Mannablog - Food In South Devon

I am enjoying a breakfast of Sourdough Wholegrain Rye Toast which we made on last weekends Slow Bread Class and I’m loving every mouthful. It got me wondering whether, whilst being delicious and filling, Rye was also nutritionally as good, better or worse than wheat.  As the table at the bottom shows it comes out well above wheat in a head to head race and is only beaten to the top spot by Amaranth.  Amaranth is used in African and Asian cooking and Amaranth Flour is available here so I’d better look some out, even though it’s not really a grain botanically speaking.

This table only applies to whole grains, so doesn’t follow for white flour, light rye or indeed breads which have been made with a proportion of rye flour mixed with a higher proportion of white wheat, as is often the case. However, my breakfast toast is 100% whole rye so I’m feeling pretty virtuous.

I was interested to see also that Quinoa and Millet, both of which have been presented as superfoods because of their protein content both rank below rye.  Perhaps a closer look would reveal that rye has a poorer amino acid profile than the others and therefore provides a less complete protein source but since I have Bovril spread on my toast I think I’m covered. I’m amazed we don;t see a lot more rye bread in UK, especially now that we have many more Eastern Europeans for whom it is a definite part of their culinary tradition.

Thanks, by the way, to Ron, Andrew and Brendan for a very entertaining weekend of Slow Bread making.  The results can be seen below and were many, varied and excellent.

 With thanks to Dr. Sears at www.askdrsears.com