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Bonkers about bread

Photo: C.V. Subrahmanyam

Make the right choice Different types of breads kept on display at a bakery

For many kids, sandwich or milk bread slathered with a liberal dose of bright red jam and topped with another bread slice makes tasty afternoon snack or perfect stuff for the school box. It’s quick and easy to make, and most importantly, the child will eat it quietly… the reasoning many parents give. But just how much nutrition, calories, sugar and preservatives go into that ‘quick and easy’ snack? Not only kids, even adults opt for a quick convenient sandwich, albeit possibly filled with nutritional ‘goodies’ like veggies, peanut butter, meat and cheese.

Bread in its many forms has been around ages. In India it’s been unleavened (flat) bread – the rotis and phulkas, ancient West used tortillas. The bread that’s popular today, the soft, spongy risen leavened bread is thanks to the ancient Egyptians. They discovered the ‘bread starter’ or a natural form of yeast that helped bread dough to rise and consequently the baked bread to be soft and spongy. Over time, ‘refined’ bread or white bread – made from refined flour (maida) rose in popularity.

No doubt the Indian roti or chapatti of whole wheat (atta) is the healthiest, but much more handy is slice of ready-made bread.

While white bread is tasty, goes with just anything and easily assimilated, it is sans the fibre and nutrition that’s present in natural wheat. Fibre helps the digestive system, helps in weight control and works against constipation. White bread only provides carbohydrates (which gets converted to sugar and energy), empty calories and removes 30 nutrients that whole wheat naturally provides. The alternative? Encourage ‘healthy’ breads; for which there are quite a few established bakeries in the city providing a varied range.

The usual substitute is ‘brown’ bread. But not every brown bread is as healthy – check the ingredients – just ‘wheat flour’ is synonymous with maida – with the outer husk removed, while ‘whole wheat’ or ‘whole grain’ flour is the healthier version. Many ‘brown breads’ are in reality with ‘enriched wheat flour’ or white flour with percentage of whole wheat added, and caramel colour thrown in for good measure. Healthy brown bread is ‘whole wheat’ bread. Switching over to whole-wheat bread takes time and the taste differs and not all adapt that easily. In which case, such brown breads are better than plain white bread.

And then again there are many more tasty and healthy bread varieties to pick and choose from.

The bakery ‘Bagels’ near Siripuram Junction has a wide range including raagi, whole wheat, spinach, multigrain, carrot, banana raisin, and garlic bread loaves.

‘Fresh Choice’ provides brown (whole wheat) bread, and raagi bread for the health conscious and garlic bread and masala bread for the taste savvy.

And the recent entrant, ‘Baker’s Castle’ has a selection of multigrain, brown bread, whole-grain bread and raagi bread.

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