Allergy advice
Sadly, some people have problems digesting bread and other wheat products.
Mild wheat intolerance
Sometimes this is a result of insufficient fermentation in modern doughs, ending up in a practically raw, doughy bread that is harder work for our stomachs to break down. If you suffer a mild intolerance when eating bread, but not when eating other wheat-based products such as pasta, this may well be your problem. The good news is that slowly made breads such as ours will probably cause you no problems at all. As with all food allergies, it is best to proceed with caution, starting off with a spelt bread (made with an ancient variety of wheat that our tummies are used to), and then progressing slice by slice to other slow-rise loaves such as our multigrain or bordelais.
If you find that you cannot eat any kind of wheat, including pasta, cakes and biscuits, it is worth trying a bread made with another grain, such as rye. Rye is not wheat, it is a different plant altogether, and is therefore suitable for many people with wheat allergies. Check that the loaf is 100% rye, and remember that it is a very different, but equally delicious, product to a wheat loaf. I prefer to keep mine in the fridge, which I would never do with a wheat loaf. Rye bread is not suitable for coeliacs as it contains gluten.
Yeast allergies
Many people experiencing discomfort after eating bread assume they have a yeast allergy, but this is actually very rare.
Usually the problem is that modern bread is made far too quickly, giving the flour no time to ferment and become more easily digestible. It is a little like making a white sauce but not cooking the flour, so it is stodgy and makes you feel heavy and uncomfortable. Commercial white breads are typically mixed, moulded, baked and cooled in 35-40 minutes, whereas our bread takes 3 days!
Breads that are made quickly need improvers, flour treatment agents, and a lot more yeast to give the fast rise, hence the confusion over yeast allergies. It is not the added yeast that is making your stomach turn, but why it is being added, ie. To speed up (and mostly eliminate) fermentation, making the flour less edible.
Coeliac sufferers
Coeliac disease is a serious allergy to gluten, which can be life threatening. Gluten is a protein found in all wheat grains (including spelt), rye…….
When mixed with water, the gluten in wheat flour becomes long and stringy, and with further mixing these strands develop into a flexible and resilient network that supports the dough, allowing it to rise and giving bread its airy consistency. Gluten is essential for bread production, and all breads contain it. Rye breads contain less gluten, and are more dense as a result, but they are still not suitable for coeliacs.
None of our products at Vicky’s bread are totally gluten free. It is possible to make doughs with flours made from potatoes or rice that contain no gluten, but in our small bakery we could never guarantee that a stray wheat grain had not jumped into our gluten-free mix, so I regret that we cannot make a gluten-free product for coeliacs.
The village bakery in Cumbria makes a range of gluten-free ‘breads’, cakes and pasties in a special building dedicated to gluten-free production. These are definitely worth trying, and are available from health food shops.
It is also possible to bake your own gluten-free goodies, which has the added benefit that you know for certain that no wheat or other gluten-containing substance has entered the process. There is a brilliant chapter on gluten-free baking in Andrew Whitley’s book Bread. He is the founder of the Village Bakery, as mentioned above.