William Davis, MD, on Wheat Belly

The book Wheat Belly by the Cardiologist William Davis has been on my Wish List for months now, and I have read many favorable things about the book, and the connection of modern wheat to our obesity crisis. Just yesterday I came across a series of 6 YouTube videos where he explains the basis for his book.

I thought some of you may be interested in watching them if you have a lull in this hectic holiday season. By the Way, he has a cookbook, Wheat Belly Cookbook: 150 Recipes to Help You Lose the Wheat, Lose the Weight, and Find Your Path Back to Health that will be released Dec. 24.
 

Part 1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9VklT8uL8yo

Part 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZYBvDee69lk&feature=BFa&list=UL3lq_5o9_iy4

Part 3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMJaXx4DAOg&playnext=1&list=PL57233F3B3DBB6113&feature=results_video

Part 4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLVjiDIwhuo&list=PL57233F3B3DBB6113&index=4

Part 5

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C0NKcJfcPw4&list=PL57233F3B3DBB6113&index=5

Part 6

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3lq_5o9_iy4&list=PL57233F3B3DBB6113&index=6

His Blog

http://www.wheatbellyblog.com/

I've been trying to eliminate a lot of wheat from my daily fare, but it's hard... wheat is IN everything! However, I have ordered some Einkorn flour to mix with almond or coconut flour for those few things I'm not yet willing to give up.

6 Degrees of "Fermentation"

6 Degrees of Separation is a term is often used as a synonym for the idea of the "small world" phenomenon. It refers to the idea that everyone is on average approximately six steps away from any other person on Earth, so that a chain of, "a friend of a friend" statements can be made, on average, to connect any two people in six steps or fewer.

In my case, it's the small world of fermenting... and all ferments are connected within 6 steps or fewer, so to speak.

I hadn't given much thought to the connectedness of the food things I do (other than eat them) until I started learn to make charcuterie and cheese. Then it finally sunk in...  fermenting is the connection! I started to ferment breads (sourdough) 2-3 years ago, and over the last 2 summers I spent a lot of time learning and making lacto-fermented vegetables. Last fall, I started to re-learn fermenting wines and cider. Over the winter I have been learning to ferment sausages and salume with the hopes of eventually fermenting (curing) a ham.

Now, I'm also learning to ferment cheese. It seems to me that each new thing is a little easier because it builds on the related experience which is also connectedness, gained from the things I learned previously. The more I learn in each of these connected areas, the more I am beginning to understand some of the nuances of fermenting, with hopes of eventually mastering a few of them. Lactobacillus, common to ferments, is a very interesting bacteria and enriches my world by the fermentation of foods from chocolate and sauerkraut to merlot and Brie.

To make things interesting, Lactobacillus is like any other living thing (including us!)... it depends on what it eats, and what it eats affects what it does. Maybe that cow ate a few more blades of grass with higher Omega-3, so that one gallon of milk had a miniscule amount more butterfat and lactose than the other gallon I used. No two cheese wheels will turn out the same, nor will any 2 loaves of sourdough, or batches of beer... The bacteria and yeast in the air we breathe, on our walls and on our skin, are all working in addition to (or sometimes against) the bacteria and yeast we add from little packets into whatever we are making. 

Perhaps a slight puff of air from an open window flows over my pot just as I am adding the culture, bringing a tad more of my resident lactobacillus along with it... or maybe there were a few more grains of salt in one measured teaspoonful compared to another...or today the humidity is 2% higher than yesterday. SO many variables that all affect every outcome.

I actually find it very refreshing (although a little frustrating) to know that everything I make will NOT turn out exactly the same every time, even after I learn the basics and move into some proficiency. There will always be an element of surprise and discovery waiting in the wings, keeping Life interesting!

Baking without an electric or gas oven

The cooking dilemma during the time I was without power for several days was my attempts to bake on my wood stove, and I’ve been researching methods ever since.

My thoughts at the time were that a cast iron container like a Dutch oven would work, although I don’t own one. More thoughts, research and trials on that idea have squelched it for direct baking. If you pour a cake batter in a pan, the bottom of the pan (where it sits directly on top of the wood stove) overheats and burns the batter; at the same time, the center of the batter remains mostly gooey and uncooked.

One alternative is to put some supports in a Dutch oven to hold a cake or muffin pan off the bottom, which will then cook the batter in the heated space (when the lid is placed on top of the oven) creating an “oven”. Duh! That would be fine if you have a huge Dutch or French oven (big ones cost upwards of $275 or more), and/or very tiny pie, cake and muffin pans… and baking just for one person in a smaller cast iron covered pot. Fantes carries some assorted small anodized baking pans, and Amazon carries some stainless steel baking pans that might fit in a larger cast iron oven.


