I like contemporary bread. Many Individuals could be puzzled by this assertion, however I feel bread is greatest when it is contemporary out of the oven, and it loses a lot of its wonderful style and texture mere minutes and hours after it is cooled. Europeans would say that is apparent, which is why many in Europe purchase freshly baked bread, from their native bakery, solely when they’re able to eat it.
I am fortunate sufficient to stay steps away from nice bread bakeries, so I can get contemporary rye bread, baguettes, bagels, and many others. at any time when I would like them. And I’ve found that if I slice and freeze what I do not instantly eat, the bread retains one thing like 90% of its deliciousness when defrosted, with the crust nonetheless crunchy if I freeze it shortly sufficient. And defrosting sliced bread can take only some minutes on the countertop. A halved baguette or bagel could take ten minutes or so. After all, toasting or heating is another choice.
So think about my curiosity when my social media algorithms began feeding me odd movies of influencers claiming that bread that has been frozen and defrosted is more healthy than unfrozen bread. Apparently some course of referred to as retrogradation happens when bread is frozen, which makes its starches harder to digest.
The declare is that freezing, and even simply refrigerating, bread and even different starchy meals, will trigger this retrogradation.
This appeared too good to be true. After all, I used to be skeptical.
So I did some internet analysis and got here throughout this summary of a 2023 research revealed within the Journal of Preventative and Complementary Medication. The summary states:
“Freezing starchy meals causes the starch construction to interrupt down, leading to resistant starch that behaves like fiber. This results in a slower rise in blood sugar, which can cut back the danger of sort 2 diabetes and weight acquire.”
When topics consumed contemporary white bread, their blood sugar ranges rose to 132 mg/dl from fasting ranges of 47-100 mg/dl. Once they consumed contemporary white bread that had been frozen and reheated, their blood sugar ranges rose solely to 120 mg/dl.
I additionally discovered this summary of a 2007 paper from Nature’s European Journal of Medical Diet (which is definitely the one cited within the above YouTube video): “The impression of freezing and toasting on the glycaemic response of white bread.”
An experiment measured the glycaemic response — the impact on blood sugar (glucose) ranges — of topics after they ate do-it-yourself white bread and industrial white bread that was (1) contemporary, (2) frozen and defrosted, (3) toasted, and (4) toasted after having been frozen and defrosted.
The glycaemic response to do-it-yourself white bread was lowered by 25% when it was toasted versus contemporary, by 31% when it was frozen and defrosted, and by 40% when it was frozen, defrosted and frozen.
“The totally different storage and preparation circumstances resulted in decrease blood glucose IAUC values in comparison with each forms of contemporary white bread. Particularly, in comparison with the contemporary do-it-yourself bread (IAUC 259 mmol min/l), IAUC was considerably decrease when the bread was frozen and defrosted (179 mmol min/l, P<0.05), toasted (193 mmol min/l, P<0.01) and toasted following freezing and defrosting (157 mmol min/l, P<0.01). Equally, in comparison with the contemporary industrial white bread (253 mmol min/l), IAUC was considerably decrease when the bread was toasted (183 mmol min/l, P<0.01) and frozen, defrosted and toasted (187 mmol min/l, P<0.01).”
I wholeheartedly advocate shopping for freshly baked bread from an important native bakery after which speeding dwelling to eat a few of it (as a result of come on! contemporary bread!) after which freeze what you are not going to right away get pleasure from. You will at all times have fresh-tasting bread available, and possibly you will be more healthy for it.
