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DG033: What's actually in our bread and why low carb bread makes sense - Interview with Matthias Hofmann

[g_podcast id="9131072"]

In this episode, I talk to Matthias Hofmann about, among other things:
  • How it came about that Matthias, as a miller and master baker, suddenly wanted to bake a low carb bread
  • How to tell if a baker is using baking mixes
  • Why spelt bread can contain up to 30% wheat without having to be declared
  • What is the difference between a protein bread and a low carb bread
  • Where to get the breads that Matthias makes
  • And: Why the subconscious plays such a big role in changing your diet


Julia: Matthias, you are a master miller and baker. I've always wanted to ask someone about bread and baking.
You've brought along some other exciting topics that we'll talk about later.
First of all, I'd like to know about your career.

Matthias: We've been millers for four generations, our family business has been around since 1878. I first trained as a miller, then as a baker and then built up the bakery. The bakery grew so much that we had 260 employees and 14 cafés! Then my wife and I trained as mental coaches. The aim was to motivate employees.

Our coach Thomas coaches many professional athletes. It was new to us that professional athletes eat a low-carb diet.

I can bake better low-carb bread



Thomas also eats a low-carb diet and baked us a low-carb bread, which we should try and what we thought of it. I said that it tasted really bad and then Thomas told me to make it better.

We then tried to bake a good loaf and it was a complete failure. The ambition to bake Thomas a good loaf was there and so we tried and tried and at some point it worked and then there was an immediate demand.

We offered the bread in our store and it sold well. We then said we'd see what happens when you eat low carb. And that's how we went about it.

I lost 10 kilos, my wife 6 kilos and we felt better.

We then realized that we were only eating low carb and cutting out the normal ingredients. That went on and on until we realized that the bakery didn't work anymore. We were producing high carb but living low carb.

We then decided to sell everything and start from scratch. We did that in 2017 and now only produce low carb.

Also professionally from high carbohydrate to low carbohydrate

Julia: What did your employees say?

Matthias: They were disappointed. We sold many of them out, so to speak. One of our colleagues built a production facility not far away and so we sold to him because we were able to take on the employees. Very few have stayed with us - they are really enthusiastic about it!

Julia: There are people who still want to buy 'real' bread from time to time. Do you have any tips on what to look out for when buying? Many bakeries work with baking mixes. Perhaps you can say something about how they come across nowadays. Compared to how bread was baked in the past.

How can I tell if a baker uses baking mixes?


Matthias: The subject of baking mixes is a difficult one, which is also difficult to find out from the baker. is.

Back then, I often heard 'When I buy from a small baker, it's without a baking mix and the industry makes baking mixes'. It's actually the other way around. The small baker, who offers a wide variety of products, can't produce so much without a baking mix. The industry calculates more accurately because the baking mixes are expensive. They have fewer products, but large quantities, and it's all about saving costs.

Costs can be saved by producing without a baking mix. I'm sorry to have to say this, but the big bakers are often cleaner than the small ones.

If you buy bread, wholemeal bread is of course better because of the glycaemic index. It takes longer for the blood sugar level to rise. But here too, the consumer goes to the baker and says, I'd like a wholemeal bread. And he doesn't actually want wholemeal bread, he wants bread with grains. And the sales clerk also gives him a loaf with grains and never says it's not wholemeal bread, because that always leads to discussions with the customer. There is very little real wholemeal bread, which consists of 100% wholemeal, at the bakery because the customer doesn't want to eat it. The customer wants a light bread - but light is never wholemeal.


Julia: Is it true that there are sometimes 40 ingredients in a loaf?

Matthias: There definitely are. If there are baking agents in it, the quantities of ingredients go way up. The more ingredients there are, the more difficult it would be for the baker to mix them all himself.

Julia: What kind of things are in it? Baking accelerators, or enzymes, or something similar?

Matthias: Enzymes are the latest trend. You don't have to declare enzymes, that's the tricky thing. A baker can say that his bread is absolutely clean. But it may contain enzymes that are no longer detectable after baking, so they don't have to be declared.

What is long leavening?

Julia: Nowadays, we keep hearing about so-called long dough rising and that it's something important. Can you say something about this?

Matthias: That was also our hobbyhorse, working with long doughs. I add less yeast, I get a lot more flavor, but the dough is much harder to handle and I need an incredible amount of storage space to keep the dough quantities in stock.

And that's where the industry has a problem, because they can't store enough dough to be able to offer long doughs.

Julia: What exactly does long dough mean?