Note: Dutch Ovens were designed for cooking inside a fireplace with a chimney, or over an open fire, used by placing hot coals on top of the lid as well as under the pot. The coals over and under the pot assured even cooking. Not something you'd want to do on the top of a wood stove inside the house!

I was looking at metal pans more for my tabletop electric convection oven (as long as there is power) because I cannot use glass pans in it for cooking, and I found the smaller pans I could use in my small cast iron covered pot (when power is out) listed at Fantes. I prefer NOT to use any aluminum cookware or non-stick coated cookware, and do not even own any except one small skillet I use very carefully on lower heat temps, and only for eggs.

Several folks have used a camp oven like the Coleman Oven on top of a wood stove, but with iffy results. The problem with a camp oven seems to be that it doesn’t get hot enough to really bake, and there isn’t much insulation in the walls to hold heat. I suppose if you are camping and cooking over an open fire, it doesn’t matter too much; food is either charred or undercooked... kinda goes with camping!

All those thoughts, though, brought up things like solar cookers… fine when the sun is out, and easier in summer when no one wants to heat the house using an oven. In the winter when it's below freezing outside and perhaps overcast or storming, it's a different story. Since I’m starting to do some cold smoking of meats and cheese, I’m also looking for a heat source using very little fuel to make smoke.

Aha! A Rocket Stove would do the trick for cooking outside regardless of available solar sunlight, or could be used for creating smoke for my smoker! I’ve known about rocket stoves for a long time, and have even thought to build one, so I went looking again for building plans.

Rocket Stove from Tin Cans

Most rocket stoves are made from (used) metal cans, whether large rectangular cooking oil cans or large food service cans. However, few last longer than a few months due to rust. Of course if they are so cheap to make, just throw them “away”? (Just where IS “away” anyway?)

The Aprovecho Research Center near Eugene Oregon has worked on developing cooking apparatus for Third World countries for many years, and they publish some good ideas they have trialed and proven to work. (They do a lot of work and education on sustainable culture in many other areas as well. Check out their website!)

Aprovecho's Capturing Heat: Five Earth-Friendly Cooking Technologies and How to Build Them is a great PDF you can download free here. To my surprise, there were 2 plans for Rocket Bread Ovens! They are made out of 55 gallon metal drums, and can bake more than 20 loaves of bread at one time. They say 66 pounds of bread can be completely cooked using just 11 pounds of dry wood, and Rocket Ovens more fuel efficient than a beehive earthen oven. The oven used at the Research Center uses a 14 gallon drum as the fuel feed box, like the drawing above.

Some fancy sheet metal work on this rocket stove! (Source unknown.)

The Rocket Stove pictured above appears to have a chimney coming out of the back of the stove. If so, and IF you could make each of the cooking wells airtight, and if you could vent the chimney to the outside, you should be able to safely use the stove inside a dwelling. You'd need to be able to close off the fuel intake ports when the fires die down, or you'd get smoke and carbon monoxide coming from those ports back into the house. It should be cheaper to build one than to buy an antique wood-burning cookstove with an integral oven.

I have thought for a long time I'd like to build an earth oven in the yard, and last summer I even bought the wonderful book Build Your Own Earth Oven by the highly acclaimed Kiko Danzer, who is truly an artist in clay. Now I may choose to build a Rocket Oven instead, as the cost of materials is much cheaper and requires less fuel to bake in it.

I'm still playing around with baking on my wood stove using what I have available, and I will post any breakthroughs!

Skillet? Cornbread?

I found this recipe online for someone's great-grandmother's skillet cornbread. Sounded like a winner. Only it wasn't a winner for me, but that had very little to do with the recipe. I'm beginning to feel like Sisyphus pushing that %^&*(# rock, but I AM determined to get a handle on bread-like items that can be cooked either on the stovetop or in my small tabletop oven.

Followed the directions, mixed up the ingredients (and forgot the salt!), heated the skillet... 

... and proceeded according to directions. After a few minutes, the batter formed bubbles in it the way pancakes do.

Eventually it "dried" on top and I was to turn it over so it would brown on the other side. Well, lemme tell ya, it didn't turn over easily! Yeah, I know the photo is out of focus, but I'm using it as a reference on what NOT to do. (The small skillet has the turkey liver I cooked for my cats, in case you are wondering.)

I will try this again, but I will use some flour in the batter, which this recipe did not have. Then, I will also use a smaller skillet. Part of the problem in turning the cornbread over was that the outer edges (where the skillet hung over the burner) were not getting enough heat to cook while the center was getting too browned. I don't know the BTU's of these burners but large pots of liquid take a long time to come to a boil, and only if a lid is on the pot.

