 Without a doubt, grains can be part of a healthy diet. Weston Price, who was a dentist in the early 1900s, explored two groups of people, in particular, the Gaelics, who got a lot of their calories from oats, as well as the Swiss in the Los Chantel Valley, who got a large amount of their calories from rye bread. The thing is, all of these foods were prepared in traditional methods. The oats were soaked for five to seven days at a certain temperature and a certain type of water. The rye bread was naturally fermented over a period of days and baked in natural methods. And not only that, the versions of these oats and the rye were like heirloom, organic quality. What we're going to do here today is we're going to make eincorne sourdough bread. And eincorne is the original form of wheat. You know, there's variations on flour we have now. Flour is originally in the state of a berry. It's called, it could be a rye berry. It could be a wheat berry. And this berry is a very hard seed that's ground up and milled into flour. Yeah, screw the bread guys, let's eat some steak. I went downstairs and I just opened up some, a bag of rye berries I had from like a year ago. They're probably actually almost bad now, but this is what the, you know, the wheat or the rye looks like before it's milled into flour. It's these very, very hard seeds that, you know, they're much harder to grind up than you would imagine. So very, very, very labor-intensive process. It's pretty crazy, you know. We take these seeds, we grind them up into like powder, we ferment them, and then we bake them. It's really, really interesting in process. That's way outside of what nature intended, at least so it seems. I used to actually mill my own flour, but when I realized I wasn't making sourdough bread anymore, was the point of having a $400 grain mill. And the whole process from start to finish is very labor-intensive. You have to imagine how many man-hours are required to make a mill, how many man-hours are required to harvest the wheat. At the end of the day, it was more something we did out of necessity and just to get these calories and the overall net time invested versus caloric gain in a society is incredible. I mean, on an individual basis, of course, it's very low if you're trying to do this yourself, but that's why we settled into civilizations once we started harvesting grain. Here I have 100% whole grain, iron-corn sprouted flour, and then here I have a regular all-purpose iron-corn flour. The difference is, this flour is sprouted, it's supposed to increase the bioavailability of the vitamins and reduce the phytic acid content, and the whole version removes some of the bran. And most people might just say, well, doesn't the bran only have anti-nutrients? So it's actually debatable on whether or not the whole grain flour is healthier than the not whole grain flour. And most people do think that sprouted flowers are healthier, but sprouting grains isn't necessarily something that would have been possible in nature. We would have had to germinate the seeds, dry them out, and then mill them up. I don't think that would have happened. I think the most natural form of the bread would just be a 100% whole grain version, not sprouted, that's it. Sourdough methods would have been very, very practical and usable, but flatbreads were also used. We didn't necessarily always ferment the bread. Maybe we just mixed flour with water, I've seen many, many Nordic areas prepare flatbreads. So what I use this bread for is a replacement for my family's bread. My father still can't stay away from pasta and other bread, but I gave this to my grandma, hopefully she feels better eating this bread. It's just a way to reduce inflammation. The iron corn wheat is more digestible, and that's really the main thing. It's a source of energy, it's a source of nutrition, and this bread is super duper dense. So let's actually just look at, I will show you guys how to make this, and I will also link a sourdough masterclass, which is a video that explains things much further in depth than I do in the description. First I might as well show you the end result and what we're actually making today. So this is the, this is the iron corn, this is the whole wheat, this is the all-purpose wheat. It's very similar to Italian bread, I don't know how many of you Italians are out there, but it tastes exactly like Italian bread, slight sourdough flavor, very, very plain, you know, this you can have with pasta, with, you know, as a sandwich bread. That's what you would use this bread for. The purpose is, it's still an excellent source of calories, and I'm pretty sure I could beat someone with this, like, this is like a, this is like a brick, you know, this is a very, very dense, nutritious bread. And I read a, I watched a video on a Roman soldier diet, and this is kind of the bread the Roman soldiers would have almost eaten, probably the whole grain version, but it's very, very dense in nutrients and calories, and once you make that loaf of bread for the day, you can get a fair amount of your calories from it. This is the sprouted whole grain