Simple Bread
This simple bread recipe using whole wheat flour, soy flour, and brewer's yeast is nutritious, tasty, inexpensive, and easy to prepare.
By Jerry Nelson
January/February 1980
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Simple bread, deceptively easy-to-make, is also inexpensive and delicious to boot!
PHOTO: MOTHER EARTH NEWS STAFF
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The staff of life doesn’t to be expensive or complicated to be good. Simple Bread is highly nutritious, good tasting, inexpensive, and easy to prepare. Furthermore, one helping can provide 30 to 40 percent of your daily protein requirements (as well as hearty helpings of other nutrients) for about 18¢ — and cooking it demands an average of only 15 minutes of labor per day!
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All you need to make a batch are 2 cups of whole wheat flour, 1/2 cup of soy flour, 1/4 cup of brewer's yeast, 2/3 teaspoon of salt, and 1 1/3 cups of water. (As you can see, there's nothing fancy about Simple Bread!)
More For Your Money!
Before we start cooking, let me explain just why this basic manna is so nutritious. The total amount of complete protein in the recipe's whole wheat and soy flours adds up to 28 grams. However — as you may already be aware — when whole wheat and soy are combined in four-to-one proportions, the result is a 32 percent increase in the amount of complete protein available. Therefore, a batch of Simple Bread actually contains 37 grams of the vital nutrient.
But that's not all. The 1/4 cup of brewer's yeast adds another 8 grams (as well as some B vitamins), for a final total of 45 grams of protein. So, since the recipe yields a three-day supply of bread for one person — or a one-day cache for three eaters — a single batch can provide about 15 grams of complete protein per person per day. (The protein requirement for a 154-pound man is 43 grams daily, and that of a 128-pound woman is 36 grams per day.)
The cost of the ingredients (when purchased in one-pound units from a rather expensive health food store) breaks down as follows: 2 cups of whole wheat flour at 48¢ per pound is 24¢, 1/2 cup of soy flour at 56¢ per pound is 7¢, and 1/4 cup of brewer's yeast at $3.85 per pound is 24¢ — which adds up to a total cost of about 55¢ for three days' worth of bread!
