Soft bread that has good "shelf" life?

[Diana Cda]

Well, after years of looking, I'm still no closer to finding a bread that is soft and that I can eat. My challenge is a difficult digestion that balks at most fermented dehydrator foods.

Most of the breads I've tried come out okay from the D but after a few hours they not only have gone hard as rocks but the fermentation has continued to the point I gag on it. It doesn't matter what method I've used, end result has always been the same.

The only fermented foods that I've managed okay with are crackers, esp. one that contains a large amount of cabbage and a small enough amount of onion that, once dry, seems to be protected from the off-fermentation due to not only being dry but, I suspect, because of the cabbage and onion.

I've not made any of the many versions of the "famous raw onion bread" one finds all over the internet that I can get past the gag reflex of my mouth. I've tried different onions but I can't get more than a couple of chews before needing to spit it out <sigh>.

So, trying again. Chef Russell James lately showed a lovely raw bread recipe in one of his videos but although soft, I don't want to experiment with the expensive raw ingredients our food demands only to have a bread I can't eat just an hour after removing from the D.

Has anyone found anything that is soft yet keeps well once removed from D?

Thanks!! :)

[walnutty]

I was going to say "Russell James Garlic Bread", but it looks as if you aren't interested in that one. I think his soft, raw bread is the best out there!

[Diana Cda]

I know, I was so excited when I recvd his email when he came out with his garlic bread recipe. I've been on his mailing list for a few years now (about 3 years??) so I was really excited when I got his video notice "hot off the press". The challenge there is that his bread calls for 1 cup of coconut meat and that's just for a small amount of bread so we'd probably have to double or triple the batch which would call for a heck of a lot of coconut meat which is not only prohibitively expensive but difficult to obtain in my city. He does say we can substitute for zucchini but although I believe the coconut meat might be what allows the bread to have some shelf life, unlike the zucchini, we were also cautioned at Hippocrates to avoid eating coconut on any consistent basis. We were advised that only healthy people with strong, healthy livers should eat this but not even they should consume this with any regularity. Since my health challenge is one of the worst there is, I was advised even cancer was easier to deal with by more than one of them there (which I can attest to as I had food allergies and restrictions decades before anyone had heard of this or it became so mainstream!), I'm reluctant to go too far away from Hippocrates' recommendations. Considering I was having attacks daily and I'd ended up in the emergency room one Saturday and Sunday on the same weekend before feverishly planning my trip to HHI which I finally managed 2 weeks after that awful weekend, anyone can understand why I keep pretty close to their recommendations <g>. I'm doing so much better than back then and better than I ever have in my life, but even though one of two ongoing challenges I finally seem to have resolved (the wheat grass issue), the bread one I'm still battling with.

I'm hoping that someone soon comes across a way to produce a soft bread that doesn't suffer from that awful fermenty smell and flavour that all dehydrated items that haven't been dehydrated until completely dry suffer from. A soft bread that doesn't go hard as rocks after a few hours, too, would be ideal!!! <g>

[walnutty]

I don't really understand the "shelf life" concern... Do you not want to eat the bread very often?

You could always freeze the bread in slices and just take out what you need. Even thaw it in the dehydrator.

[Diana Cda]

I've used the term "shelf life" because that's the only term I can think of to cover what I described above. Most all dehydrated foods I've ever made (with few exceptions) become uneatable after about 1-2 hours out of the D.

Foods have to either be completely dry (crackers, dried nuts, kale chips, etc.) or have ingredients that resist fermentation such as red pepper and cabbage seem to do.

But breads? No way. As I said, after 1-2 hours out of D, the continued fermentation always steps in and makes the bread uneatable. Or, like what happened last month to a bread trial, not only bad fermentation continued being produced but the bread got rock-hard very fast!

So here's hoping that someone, somewhere can think of a way to get a good soft bread that has a bit of "shelf life" without using indulgent raw food ingredients or expensive ones!

Thanks! :)

[GoodCat]

Whenever I've made our raw breads, if I wanted them more soft, I would just dehydrate them less and then refrigerate them. They would last around a week refrigerated.

Cathy

[MysticTree]

Cabbage ferments just fine! Think sauerkraut.

The best I can suggest is that you dehydrate the bread/s until they are the desired consistency then eat what you want of it. Then dehydrate the remainder until it is properly dehydrated (if fermentation occurs then you haven't dehydrated enough).

Store that dehydrated bread until you want to use and then spray with water and pop in the dehydrator to get the right consistency again.