bread. Still same density, it's just smaller because I made a half the size of the loaf. The grain, the crumb profile is still similar. Oh man, this one is so, this is so nutty, it's almost sweet, it has this deep complex grain flavor. Although this bread would remind you more of Italian bread, I think this bread is just, this bread is delicious on its own and in general, it is by far, it's so delicious. I would never make that other white bread, like, but the only reason I made that was to be more approachable for my family, but this bread I prefer 100%, you know, you could see the darker color, whether or not it's more nutrient dense, it certainly tastes better on its own. So that's definitely something to consider. So let me show you guys how to, I mean, I wanted to show you this first and go over the flavor profile. My dad loved both of these and he's a breadaholic, so I'll just show you guys that I can actually make the bread before you listen to me and we make it. To make bread, we need a yeast, a starter culture and the natural way to do that is to take flour and water in equal parts and you pretty much let that sit for a week or two and the wild yeast in the air will start to ferment the flour and the water and you keep adding flour and water and feeding the yeast and then you like, you remove some of the starter, you add some flour and water back in just so you don't have to keep feeding it so much because it gets to a certain size and I already have the starter done. So here is a, this is the whole wheat starter and this is just the regular, the white flour starter and I just fed this one this morning. So this should be ready to make some bread within a couple hours, it's bubbling. I don't know if you guys could see the bubbling, the yeast. This one, the whole wheat starter is, I don't have enough to make another whole wheat loaf. Oh, it's like super sour, super whiny, yeasty smelling and the reason I brought out two starters to show you guys is because depending on the grain and what type of nutrients are in the grain, even if they're both wheat, different yeast will take hold and produce different flavors. If you have a rye starter, I've noticed that rye bread has a much sweeter smell with the yeast and taste compared to wheat. Wheat has more of like a sour, accurate taste. Very, very interesting, I wonder if you could even use, like what would happen if you use the rye starter in a wheat sour. You know, there's many, many variations to sourdough bread. I mean, maybe one yeast would just take over, but who knows. So what we're really going to do now, I'm probably going to wait a couple hours just to make sure that that starter culture is nice and active and then we're going to make the bread. In regards to equipment you need, everyone's going to have pretty much the basics. I mean, what will make it easier, like I have a stand mixer that I'm going to use to knead the dough for like 15, 20 minutes. That's going to save a lot of effort on my part. And then we just need like a pot that has a tight fitting lid to cook the loaf in. So most people will, you know, you don't need proofing baskets. You don't need bread baking loaf tins. You don't need those things that most bakeries that produce these breads in bulk use. And I guess one more thing to touch on is there are many variations on preparing bread. I mean, there's debt mold or rye method. There's different methods to produce different flavor profiles of bread and rise it in different ways, as well as preparations for every grain. If there's a grain or a source of plants in nature, a wild plant, a grain, whatever it is, there's usually a traditional method that's tied into preparing that grain to reduce the anti-nutrient content, to reduce the phytic acid content. Actually, I don't know how much they could be reduced, but you're basically making the food less inflammatory and more digestible the longer you ferment it and through various processes. So that's why we do this. We just want a source of energy that's less inflammatory. All right, guys, first step to making the bread. I actually have my starter here in hot water just to make it a little more active. Yeast is more active at higher temperatures, but it's good to go right now. In this bowl right here, I mixed it earlier by accident because I didn't think I had to re-film this video, but this is 800 grams of the white flour we have, 460 grams of water, and 10 grams of salt. That's all that we have in this bowl. And again, the recipe as well as the other video as a full guide on how to do this will be posted below. So the only thing that we have to add in addition to the flour, the water, and the salt is of course the fermentation base. And this is just a natural way to replace the yeast. So we need 320 grams of the fermentation base. And I might do a little more because it is a little bit wet. Usually the mother starter you use is equal parts. Flour and water, this is a bit more. So maybe we'll go to 350 grams of starter. Now the starter, if you want to use it, keep it on the counter, keep feeding it, or put it back in the fridge. That's what