold it into a square and put it in the tin. Wait 10-15 minutes and then stretch it gently into the corners of the tin. Push your finger tips through the dough to make dimples and leave it for 30-60 minutes to rise (depends on temperature) - then drizzle on your extra oil so that it puddles in the dimples, sprinkle on your salt and push some rosemary springs into it.

Bake it at about 220C for 30-35 minutes - with a tin of water in the base of the oven to get some steam. Let it cool a little.... and eat!

Here's the finished article

and sliced with some dukkah for dunking...

sliced with dukkah

*starter - if you live in South London, you're welcome to some of mine if you don't know anyone with one. Otherwise, get some bread flour (rye is best to get it started) and mix 25g flour and 25g water together in a jar/bowl (cover lightly) and leave it for 24 hours. Then keep 25g of it and add another 25g flour/water to it and leave it again. Keep throwing away all but 25g and feeding it every 24 hours and after 7-10 days, you'll have a starter.

I am heading off to a food festival tomorrow. There should be an artisan baker there to try out a sourdough loaf. It will have to be just for me though as I managed to buy 4 3kg bags of catering bread mix for a ridiculously low amount of money. It will take us 6 months to use that up.
I can't afford to NOT use it.

Good luck finding a lovely loaf and keeping it to yourself! Once you've used up all that breadmix, you can just buy a big 10kg bag of flour and bake your own sourdough!

I had a go at making a starter and it went off, so I bought one in the end off Bakery Bits and it's very forgiving!

Much easier in some ways than proper yeast as I now follow Dan Lepard's way of doing bread, which is mix, leave overnight, then put into cooking thing, then leave to double in size, then bake...

That focaccia looks fab!

Love sourdough! It really does avoid the bloat. I'm going to put some of my starter out tonight and try that focaccia recipe on Sunday. Looks gorgeous!