Yes. I eat bread.

I think my personality would expire without it. Can’t get enough of rye sourdough toasted with crispy edges, soft warm centre and mmmizzled with spicy olive oil.

There’s so much crap available in the supermarkets, it’s tricky to know what bread to submit to.

You won’t regret finding a good, honest baker and becoming a disciple of their sourdoughs (like Blazing Salads and Riot Rye, pictured below).

The trick to sourdough is in its digestibility – fermenting the bread with cultures helps to break down trickier starches.

The physical distress some people experience with commercial bread is less to do with “grains” or “gluten” than with the way large commercial bakeries operate. Instead of spending 48 hours making traditional bread like sourdough, loaves are belched out on conveyor belts within a few minutes, and designed to last weeks on supermarket shelves. Most commercial white flour in the US is bleached, using chemicals like acetone peroxide, chlorine, and benzoyl peroxide. This is not real bread! Is it any wonder our bodies reject this stuff, manifesting its contempt for such foods through a kaleidoscope of symptoms like constipation, bloating and military-grade gas?

But REAL bread won’t present such problems.

Below are some fabulous Irish bakers who should be wildly applauded, and supported for their dedication to natural bread making (and not the dental putty sold in supermarkets). Lets support them, so they stay in business.

Joe & Julie Portrait

(1) Joe Fitzmaurice, baker extraordinaire in Cloughjordan, Ireland, is the godfather of sourdough in Ireland. Take a sourdough course with Joe and a few of your pals this winter.

It’s the best €95 you’ll spend in 2015.

(2) La Tartine

A suite of organic sourdoughs from multigrain, to brown spelt, to hazelnut and fig. Surely you’ve had Tartine? Surely?! If not, it is imperative you beg your local deli to stock it, wherever you live in Ireland. (Here’s a link). You owe it to your taste buds and your health insurer.

(3) Arun Bakery

100% rye sourdough and other kickass delights. Find them in Stoneybatter, Dublin. Many health food stores such as The Hopsack stock goodies from Arun Bakery.

(4) EDITED IN 2018 … Sceal Bakery

Check these new comers out. They’re doing regular sourdough courses, and have earned themselves cult status across the capital city.

Pssst. So what goes into “Real Bread” ?

Real bread is bread made without the use of processing aids or any other artificial additives, says RealBreadIreland.org. It’s honest bread, made from unbleached flour, water and fermentation (either by adding yeast or using natural fermentation like with sourdough) and salt. No flour-improvers, dough conditioners, preservatives, chemical leavening (baking powder, bi-carbonate of soda), any other artificial additive or the use of pre-mixed ingredients. Nice one.

Taking the hell out of healthy.

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