Bread Ingredients

First things first - What Is Bread?

Prepare a dough using flour and water. Bake it / cook it (in / on anything - oven, girdle, tandoor etc.) and you have the simplest of breads. Roti is a bread and so is the French Baguette. Of course, there are dozens of things that you can put in the dough to make the bread more exciting – yeast and salt are the next two most common ingredients.

Is Bread Healthy?

Yes, but not all of them. the loaf you buy from your local store is one of the unhealthiest forms of bread. It is made of maida (even the ones claiming to be ‘100% atta’!) and loaded with chemicals. One commonly used chemical in breads  (azodicarbonamide) is the same stuff that is used to make yoga mats springy.

WHAT?? Tell Me More!

Commercial breads contain stuff like: Palm Oil, Preservatives, Emulsifier 472e (Diacetyl tartaric and fatty acid esters of glycerol), Treatment Agent 510 (Ammonium chloride), Food Colors, Acidity Regulators, several chemicals that act as Bread Improvers; the list goes on and on. Most, if not all, are harmful for you.

How Has Bread Making Changed?

Bread used to be plain bread – flour, water, salt, yeast, a bit of butter and sugar. It was baked fresh, with love, in small batches. This was done for thousands of years. Then along came the Chorleywood Bread Process, and with it, the industrialization of bread. From a loaf of love, bread became a chemical bomb.

So What's The Alternative?

Well, certainly not your neighborhood bakery, which has been around for years. That is no better than ‘Big Bread’. However, India is witnessing a bread renaissance. We are seeing the emergence of a new class of bakers, who are baking the way our ancestors did. Sir Olli’s is one such endeavor.

What's This Renaissance?

It’s the re-birth of traditional bread making – a slow process, using nutrient rich flours, naturally leavened, and without the use of chemicals. The result is a loaf of bread that is healthy, nutritious and tastes awesome. Once you eat such a bread, you are never going back to the styrofoam type commercial bread!