The stuff of life

Many years ago (up to 15, I think), I switched us to the soy and linseed variety of a supermarket bread called Bürgen. It was for specific health reasons, and that decision meant that bread was a part of the life Nigel and I shared. Today it was announced that the Australian owners of the Bürgen brand are withdrawing it from New Zealand. That baked up some memories.

I suggested to Nigel that we switch to the bread because its soy and linseed were good for heart health, and especially because at the time it was the only low GI bread sold in supermarkets (this was well before my cardiac stent). Nigel and I ended up having some nearly every morning after that—in fact, it was part of Nigel’s weekday breakfasts for the last several years of his life (usually prepared by me): Peanut butter and jam on toast, and put on a plastic plate so he could bring it in the car on his commute to the office, and he’d use an old tea towel as a bib so he wouldn’t drop any on his work shirt. Because he’d often forget to bring them back into the house when he came home, he’d sometimes bring in a stack of plates and tea towels for me to deal with—and several times I had to go out to his car to collect them myself because we were starting to run out of the supplies (I mentioned all this in a a 2023 post (forst iterm).

After Nigel died I moved to Kirikiriroa-Hamilton and noticed that particular variety of bread was getting harder and harder to find, especially at my local Woolworths, where it was often out of stock (I could get it for more often by home delivery from Woolies, or from the nearest New World). So, I started using my breadmaker sometimes, and then started experimenting with other supermarket brands, including others with soy and linseed. That led to a bit of a revelation.

I was surprised at how much more fibre per 100 grams other brands had than the Bürgen loaf we’d always bought. In fact, I thought about blogging about that, since I’d talked about the bread and it also relates to my continuing health journey. If I’d done that post, I would’ve mentioned that the Bürgen Soy and Linseed bread has 4.4 grams of fibre per 100 grams of bread, along with 347g of sodium per 100g, and total cabs of 27.6g per 100 grams. This compares to the bread I usually buy these days, a “lower carb” loaf: Fibre is 8.9g per 100g, sodium is 355g per 100g, and total carbs is 24.8g per 100g. Well, at least the fibre of the current bread is a lot higher. But, there’s more!

As it happens, I’ve been learning a lot lately about healthier eating, and I learned that if you freeze bread, the carbs are turned into what’s called “resistant starch”, which is important because the body can’t break it down as quickly as normal starch, and that means the body treats it more like dietary fiber, which reduces the bread's glycemic index (GI), reducing blood sugar spikes (and lower GI bread was one of the reasons we switched to the Bürgen all those years ago). Bonus fact: refrigerating cooked pasta or white rice overnight does the same thing for them, and that doesn’t change when you re-heat it the next day. I definitely plan on starting to keep my bread in the freezer, but I need to clear space—and I only learned about these “resistant starch” tricks in the past week, so I’m cutting myself some slack on this.

in the past couplpe years, and probably partly because it was often difficult to get the Bürgen bread here in Hamilton, I gradually became less enthused about the bread we’d had for all those years, so I doubt I’ll miss it. However, the Bürgen slice size was smaller than most supermarket breads, and that I will miss.

Seeing the announcement this morning made me think of two things. First, how even something as small (literally) as a loaf of supermarket bread can be a constant in our lives. The other thing was that I really ought to resume trying to find a breadmaker recipe that I actually like (the results have been mostly “meh” for me for several years, which is why I hardly ever make bread any more). I know I probably won’t do that, though—there are far too many other things demanding my time, attention, and my sometimes limited energy. Besides, there are plenty of options available already made for me.

Yes, all that. But what I wouldn’t give to still be making peanut butter and jam on toast for Nigel. Of course.