Update: I finally made cornbread, just not skillet cornbread! It took several more failures, and several recipe adaptations, but I was eventually able to make a half-batch in my portable oven. I went back to trying the little oven because I couldn't find my 8" cast iron skillet, and the smaller one I have just holds a single fried egg. It wouldn't make much cornbread (even though I don't need much for my turkey dressing).

This recipe turned out nicely, and not too crumbly. Of course, my granddaddy would love any crumbly cornbread. I remember he used to eat a chunk broken into a glass of real buttermilk before bedtime.

Soaking Flour for Baking Bread

Photo from net_efekt's photostream

I wasn't very clear about soaking whole grain flours in an acid medium to break down phytates in the flour for making bread. Sorry. Let me see if I can explain it better.

Bread recipes call for flour, water (plus possibly other ingredients, depending on the recipe) and a leavening agent such as dry yeast or a starter. If you use a packaged yeast for the leavening, it doesn't break down the phytates (i.e. destroy the phytic acid) during the fermentation process. If you are using plain ole white flour that has been stripped of its nutrients, it probably doesn't make any difference anyway since the bran containing phytates is long gone.

If you are making a nutritional, whole grain bread, there are phytates in the milled flour, and using a starter rather than packaged yeast will help destroy the phytates. First, the starter (levain, sourdough, etc) has an active microbe population that has already destroyed most of the phytates in it. When you mix the starter with the flour and water called for in the recipe and let it sit in a cool-ish spot overnight to slowly ferment, you are letting the microbes grow and break down (digest) the phytates. This actually amounts to "soaking the flour"...

The more you slow down the fermentation time, the more phytates will be disarmed. So, if you normally mix up the ingredients, let it raise to double, punch down the dough, let it raise once more, then form and bake, you are eliminating some of the phytates. To let the dough rise longer (thus what is called a slow ferment), and punch it down at least once or twice again before forming, you need cooler temps.

My kitchen is generally cool, and I can leave mine on the counter, let it rise and punch it down 2-3 times after it has first fermented overnight, and put-off baking until perhaps 36 hours from when I first began, destroying more of the phytates.

Fermenting more than 48 hours is pretty useless because by then there are few phytates remaining and your dough could begin to spoil as the microbes have nothing to eat. One of the reason to refrigerate starters between use is to keep the living microbes dormant, not dead. Bringing the microbes out of dormancy by putting the starter back in room temperatures and feeding re-activates the starter.

Any of my whole grains to be cooked as a side dish or a cooked cereal, are soaked overnight in water with some Braggs Raw Apple Cider Vinegar. The acid in vinegar will break down the phytates, and the addition of the microbes in this particular raw vinegar will increase the vitamin (nutrient) content.

Sourdough Bread and Soaking Grains

Photo from surlygirl's photostream

In my post about antinutrients, I passed along Sally Fallon's recommendation of soaking legumes and grains overnight in an acidulated medium, but I didn't say why. The 'why' is very important, whether making sourdough bread, beans, or soaking milled whole grain flour overnight for pancakes.

An acidulated soaking medium such as buttermilk, raw apple cider vinegar or lemon juice in water, kefir, yogurt or whey contains enzymes and beneficial bacteria such as lactobacillus. (The skin on your arms holds enough friendly bacteria to make a sourdough starter!) As the bacteria break down the phytic acid and enzyme inhibitors in either whole grains or milled flour, they also multiply, thus increasing the beneficial enzymes and vitamins produced by their activity.

Just last week I read about a zillion pages on the internet about making bread. I have made bread many times (usually the basic recipe from the Tassajara Monastery in California), but would never call myself anything but a novice, thus all the recent reading.

However, combining what I have learned about soaking grains with the many bread baking sites I've read and bookmarked, I have thus far concluded that if I am to learn to make the nutritionally best everyday bread for myself, it needs to be a long-ferment sourdough.

When I return from my current trip to UVa on Wednesday, I intend to begin my own starter, or maybe 2, with one being helped by some very old starter from a friend. It will not be a quick project, as I understand starters change and get better with age. I do not plan to use any added yeast, either... just sourdough.

Bread won't happen for a while, and I expect I'll be looking at a long string of failures as I learn. I will no doubt buy some packaged sourdough starters along the way, just to have somewhat edible bread, and to see what different tastes develop with other starters and other grains. I will probably make the occasional yeasted bread too, just for variety.

I'm taking my camera to the shop on my trip. The battery will not charge and I'm hoping it is just the lithium battery and not the charger. I need it to take pictures during my bread project, including the failures.

By the way, several bread blogs I read mentioned Sally Fallon's buttermilk soaking of the milled wheat flour. Most said it was a heavier, more dense bread that they preferred, but switching to raw apple cider vinegar or fresh lemon juice produced a more satisfactory product. Either way, you should read the book. Your local library probably has a copy.