Here at Digital Nomad Health, we don’t like categorizing things as healthy or unhealthy, but the title gets the point across. In the Dr. Mo household, we like to cook and bake; when we come across a healthy bread recipe, we like to share it.
A healthy bread recipe should have good quality flour, high fiber, high protein, and easy to make.
We don’t demonize bread or carbs here at DNH, but each patient has particular needs, and having options is helpful for achieving your ideal health goal.
Good Quality Bread
The criteria for good quality bread, aside from taste, are the following:
- pesticide and preservative-free 100% whole grain flour
- salt for taste instead of preservation
- good quality oils, if needed
- easy to digest
I get the wheat grain from a reputable source. I know that it has minimal pesticides and wasn’t sprayed with antifungals for storage.
The flour is fresh and didn’t sit long enough for it to go rancid. The taste of rancid whole-grain flour is quite unpleasant; the germ kernel has oils that can oxidize.
There is no scientific proof that rancid oil is bad for you but it’s a topic we watch closely here at Digital Nomad Health.
A Simple Bread Recipe
The @chainbaker has a healthy bread recipe on his channel, which I’ve used many times successfully. It’s fast and simple.
Check out this 100% whole wheat bread recipe. It’s something we recommend our patients try when trying to improve their blood sugars and inflammation.
100% hydration (1:1 ratio of flour:water by weight) with some salt and active dry yeast, along with some olive oil for coating the pan.
The dough is messy but requires no kneading.
- Mix the ingredients in a bowl.
- Turn it out onto an oiled sheet.
- Do a coil-fold every 20 minutes x3.
- Cut or bake as a whole loaf @ 450 F.
How Often is Bread Safe to Eat?
If I overdo it with bread, I get acne, get puffy extremities, and get some digestion issues. Listening to my body helps me to know how much is too much.
For others, measurements using blood sugars can be helpful. If your sugar spikes over 140 after eating bread, it might be worthwhile to experiment.
How to Change the Variables?
There are a few experiments you can do to determine how you can consume bread without common side effects.
1. Adjust the flour
For example, use different grains and aim for 100% whole wheat. A little more challenging to bake with, but once you get the hang of it, quite easy.
2. Adjust Ingredients
A dense bread may spike your blood sugar, but a 100% hydration dough like this healthy bread recipe might be perfect for you.
3. Adjust the Serving Size
Maybe a smaller piece of bread is better for you; perhaps you’ll see no spike whatsoever with one of these loaves but get a major spike when you exceed that.
4. Adjust the Toppings
When making a sandwich, certain ingredients, such as vegetables, can manage your sugars; in fact, that’s the first thing we try.
A peanut butter sandwich with no jam might spike up your post-prandial sugars. But the same peanut butter sandwich with some berries and carrot slices might be fine.
Tune Into Your Body
A body scan doesn’t need gadgetry. Scanning my body now as I’m typing this out, there is no gut inflammation, no fatigue, some neck stiffness, a little tightness in my upper back, and little pressure on the right sciatic.
To go a step beyond, I can keep a mood/food/poop journal to help me figure out if certain things in my diet interfere with my physiology negatively.
Even a healthy bread recipe may clash with your particular genetics; experimenting is the key.