OK, I am well aware of the fact that America has somehow decided that bacteria is the devil incarnate. Most of everything we do involves some sort of anti-bacterial campaign. Hand sanitizer companies, antibiotic companies, antibacterial soap companies, etc have certainly benefited from the hype... of course, you know who else has benefited from this trend?
Bacteria- not the good kind, the bad kind.
We like things controlled. So, we want a sterile environment, but we forget what our bodies are capable of. Our bodies learn, they adapt and it is those adaptations that make us stronger as a species. When we kill all the bacteria around us, we don't realize the actual damage we create... then we hear about the "super-bug".
We have so overused antibacterial everything, that we have actually become weaker as a species while allowing the bad bacteria to evolve and become stronger. Call me crazy, and I'm not a scientist, but our desire to control everything around us- from processed food and processed footwear to processed bacteria and processed air and water, that we have actually held our bodies captive to the adaptations necessary to become stronger.
One of the ways we take control of bacteria is through yeast.
Ok, I get it... yeast? This guy is beyond crazy. But here me out.
Exodus 12:14-15
"14 'This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord—a lasting ordinance. 15 For seven days you are to eat bread made without yeast.On the first day remove the yeast from your houses, for whoever eats anything with yeast in it from the first day through the seventh must be cut off from Israel. '"
I never knew this before, but this Sunday when I heard this passage, I finally understood the importance of the line "remove the yeast from your houses" as sacrificial as it was.
If you've ever made bread, rolls, or any type of bread with leaven, you have most likely made it with a yeast that you purchased in a store, just as I had always done. You may have even bought sourdough bread or ordered a sandwich with this type of bread without ever really knowing what you were ordering.
I did all this until I read the book, "Cooked" by Michael Pollan. In it, Pollan describes the ever-appetizing thought about "gut-bacteria". In brief, we've lost that development of gut-bacteria which has potentially led to many disorders of digestion and possibly a lot worse. What I want to highlight here, however, is the idea of yeast.
Commercial yeast bought in stores is actually cast-off yeast from brewers. I didn't know that. That is the yeast that the vast majority of bread makers use. Commercial or Baker's yeast is called Saccharomyces cerevisiae; however, yeast used in sourdough bread- the wild caught kind- the very kind that the Israelites would have used, the kind that is cultivated over time and even passed down from generation to generation is called L. sanfranciscensis- a name bestowed upon it when the prevailing thought was that this was a specific strain of yeast only found in San Francisco. However, this same strain was discovered across the globe to be in wild-caught yeast.
What's important about the bacteria discussed is what it does and has done to our guts. Our guts are so accustomed to the norm that our immune system has trouble adapting to changes. The gist in "Cooked" is that fermentation is an incredibly important facet in our species and it's almost been completely eliminated by processed, controlled, and structured food production.
I have since learned about the importance of fermentation, and I have made my own sourdough culture/starter. It's simple, but does take time, patience and care. I have started to make my own bread, which I had been doing before, but now with yeast that I have cultivated.
Please consider these words as a precursor to tomorrow night's exciting continuation of "Let's Grow Some Bacteria!"
God's Peace,
Paul
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