>Atkins didn't work so the family is on a new diet. I admonished my wife
>for thinking of buying store bought Weight Watchers bread and told her
>that I could make a bread just as caloric free. Now I have to perform.
>Does any one have a bread machine recipe for a low cal and low fat bread
>that has some flavor to it? Also, does anyone know if 'Eguel' or 'Sweet
>and Low' can be used in bread baking?
1) yes. Hundreds. Thousands. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that
milk-enriched, sweetened doughs are but a single subset of the infinite
variety of breads. A simple web search will turn up a hyperabundance of
suitable recipes, and I would also recommend you look for Eckhardt & Butts'
_Rustic European Breads From Your Bread Machine_, a tome laden with
enlightening and user-friendly advice on the hows and wherefores of the
various ingredients in bread, as well as bales of recipes for exquisite
loaves (and braids, and baguettes, and boules, and couronnes. . .) that
rely on flour, water, yeast, and salt instead of sugar, butter, milk, and
eggs - all of which also have their place and are also well-represented.
See my just-submitted carrot-bread recipe for a good example of a tasty,
low-fat more-or-less white bread.
2) No! Sugar substitutes are utterly different from sugar in all but the
gustatory sense. They break down and lose flavor when heated (although I
believe some lab recently solved this problem and released a baking
aspartame), and in bread you suffer a double privation because the poor
yeast, counting on valuable nutrition from the sweet stuff, don't even know
it's there. On the other hand, you might experiment with herbs like dill,
rosemary, and (though I've had no personal experience with it) stevia,
which have a very sweet flavor of their own. Also, don't be bamboozled by
proponents of fructose, molasses, sweet dates, etc. . . the various forms
of sugar do have their own virtues (regulating blood-sugar level, for
example), but in caloric terms sugar is sugar is sugar.
X) A warning: All the simplification in the world may not make bread as
calorie-free as some lite products, which use stabilizers and gums to puff
their bread full of air while utilizing a smaller quantity of flour than
could any natural baker. Perhaps some here could shed light on such
ingredients and techniques; I myself am left behind.
mMichael
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