Matthias: You make a soft dough (water, a little yeast, flour and salt) and leave it to stand for at least 12 hours, sometimes even 24 hours. During this time, the naturally occurring enzymes break down the protein and starch and make a relatively soft dough, which I then add to the normal dough with a 10-20% proportion. This makes the flavor much better.

Julia: And the digestibility is better.

Matthias: Many people say that, but there are many different opinions on the market.

Julia: As far as I know, the gluten is pre-split and the digestibility is improved.

Matthias: That's the problem, because bread with a pre-dough is more difficult to make in production, the pre-dough is often used to add flavor and then the dough is added to the normal dough. You add more gluten to the dough to make it stable again.

Julia: And sourdough is something else again?

Matthias: Sourdough is basically also a starter dough, but it's made with lactic and acetic acid bacteria and is therefore acidified.

Julia: It's fermented, so to speak. Does it produce its own yeast?

Matthias: Yes. Nevertheless, normal yeast is usually added because the sourdough yeast is too weak.

Why bread doesn't always contain just the flour that it says

Julia: I once heard that wheat is often added to rye sourdough bread anyway. Is that true?

Matthias: Yes. The guidelines allow you to add 10% flour to 100% wholemeal bread, for example, and still sell it as wholemeal bread. And it doesn't have to be declared.

A 100% rye bread may also contain wheat.

But the 10% rule goes even further. The farmer may deliver spelt and may add 10% foreign grain (wheat). The miller may add 10% foreign flour and the baker may also add 10% foreign flour. So if each of them does this, we will only have 70% spelt in our spelt bread.

And many people with wheat intolerance who would normally tolerate spelt think that they cannot tolerate it.

The problem with spelt is that years ago it was an original grain and demand has increased to such an extent that spelt (just like wheat) is now so overbred that the proteins change in such a way that the human body cannot cope with some of them. Wheat was much better tolerated 100 years ago than it is today. And that's only because the composition of the proteins has changed so quickly that the human body can't keep up.

Julia: That means that if I buy spelt flour in the supermarket, it's possible that the miller has put wheat in it and it's not declared?

Matthias: Right.

Julia: And why does the miller do that? Is it cheaper?

Matthias: For example, if the miller first grinds wheat and then spelt, there is still a foreign flour in the pipeline. That's why it's theoretically allowed. In practice, spelt costs many times more than wheat and that's why farmers, millers and bakers always want to push the limits.

Julia: That shocks me a little. What about original spelt? Can you trust that it is a different spelt or is it a marketing gimmick?

Matthias: In principle, it is a gimmick. It is also being bred extremely quickly at the moment.

Julia: The whole thing is very unattractive. But it's good that it's now being explained here. It might explain to a few people why they can't even tolerate spelt bread.

Matthias: In such a case, buy whole spelt and check carefully whether it contains wheat. Spelt is relatively long, wheat grains are shorter and rounder. And then it's best to make it yourself.


What was difficult about developing a tasty low carb bread?

Julia: But you make different bread. Can you describe what is in such a low carb bread and why it was so difficult to develop it?

Matthias: The main ingredients are sunflower seeds, linseed and psyllium husk. We use baking powder for loosening. The first difficulty with baking powder was that there is no baking powder on the market that is starch-free. There isn't much starch in it, but we wanted to be on the The list of ingredients doesn't include starch.
So we developed a baking powder without starch. And then there's salt, herbs and water.

Julia: Ok, and then there are some that contain chicken egg white. Do you also pay attention to the quality of the chicken egg white?

Matthias: Our breads are all organic.

Julia: But you also have vegan breads, right?

Matthias: Yes.

Julia: What else was difficult, apart from the baking powder?

Matthias: Just the basic things. Different kneading time, longer baking time, but colder baking temperature, different processing, different rising times. Everything was completely different. With grainy bread, the issue was of course: How do I get a bread like this to keep naturally for 4 weeks without preservatives?

Julia: How do you sell it? Do you have a store?

Matthias: We have a factory outlet. But we couldn't make a living from that. We have various sales channels. We sell in the online store at panifactum.de, we are available nationwide at Kaufland in Germany and you can buy our baking mixes on QVC.

Julia: The baking mixes are only available there and not in the store?

Matthias: The bakery mixes are also available in the factory outlet and in the online store, but Kaufland only sells the ready-baked bread.

Julia: How do you imagine that the bread will keep for 4 weeks? Do I still have to put them in the toaster?

Matthias: It just keeps like that, in principle they are ready to eat. If you toast it, it is of course very crispy. You can also freeze it without any problems because the bread doesn't contain any starch, so it tastes fresh even when defrosted.

Julia: I was able to see the quality for myself when I met you at the LCHF Congress. It really tastes very good! Do you also make bars? And everything is low carb?

