What do you do to keep your bread fresh? About six months ago, I was on a kick where I was making homemade bread quite a bit. It tasted fantastic the day it was made but by the second day it was noticeably less fresh. By the third day it was basically uneatable.

Given that I’m just cooking for myself (and my girlfriend when she comes over to visit) I found that I wasn’t able to use up all the bread before it became stale. While I am wary of the preservatives in store-bought bread, it seems like I waste a lot less food when I use that instead.

Do you ever have this problem?

Phytic acid is not good for anybody, except seeds of course. It acts as a “lock” in all seeds, preserving their nutrient content in stasis until the seed sprouts, at which time phytic acid is neutralized. That’s good for the seed but bad for our tummies because it makes our bodies work much harder to unlock the nutrients in grains; in addition, it causes stomach irritation and poor absorption of the grain. Things like Irritable Bowel Syndrome and so forth can result.

Ruminant animals (cows, etc) have multiple stomachs so the grains they eat can ferment in their stomachs, thereby neutralizing the phytic acid. But, because we only have one stomach a piece, it’s good to aid our digestive systems by soaking grains before we eat them.

This sounds delicious, though. Do you have an allergy to phytic acid or is there something undesirable about it that we should be aware of? Pardon my ignorance.