Low GI Homemade Bread

[nickrey]

I love making fresh bread at home but for various reasons need to make it low GI.

The commercial bread mixes available here don't fit the bill so I'm going to have to create my own mix.

Does anyone have a good, low GI, bread mix recipe?

Thanks

[Rich In Bunly Goodness]

I know very little about a low GI diet. However, I'd stay away from commercial mixes regardless of low GI requirements. What I would recommend is that you get a copy of Peter Reinhart's Whole Grain Breads. Most everything in that book should be good for you. Use lots of preferments, and lean heavily on whole wheat flour and medium/dark rye flours. Play around with soakers of cracked wheat, rye meal, steel cut oats, etc. When you are going heavy on whole grain flour and whole meal, soakers and pre-ferments take on added importance. Get the best flour you can find. You may have to go to an artisan bakery to get the good stuff. (Our bakery sells flour to the public--you would never find the flour we have in a grocery store.) Try adding toasted flax and sunflower, and/or sesame seeds. Learn to bake with sourdough, if you can. Don't rush the proving.

[paulraphael]

Any enriched bread or whole grain will have a lower g.i.

The most important consideration is the g.i. of the meal as a whole; the g.i. of individual componants is irrelevent beyond the degree to which they affect the meal.

As an example, baguette has a very high g.i..

but if you put butter and piece of ham on it, the total g.i. becomes low.

Your body can't digest and metabolize that bread out of context; the fats and proteins that you eat at the same time slow down the digestion of everything, including the starch in the bread.

[devlin]

Any enriched bread... will have a lower g.i.

I hate to be contrarian, but this is simply wrong. Enriched breads typically are breads with butter, additional fats and/or eggs, sugar, etc.

Low GI breads would slant in the direction of whole grains, ryes, brans, etc. But also, true sourdough, or naturally-leavened breads, are by nature low GI. I'd for sure start there.

[nickrey]

Thanks everyone for your input. Attempt one is described below:

I wound up using the following ingredients to make my loaf:

340g unbleached wheat flour

40g soya flour

220g organic wholemeal spelt

80g burghul

40g coarse cut oatmeal

30g unprocessed bran

20g oat bran

35g linseed

4g dried yeast

Lukewarm water in 0.75 ratio of weight (604g)

(added after first step) 6g salt.

I mixed all the ingredients together (except the salt) and transferred around 2/3 of the mixture to my electric mixer's bowl. I then added the whole amount of water and mixed on low speed. The other 1/3 of the ingredients mixture then formed a blanket while the mixture fermented at room temperature.

After around 90 minutes, I put the mixing bowl containing the pre-ferment on my mixer and added 6g salt. I then used the dough hook for around 9 minutes to first mix and then knead the bread. This was done until the gluten was forming obvious bands in the mixture.

This was covered with plastic film to rise to double its height.

The dough was then knocked back gently, formed, and placed in an oiled bread tin.

Again it was left to rise until double its height.

The loaf was then sprayed with water, placed into a pre-heated 200 degrees celsius fan-forced oven, and cooked until the internal temperature was 92 degrees celsius (measured by my trusty thermapen).

It was then cooled on a wire rack.

The resultant bread had a very crisp crust and a strong grain texture. It is dense and moist but very edible: more like northern European than "conventional" bread.

(I know, no presoaking of grains, minimal pre-ferment, no added sugars to speed up the fermentation: but it seems to have worked despite this)

Here it is: