Eating Healthier in Today's World

MAKING WHOLE GRAIN QUICK BREADS AND MUFFINS

In the past few posts I have been talking a lot about making, rising, shaping and baking whole grain yeast breads.  I thought it was time we could take a look at the other types of breads that don't require and rising and use a different leaving product instead of yeast.  These breads are usually termed QUICK BREADS OR MUFFINS because of the short time it takes to create them.

For rounding out a simple dinner when time is short, or making LUNCH out of lunch, a batch of muffins or a spicy loaf of quick bread can be just the thing.  Quick breads offer variety, interest, and flexibility, complementing rather than competing with the long-rising breads that are our staff of life. 

Without the fermentation period, quick breads depend solely on their ingredients to give them pizzazz.  Most quick bread recipes that I have seen roaming around at large on the web world, call for a humongous amount of fat and, often, sugar too.  They are in fact not breads at all, but greasy cakes, hiding behind the unassumming innocence of names like " Wheat Germ Zucchini Loaf."  Tasty, but Good Grief!  A whole cup of oil, and two of sugar in one loaf?

The breads that I will recommend are lean by comparison to such delicacies, but they are just as delicious.  Natural ingredients like fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, herbs, and spices supply their full, satisfying flavours.  The recipes call for a minimum of fat and sweetener to make the breads tender ant tasty.  I have included flours and grains other than wheat here and there, and have tried to describe some of their possiblities and limitations.  We who eat wheat bread daily, welcome the variety the other grains have to offer.  Since quick breads do not depend completely on gluten for their rise and cohesiveness (particularly if the recipe calls for egg) some, or even all, of their flour can come from oats, rye, corn, and rice.

Leavening for Quick Breads--Usually the ordinary, double-acting baking powders are effective, and of the several kinds of baking powder, they are the least bitter.  If you prefer to avoid the aluminum salts that these products contain, the old-fashioned cream of tartar baking powders--either made at home or bought in a natural foods store--work perfectly well.  To make your own baking powder, use 5/8 tsp. cream of tartar plus 1/4 tsp. bicarbonate of soda per cup of flour;  that is the equivalent of a teaspoon of single-acting baking powder.  Make it fresh each time, or make extra and store it air-tight, but only for short periods.

If quick breads appear often on your table, the sodium content of these products and their destruction of thiamine may be more significant considerations than whether or not they contain aluminum.

One teaspoon of baking soda contains 1360 mg. of sodium, commercial soda-based baking powders vary, ranging from those made with cream of tartar, with 200 mg. to those double-acting kind, with 330 mg. sodium per teaspoon.  Those who need to limit their sodium intake carefully can look for potassium bicarbonate baking powder at the health food store, or even in some supermarkets. 

Sodium and aluminum aside, chemical leavenings always generate an alkaline pH and this destroys the B vitamin thaimine, which you would expect to be plentiful in a whole grain product.  For good rising power with a minimum of baking powder I suggest using 1 tsp. per cup of flour.

In batters with a lot of acid ingredients, baking soda can be used by itself ( or in combination with baking  powder) to get a good rise without the addition of extra acid salts.  Here are a few simple rules to follow:

NOTE: There is close to 1/4 tsp. baking soda in each teaspoon of baking powder.

1. Don't mix soda and acid liquids together.  Sift the soda (and cream of tartar) along with the dry ingredients, and measure the liquids with the liquid measure.

2.Always sift the dry leavening with the flour because if there are even small lumps, the final product will have little dark brown places that are impressively bitter.

I will continue talking about the liquids, eggs, sweeteners and fats in the quick breads and muffins in our next few posts but I will always include a recipe with them as well.  This time we have one of my favorite whole grain muffin recipes.  CLICK HERE FOR MONSTER MUFFINS