Matthias: Exactly. It's all low carb, it's all grain-free and soy-free. What's different about the products compared to bread is that everything sweet is not organic because xylitol is not approved as organic.

What's the difference between a low carb bread and a protein bread?

Julia: I am often asked by customers what I think of protein bread. Should we define it differently, or is it something similar to what you have?

Matthias: It's something completely different. Protein bread is a normal mixed wheat bread that simply contains more wheat gluten and therefore mathematically has fewer carbohydrates because it has more protein. The wheat gluten in its starchy form is exactly what people often can't tolerate.

Julia: That's a good example of something that sounds pseudo-healthy and people think they're doing something good for themselves, but the exact opposite is the case. For you, the motivation to eat low carb was primarily because you heard it from your coach and the benefits were that you lost weight and felt better. You probably didn't expect that at all,

Matthias: No, not at all. Especially not without exercise and without hunger. That was very surprising! I always thought that if I wanted to lose weight, I would have to go without. That wasn't the case at all.

The subconscious plays a big role in changing your diet

!
Julia: Have you now been able to mental coach training, for example when people ask how to get started with low carb?

Matthias: Yes. We offered courses for a while. It was an exciting testing ground for us. Simply to see what else happens with low carb.

It's incredibly interesting to regulate high blood pressure to normal within half a week.

Or with depression, people were able to reduce their antidepressants. In some cases, type 2 diabetics no longer need to take insulin at all. What we have built into this with our mental coaching story is that when people change, the mind says 'I want to lose weight' and the subconscious says 'No, we're not going to do that today'. And then it's like a battle of mind versus subconscious.

This works for a while and then at some point the mind is distracted because other problems arise and then you fall off the wagon again. And for us, the theme was to say: if you can mentally change your subconscious, then it's much easier. We tried to teach people that and it worked very well!

Julia: And how do you do that?

Matthias: There's a tapping technique. I think certain sentences and tap certain positions.

Julia: Great! You definitely shouldn't underestimate the subconscious. If you get it on board, you have an ally with you and things run smoothly. Is it also your experience that when people start to reduce carbohydrates, their desire to do so decreases?

Matthias: Yes, exactly!

Julia: Most people start with low carb to lose weight. Why are there people who follow a low carb diet and still don't lose weight? Have you ever experienced this?

Matthias: Yes. There are people who continue to eat too much. If you don't go into deficit, you won't lose weight. One of the issues is that people eat too little fat. Then we found out that people with fatty livers lose weight extremely badly. We are now trying out whether intermittent fasting can help.

Julia: Do you still offer coaching like this, or have you concentrated entirely on bread?

Matthias: We do individual coaching sessions from time to time when the time is right. We don't currently offer courses.

Julia: Is there anything new coming soon?

Matthias: Yes, and it's baked cake! It will also be placed in retail stores.

Julia: Great. I think we've learned a lot here today! I'm sure one or two listeners will see the light. Where can we find you if we want to know more or even order something?

Matthias: At www.panifactum.de you can find me, all the products and everything about our company. If someone comes as a new customer and enters the code JULIA10, they get a 10% discount on their first purchase! Unfortunately, shipping to Switzerland is not possible at the moment, but we are working on offering this soon.

Julia: Super nice with the voucher! I think it's great what you're doing! Personally, I often don't eat bread because I don't miss it. But I see that many customers really miss it, so it's a really great offer that you're making. One last question: would you say you can bake bread like this yourself?

Matthias: There are lots of recipes in certain forums that work. Of course you can do that. The problem is often that the ingredients are not clearly defined.

Julia: Thank you very much for talking to us! I'm looking forward to seeing what happens with you. I look forward to staying in touch!

Wow. Me I have to say that I was a bit shocked by the 30% wheat in the spelt bread. I knew that not everything always has to be declared. But I wouldn't have thought it was that much.

If the interview has inspired you to change your diet to low carb yourself, then find out more about our online course "Darmglück", I'd be happy to accompany you! Darmglück is a comprehensive and undogmatic course where you will learn a lot and, above all, put it into practice straight away. You can apply the course well even in a stressful everyday life. It's all about attitude and motivation, changing your diet with the help of specific recipes and weekly plans, background information on the topic of gut health and there are live Q&A sessions so that everything you want to know about gut health and your personal situation is answered. The sole aim of the course is to make you feel good. Every day.

Now I recommend that you subscribe to the podcast so that you don't miss an episode, and if you like what you hear, I'd really appreciate a review on iTunes or Apple Podcast. Because these reviews also help other people find the podcast so we can spread the knowledge about gut and health more.




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