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Whole Grain Baking in Malaysia


 Contributions to Dr. Schnitzer's health Secrets Forum seit Mai 1999
Beiträge zu Dr. Schnitzer's Gesundheits-Forum seit Mai 1999

Information sent by Mr. Martin Prior, 01.03.2005

Our Path to where we are now in Bread making

The first time I came across Bread in South East Asia was during the sixties in Singapore. Hotel Breakfasts in those days were, as I suppose still are now, Eggs and Toasted Bread for the European Breakfast. The bread then, as now, is a pure white, delicately soft bread that immediately turns to a gummy substance when put in the mouth. Toasted it is not much better. Since that first encounter I did without bread whilst in Asia, until recently, when my wife Ati and I started to bake our own.

 We did not start out baking bread. My wife Ati has for some years been making a cake called Indonesian Spice Layer Cake during the various Malaysian festivals for her friends and families. After we were married and I saw her making the cakes in a tiny little electric oven, each one taking some four hours, I decided to buy her a better oven. An Oven in which she could make several at one go. After investigating what ovens were on the  market we purchased a deck oven. The production of the cakes went up.

 During our time in England and prior to moving to Malaysia, Ati purchased a book on “Bread Making Around the World” and  carried it with her on our subsequent travels, which took us to Indonesia, Jordan and Egypt, before returning to Malaysia. Although I do not think she ever read it.

 After we had the oven I remembered the Bread Book, read it, and decided to make some bread for our own use. This first bread was just made from white high protein flour from the local market with some added bran. Compared to the store bread it was delicious. My in-laws liked it and started to give it to their friends. Suddenly people were asking for it. A bakery was born.

 One of the shops where we bought our ingredients asked if we would like to bring some of our produce to their shop to sell and in return take care of their shop for a few hours to enable the owner to do some other things. We agreed and to cut a longer story short we eventually moved into the shop and began to run it full time as well as run our bakery from the back of  the Ingredients Shop.

 At some point in time, I started to notice that a rash developed on my arms and upper body that just refused to go away. It eventually dawned on me that the rash got worse whenever I picked up a flour sack. The flour which is locally produced is bleached and contains other preservatives. Ati and I felt that if the flour had this affect on my body then what does it do to us when we eat it.

 We tried to find an alternative unbleached flour but all we could find were some small packets of Organic Unbleached Flour that had an outrageous price for what we wanted to do. We could not find any bulk supplier. Importing in our small quantities was out of the question.

 We then looked into buying whole wheat grains and after a lot of Internet surfing, telephoning etc we drew a blank. One day Ati found a small 50 gram bag of grain in a local store and it happened to have the suppliers address on it. We called them and to our relief found they could supply in 25 kg bags. When we asked what the protein content was they said they did not know. They sold it mostly for making soup.

 We decided to try it. We then had to find a mill to grind it. Again after a lot of surfing the first mill we found was a small mill from Australia that used stones. We quickly imported it and got to work.

 Well, our first attempt was not good, the bread was very heavy, we figured the wheat that we had bought must be low or medium protein. We thought however that a Baker should be able to use what is available and as far as we knew European Bakers had always used a lower protein flour than the North American developed high protein flours. We persevered and we got better and learned how to make the bread rise reasonably well by improving our kneading and shaping techniques.

 We were so enthusiastic about our new found skills that we started to invite the local schools to come over and let us show the younger children how bread was made starting with grinding the wheat. The children loved it, especially trying to hand grind the wheat!

 Our cakes have always been popular and they carried us along financially as we developed the bread techniques. We did lose quite few customers with the new heavier, but tastier Whole Grain Bread. We also switched to using the whole grain flours in our cakes and no-one said a word so we continue to use whole grain in all our cakes to this day.

 One day surfing the net I came across Dr. Schnitzer's site and stayed for several hours reading through it. Here, I thought, is someone who genuinely wants to help people. Similar websites say “I can cure you. Buy a Video and a bottle of this magic elixir...”. As a fledgling Baker I was particularly interested in what Dr. Schnitzer had to say about his baking experiences. I immediately sent off for his Whole Grain Baking Book. At the time there was no English version, but the Good Doctor offered to translate it. I received it after a short while and read it enthusiastically. The Doctor's tips really worked and made a vast improvement to our 100% Whole Grain breads..

 I had one day tried to sprout some of our wheat and found it just went smelly and began to rot. It was not until I read Dr. Schnitzer's Book that I discovered the wheat we had was hulled. We then set about finding un-hulled wheat. We eventually found some from a supplier in Penang, an island off the coast of West Malaysia. The sample they sent us sprouted and we immediately ordered several sacks. We noticed a slight improvement in the rising and the flour seemed softer. It was however still medium protein wheat intended for making noodles.

