Do You Knead Bread? You Shouldn't

Travel clogs your brain with all sorts of pernicious poppycock. You work it in there with all the truths and half truths you discover on your journey through life, and out comes a crusty deposit full of holes. Like bread.

On our last trip to Rome we stayed northwest of the Vatican, in the neighborhood called Aurelio. This happens to be the place where the current king of bread, a guy named Bonci, has a pizza joint. As a journalist, I had to try the pizza. After all, it was all the rage. The man was a saint, according to the lit. This fact, of course, made me want to ignore him. I am a contrarian. I immediately think of other things, hidden things, when confronted with anyone made godly by a ballooning cadre of sycophants. (After all, at the height of his power, Mussolini received about 1,500 letters a day from Italian men and women of all social classes praising his political prowess. Think on that!)

In any case, I also visited a bakery in Puglia, a region which I consider the best for bread. There I met Lorenzo Accarino in a store called Chichino Pane in Monte Sant’Angelo. He was throwing big, wobbly hunks of bread to be baked.

And he didn’t knead it. Not a bit.

So, then I listened to a talk about bread at La bottega di Stigliano, a food cooperative in Siena province. The talk turned to modern folks inability to digest bread, and one of the threads being studied was the turn away from ancient methods to “quick rise” methods of making bread faster. We all took a swerve and started to make bread like factories, a quick rise, kneading to align the gluten in the flour, a short rise and then bang, into an oven.

So then I started hearing all the new talk of “no knead” bread—because that’s the way Mr. Bonci does bread—creating a wet dough you can’t even think of kneading.

Why don’t you need to knead? Because a long rise, overnight or longer, aligns the gluten when the big holes expand with the slow rise. The bread works for you.

So what’s the big deal, then, about health? Well, well-fermented, slow rise bread is very low in phytic acid.

Phytic acid not only grabs on to or chelates important minerals, but also inhibits enzymes that we need to digest our food, including pepsin,1 needed for the breakdown of proteins in the stomach, and amylase,2 needed for the breakdown of starch into sugar. Trypsin, needed for protein digestion in the small intestine, is also inhibited by phytates.

Through observation I have witnessed the powerful anti-nutritional effects of a diet high in phytate-rich grains on my family members, with many health problems as a result, including tooth decay, nutrient deficiencies, lack of appetite and digestive problems. ~ Living With Phytic Acid

To be fair, there are some who would argue that the benefits of Phytates outweigh the disadvantages. But still, I can create a free-form loaf of bread with a crunchy crust and those un-uniform holes that pane pugliese has with a minimum of effort while the rising dough does all the work. And the long fermentation makes it tastier.

So, when you slow travel, think of slow bread, too. Let’s hope this swerve back to the past has legs.

And, um, thanks Mr. Bonci!