I'm going to do. Now comes the more laborious part where we have to knead this dough for about 15-20 minutes in order for the gluten structure to build as well as the elasticity in the dough. So it rises and it keeps its crumb. Now, this is very, very labor intensive but you still get a net caloric gain. I fortunately have a stand mixer. Otherwise I wouldn't be making bread for my family every other day. So again guys, this is going to go for about 15 minutes and then we'll come back down and we'll check the texture. While the mixer is kneading the dough, I put the bottom oven on a warm temperature just to warm it up so we can proof the yeast at a higher temperature. If it's like 85-90 degrees outside, you don't have to do this, but as long as the oven is below 130 degrees, the yeast will not die. Our bread has been going for like 20 minutes and when we stretch the dough, it doesn't tear. It's like a window pane effect almost. So, and this dough hook is almost hot and the dough is very warm itself because of the heat from the friction of the kneading. So that's good. It'll stimulate the yeast growth a lot more. We don't have to worry about the dough being cold. Okay, now this goes in a warm oven to proof for three hours and I just put a damp towel on top of that so the top doesn't dry out. Not too important. For our baking vessel, all I did was I traced the bottom of the pot we're going to use on some parchment paper. I'm going to cut this out and put it in the bottom just so it doesn't stick. So our dough has proofed for about three hours. As we can see, you know, there's a lot of air in it. We've got to kind of knock it back down. It's another we knocked the air out of the dough. It's going to go into the final baking vessel which for me is the pot that has a tight-fitting lid and some parchment paper on the bottom so it doesn't stick on the bottom. Switch to a bigger bowl. The one might have been a little too small. Alright, so the bulk of the work is done. Now this just has to go back into that warm oven to proof for another three hours. I put the oven on the lowest heat for just like a minute and then I just let it sit. Especially in the colder months, this speeds things up a lot. Oven at your hottest temperature for ten minutes. Then you put the bread in. Ideally, you score the top with the razor blade. I'm going to go grab one. I'm just going to make a few designs in the dough and some civilizations, they used to have like stamps. So you know which part was yours. This needs a lid so that it steams itself. If it doesn't have a lid, a crust is going to form on the top before the bread gets to rise. Although this size takes about an hour in this hot-ass oven so in about 40 minutes, we'll take the lid off and let it brown on top. Come back down to 1140. The middle didn't rise as much as I would have liked to but that's probably because the pot was so big. This cool off and we'll check on it in the morning. Alright guys, so it is the next morning. We got a really nice crumb profile on this loaf. Very dense, soft in the middle. Smells like the Italian bread, you know. Crumb profile looks awesome. Very happy with how this turned out. This is actually one of the better crumb profiles that I've had on the bread. They're a little denser than this. But that's it, thank you guys for watching. As I said earlier, there are many, many preparations in regards to various grains and when people ask me, is one grain better than another? That's a very individual question to answer. I mean obviously something like white rice or wild rice or whatever might be a lot less inflammatory than wheat for some people. So the reason I don't like answering if something is better or worse is because people eat these foods out of necessity according to their region. Now, if we were going to debate these things up and down, say alright, is there a pollution factor in rice, maybe arsenic, you know, who knows? There's just too many variables and the point is that the initial food is high quality. You can tolerate it, particularly, you know, maybe it's part of your ancestry, maybe it's something they've eaten for the past thousands and thousands of years. But by no means were these foods we would have consumed to be in optimal health. Granted, they were more than 30 to 40% of our calories. That's why Italians are a lot shorter than other people. We had a heavy grain and plant based to our diet that did not have a lot of animal foods. There used to be a certain amount of animal foods to sustain optimal height, you know, all those factors. So if you guys would like to support me, please just share the video. The wheat flours that I used in this video were actually on my Amazon shop, if you want to check that out. I'll also add some other wheat and stuff to my Amazon shop, some other rye grains, some other things. If you guys would like to support me, please just share the video and outside of that, you know, you can check out my website frank-tufano.com. If you guys are interested in reaching out to me for anything, you can also shoot me an email in the description below, frankatufano.com.