In the last few days I have spoken to Kate our volunteer gardener about various things to do with food and health, one thing we have been discussing is the benefits of home grown food over commercially purchased food. Kate was telling me that recently her father made some homemade bread with her and she was surprised to see how few ingredients went into it and how great it tasted when it was finished. The three necessary ingredients in bread are yeast, flower and water, when you look at the ingredients on a loaf of bread bought from your local shop you will notice there are many, many more ingredients in it. Why is this? Well first of all when you bake your own bread you can eat it right away, this is not the case with shop bought bread which has to baked, packaged, transported and put on the shelves before you can buy it. In order for the bread to stay fresh and still taste good by the time you get it home most companies will add extra ingredients like preservatives, sugar and salt.
Sadly in our country homegrown food has definitely declined over the last hundred years which is not the case for many other countries like France and Italy who have a thriving food culture with homemade products sold nearly everywhere! Homemade food tastes good, is good for you, cheap and most importantly making our own food is a part of our culture and history! It can be a great hobby and something that you can get your kids involved with in the kitchen! Make your own bread, put something crazy in it if you like and please leave me a comment on how it turned out. Happy baking!