 At the same time all this was going on, I had become intrigued by Dr. Schnitzer's Natural Nutrition for Man after receiving Dr. Schnitzer's Book about Diabetes.  I had had type II for some time. I dived straight into the Natural Nutrition and within days I started to feel better than I have in years. Within weeks I lost weight and with my renewed energy from Natural Nutrition I re-started my exercise programme (I am a trained fitness instructor). Today at about 6 months into Natural Nutrition my relatives and customers are amazed at my level of fitness and change in physique. And I may even be on the way to have a full head of hair again!  New customers ask if I am a karate expert. This is to someone who quite frankly six months ago was rated obese. I tell them all to follow Dr. Schnitzer's natural nutrition to get results.

 The exercise I do each morning is simple and used to be shown on ESPN TV channel “Bodies in Motion” by Gilad http://bodiesinmotionwithgilad.com/index.htm. Fifteen minutes of fun.

 But back to bread. Since changing to the whole grain breads we had lost quite a lot of business with our breads. The majority of the local population just did not like the heavy bread. The first test they do is to squeeze the bread, if it does not collapse its too hard.

 But God had plans for us. An Organic shop from whom we buy Organic Vegetables asked us to provide a sample of our bread, we did, and they loved it and immediately asked us to supply them each week provided we could use all Organic ingredients. Fortunately this time they helped us to source the ingredients so we were able to switch over quite quickly. The new wheat is Hard Red Australian Wheat. There was a noticeable difference in the rising and the condition of the dough as it is a high protein grain. My personal feeling however is that it lacks some of the taste of the medium protein wheat.

 We now supply a variety of Whole Grain Breads to the shop and its branches, two from Dr. Schnitzer's Book and two from our own recipe we developed to produce a slightly lighter loaf, plus a Gluten Free Bread made from rice flour. The lighter loaf uses potato and oats. The potato provides a softening effect. In none of our breads do we use any commercial enhancer or improver. If you look into the composition of some of these commercial products, they are made from a variety of things including enzymes from human hair, which in South East Asia would upset several groups of people on religious grounds alone.

 I am pleased to say that even in our own shop some of our old customers are starting to come back.  Some never left of course, and to them we offer our thanks.

 It has taken us nearly two years to get where we are today making 100% Whole Grain Bread. We feel it is all worthwhile when a customer, be it a Malaysian, German, Russian or Englishman, says, “Thank goodness I have found your shop, I have been looking for real bread !”.

Martin Prior


Link für neuen Beitrag: Dr. Schnitzer's Gesundheits-Forum

Annotation by Dr. Johann Georg Schnitzer, 16.06.2005

Regenerating Humanity at the Grassroots:
Baking and Teaching Healthy Bread

When Mr. Martin Prior contacted me, asking for my recipes to bake whole grain bread, I asked him for some more information, and he told me about his teaching children how to grind cereal grains and to bake bread. I recognized immediately the fundamental importance of Mr. Prior's efforts, because this is an optimal way to regenerate the population's natural health, which has been damaged and destroyed by industrialized, refined, chemically polluted grain products ("extra short flour"), including the white polished rice.

An old Chinese wisdom says:

  • If you plan for one year, plant rice.
  • If you plan for 10 years, plant trees.
  • If you plan for 100 years, teach the population.

Mr. Martin Prior is teaching the population's most important age group: The children, the young generation, who are the future of every country.

At that time, my whole grain baking recipes were only available in German, and even this German book had been out of print, and recently I had worked it over completely and published it again: "Backen mit Vollkorn".

I found Mr. Prior's efforts worth to do myself the considerable work of translating the German book into professional bakery English. After the translation was done, my good American friend Mr. David B. McCollum (Virginia, USA) read the manuskript and helped me to optimize it. Therefore, this book now also is available in English: "Whole Grain Baking".

Normally, as emphasized in the book, the baking with these recipes is limited to private use. A commercial use, to produce and sell bakery products with my recipes, needs a license agreement between the producer and me.

To Mr. Prior, I have given permission for the commercial use of my recipes (to bake and to sell the bakery products, including referring to my name in connection with these bakery products), under the following conditions:

  • The recipes are followed precisely under each aspect.
  • Each diversified recipe needs my permission before produced.
  • Periodically, children are trained how to bake such healthy breads.
  • 10 % of the daily bread production is given free of charge to the poor.

Under these conditions, I don't claim any license fees. Who wants to start such a project in his country or town, can ask me for the same license conditions, if as a private person, as a professional baker, or as a bread factory.

To Mr. Prior I wish great success and continuous expansion of his exemplary project.

Dr. Johann Georg Schnitzer


Link für neuen Beitrag: Dr. Schnitzer's Gesundheits-Forum

In case you want to answer to an article of this document, please go to Dr. Schnitzer's Health Secrets Forum, and mention the topic and its author in the beginning of your contribution.
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Wenn Sie auf einen Artikel dieses Dokuments antworten wollen, gehen Sie bitte in das aktuelle Dr. Schnitzer's Health Secrets Forum, und geben einleitend das Thema des Beitrags und dessen Verfasser an, auf welche Sie sich in Ihrem Beitrag zum Forum beziehen.
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Friedrichshafen, 2005   Dr. Johann Georg Schnitzer
Dr.Schnitzer@t-online.de / https://www.dr-schnitzer.de

 

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