Doris Grant revolutionised English bread-making in the 20th century with her easy brown bread recipe, which needs no kneading or dough hook and requires only one rising. The rising time is around an hour or less, and the method produces a slightly dense textured basic but delicious brown bread. It’s a little like the texture of traditional Irish brown bread and tastes a bit like the Northern Irish wheaten bread I grew up on. The significant difference is that it’s naturally vegan too.
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Pioneer Nutritionist
Doris Grant was a pioneer nutritionist who cured herself of rheumatoid arthritis after medical treatment had failed her. Before changing her diet, her condition had worsened to the point where she could only climb the stairs on her hands and knees.
In her book Your Daily Food (Faber and Faber, 1973) Doris explained why white bread is nutritionally inadequate:
Since the introduction of white flour milling, the two most valuable parts of the grain, the wheatgerm and the bran, have been removed.
The resulting flour is robbed of the greater parts of eight important vitamins and twelve equally important minerals; these include Vitamins B1, E and B6, folic acid, iron, calcium, magnesium and potassium. All the nutrients have vital parts to play in the maintenance of body function, but the defenders of white bread claim that by restoring three of the twenty nutrients removed, iron, vitamin B1 and niacin (nicotinic acid), and by also adding chalk, this ‘enriched’ white loaf is just as nourishing as 100 per cent wholewheat bread.Doris Grant
The Doris Grant Loaf and the Bran-Plus Loaf
The Doris Grant Loaf is a delicious kind of quick bread that is great for breakfast, with soup, or as part of a main meal, and can be frozen in individual slices. Doris invented what is probably the easiest brown bread recipe in the world, accidentally, one day when she forgot to knead her usual wholemeal loaf.
Doris believed that commercial removal of the eight vitamins and twelve vitamins from flour distorts the natural balance of the flour. She also believed that adding the four statutory additives back into the flour compounds the distortion by altering the natural balance and ratio. For example, white flour has twice the amount of potassium in relation to magnesium than wholemeal flour does.
In Soil, Grass and Cancer, André Voisin (Philosophical Library, 1959) draws attention to the disadvantages of this increase and the possible consequences with regard to cancer and thrombosis.
We should not eat anything that contains denatured white flour. If we all say no to flour that has it’s good stuff removed, producers would very rapidly switch to wholemeal flour and the health of humanity would improve dramatically.
Wholemeal bread is also much more satisfying than white bread and Doris believed that white bread is one of the contributors to the obesity crisis in developed countries.
So, back to the super quick and easy brown bread recipe. I’ve listed some of my favourite toppings that I enjoy with this nutritional brown bread too.
This is a recipe for those who think they could never find the time in the day to make their own bread. This wholemeal brown bread recipe literally takes five minutes to knock together. During the rising time you can be getting on with your day, at the same time anticipating the beautiful bread slowly rising in the kitchen.
The recipe makes one loaf and uses dried yeast. If you use fresh yeast, you will need a third of an ounce, or 10 grams. The rising time given is the minimum time in hot conditions—the loaf may need a lot longer than this to reach within peeping distance from the top of the tin.
None of the ingredients used must be too cold— if the flour is stone cold, warm it slightly before using it to take the chill off it.
The water temperature should be between 35–38 C on a cooking thermometer.
It is actually the fact that the bread does not need kneading which gives its its particularly delicious flavour. Doris explained that the air space which is formed by the yeast working in the dough may contain some as yet undiscovered vitamin or other qualities of the wheat. When the air spaces are broken up during the kneading of the bread then these special qualities escape and the bread is the poorer for it.
Doris said that a Master Baker had also confirmed to her that wholemeal bread should never be kneaded but it didn’t matter at all if white flour is kneaded because the flour has already lost most of its goodness in the milling process.
Any basic oven turn this recipe out beautifully so it’s something you could still make when far away from the shops in your camper van or in an Airbnb. One of my priorities when I eventually get the camper van I dream of is that it has a little oven so that I can bake this delicious brown bread recipe and always have fresh nutritional bread with no additives or denatured ingredients.
Don’t let the dough rise higher than a centimetre under the top of the tin before baking, otherwise it will make the loaf crumbly and hard to cut. On the other hand, if the dough doesn’t rise enough, the loaf will be close and heavy. It’s important to get just the right rise on the bread and this will come with time when you make it regularly.
Make a cut with a knife along the middle of the dough before baking.
For variations on the traditional Grant loaf try adding a handful of wheatgerm or granary flour. Granary flour is a mixture of malted wheat, rye flour and wholemeal flour.
Doris also made a loaf called the Bran Plus Loaf. It was a version of the Doris Grant Loaf, with added bran. She mentions it in her book Your Daily Food. It originates from a suggestion by T.L. Cleave in his food guide in Diabetes, Coronary Thrombosis and the Saccharine Diet (J. Wright, 1969). Cranks restaurants in London and Guildford used to make it in the 1970s. I’ve included the Bran Loaf Plus recipe after the Doris Grant Loaf recipe.
