Bread - Tuesday

This week, I am thinking about baking bread and how important it is to us.

As usual for home bakers, it took time before I learnt how to make a light loaf with wholemeal flour – wholemeal is more nutritious than white flour, but more challenging to get the dough to rise.

Wholemeal flour is a good food although vitamins A, B12, C and D are lacking in it. It’s easy enough for us to get these vitamins from other foods that are natural to us – our teeth and our digestive enzymes show that we are omnivores.

The science of nutrition is fairly young – we learnt about carbohydrates, proteins and fats in the nineteenth century; about the vitamins early in the twentieth century; and about the trace elements – selenium, manganese etc – in the sixties when scientists were developing TPN, total parenteral nutrition, for patients who had completely lost their ability to digest food. One of these scientists described the challenge they had in putting everything the body needs in liquid in a plastic bag as ‘monumental. Isn’t it amazing that it is so easy for us to get all we need from our usual daily diet?

The same God who provided us with bodily food has also given us food for our souls. Jesus said to Mary, sister of Martha and Lazarus, that she would find everything that was needful to her by sitting at his feet and listening to him.

I am greatly indebted to Mairead McIver for her advice.