Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark - What If Gluten Isn't the Enemy? | Sue Becker
Episode Date: April 4, 2025What if gluten ISN’T the bad guy?! 🤯🍞Sue Becker—founder of Bread Beckers and highly requested bread queen—is here to drop some TRUTH BOMBS. She says gluten isn’t the problem… it’s wh...at we’ve done to wheat 🌾🚫 The processed bread on store shelves is NOT exactly what nature (aka God) had in mind.Sue’s helped hundreds of thousands fix their health with fresh-milled flour, and today, she’s here to prove why you might not have to break up with bread after all! Get ready to have your carb-loving mind BLOWN! 💥Thank you to our sponsors! 😊Taylor Dukes Wellness | Use code "ALEXCLARK" for 10% OFFGeviti Active Skin Repair Branch Basics | Use code "ALEX15" for 15% OFFMasa Chips | Use code "REALALEXCLARK" for 20% OFFOur Guest:⭐️ Sue BeckerWebsiteInstagramFavorite Book | The Essential Home Ground Flour BookTop Tip | Eat real whole grains – and a grain mill to mill your flour fresh for baking bread🎀Follow Alex🎀Instagram |@realalexclarkInstagram |@cultureapothecaryFacebook |@realalexclarkX |@yoalexrapzYouTube |@RealAlexClarkSpotify |Culture Apothecary with Alex Clark Apple Podcast |Culture Apothecary with Alex ClarkNew 'Culture Apothecary' Merch OUT NOW! Glass tumblers, weekly wellness planners, hats, crewnecks and more. Use code "Alex Clark" for 10% OFF at tpusamerch.comJoin the Cuteservatives Facebook group to connect with likeminded friends who love America and all things health and wellness! Join the CUTEservative Facebook Group!Subscribe to ‘Culture Apothecary’ onApple Podcasts and Spotify. New episodes drop 6pm PST/ 9pm EST every Monday and Thursday.This show is made possible with generous donations from listeners who believe in our mission to heal a sick culture.You can support our show by leaving a tax deductible donation HERE or by subscribing to @RealAlexClark YouTube for FREE!#CultureApothecary #Health #Wellness #Alexclark #GlutenMyth #FreshMilledFlour #RealBread #HealthyEating #GutHealth #FoodScience #HolisticHealth #WholeFoods #NourishYourBody #ProcessedFoodLies #HomemadeBread
Transcript
Discussion (0)
You want to change the health of your family?
Change your bread.
If you're doing sourdough with store-bought flour, you're wasting your time.
They're not getting the nutrients and the fiber that God intended us to get from our bread.
The 25 years of raising nine children on real bread and real food, my children only had to go to the doctor twice.
I haven't had an anhystamine or a decongestant since 1994, 34 years ago.
Because you started milling your own flour.
Yes.
I have never seen one health change bring such drastic and immediate health benefits than this one food.
Sue Becker, founder of Bread Beckers, has been the leading expert on breadmaking online for decades.
Her bread made with flour that she mills herself has been a game changer for the health of hundreds of thousands.
As a food scientist and expert in biochemistry, she doesn't believe gluten itself is the problem.
Instead, she believes it's the type of.
of wheat we're using in breads and baked goods across America. What we've done to wheat is
the complete opposite, she says, of what God intended and why we are so sick. She says that what
passes for food today bears little resemblance to the living organisms God created. Fatigue,
sinus problems, constipation, high cholesterol, even warts are just some of the conditions
that Sue Becker has seen families overcome, including her own, by rejecting processed foods and
fueling our bodies with the whole delicious food that they were designed to use and making this
special bread. You too may be able to enjoy bread once again. Watch this interview on the real
Alex Clark YouTube channel or Culture Apothecary on Spotify. Leave a free five-star review to support
the show, which takes less than 10 seconds to do. Make sure you check out the cute serve at as Facebook
group also for female fans of the show. Please welcome the legendary Sue Becker to Culture Apothecary.
You are the number one bread lady on social media.
I have never had so many people in my comment saying,
you've got to interview Sue Becker.
You are the most requested guest I've ever had.
What is going on with the state of bread in America?
How has it changed?
It's very significant.
This was the information that opened my eyes to the realm of food processing.
I'm a food scientist graduated with a food science degree,
which is the study of food processing.
After college, after graduation, I continued to study health and how the body works because I loved it.
So I knew that whole wheat flour was better, but I tried it and I, you know, buying it from the store and I didn't see any great difference.
And especially I couldn't make it taste very well.
But in 1991, I subscribed to a publication.
The first journal that came into my home was how to greatly reduce the risk of common diseases.
In that journal, the history of white flour was presented.
Oh, my goodness.
It blew my mind.
A little brief discussion after that of the common diseases that plague America
and showed how it was directly related to the commercially processed flour
that came on the scene in the early 1900s.
So my eyes were completely open.
I learned that whole grains are the most nutrient, dense food that God has given us.
If you read Genesis chapter 1, verse 29, God gave us two kinds of foods.
He says, I've given you plants.
that bear fruit that have the seed in it.
That's our fruits and vegetables, wonderfully nutritious and healthy.
But he said, I've also given you plants that bear seed for your food.
That's all your grains and beans and nuts.
Okay.
Why do you give us those two kinds of foods?
I can't claim to know the mind of God, but here's what I do know.
Fruits and vegetables lose their nutritional value every day that they're stored or even ripening on the tree.
They decay and they rot over time.
Not so with your seeds.
Wheat and grains are storable.
So God gave us storable food, and here's what I learned.
Left whole and intact, they're perfectly storable.
But only when they're eaten either boiled and eaten whole or the flour is freshly milled,
do they retain all their nutritional value.
They lose nutritional value as soon as that flour is milled in, as soon as that grain is milled into flour.
And I learned that prior to the 1900s, most families had the capacity to mill their own flour
and they made their own bread.
most of the bread consumed in this country before 1900 was milled at home, made at home, and consumed
at home. And here's what I also discovered. As soon as you break that kernel of grain open,
those nutrients then are exposed to the air, they begin to oxidize. Oxidation begins to take place
immediately. You don't have to be a food scientist to have seen oxidation with your eyes. You've cut an
apple, you've cut a banana, you've cut an avocado, and you've seen it turn dark. What you may not see,
though, is those nutrients getting used up and degraded in the presence of oxygen.
Someone in the late 1800s discovered that if we sift the very nutrient-rich bran away and the
oil-laden germ, because that vitamin E wheat germ oil that's there laden in the wheat germ,
it's got a lot of fatty acids, got a lot of oils there, that if when you, they're exposed
to the air oxidation and spoilage takes place very quickly, so that they're there.
they said if we take that nutrient-rich brand away, that oil-laden germ away,
and leave only the white flower part, which is known as the endosperm,
and all that is, for all practical purposes, protein and starch.
So someone came up with this brilliant idea.
So they were like, hallelujah, no more food, you know, no more flour spoilage.
So it led to the invention of these huge steel rolling mills that would crush the grain
and then run it through a sifter because the brand and germ mills,
up a little more coarse than the endosperm part. So they would sift those coarse brand and germ parts
away, leaving only the protein and starch, this long-lasting white flour that would never spoil. So this was
in the 1900s. These steel rolling mills came on the scene. Everybody thought, this is a wonderful
discovery. So all the local millers went out of business. They, you know, the mills moved out to the
wheat fields and every household, every woman in every household was like, hallelujah, I don't have to mill my own flour because they were
hand mills, you know. And so it was a one considered a wonderful discovery. They displaced the local
millers. The next thing you know, they were producing massive volumes of this long-lasting, never-spoiling
white flour. And it came on the scene. And now for the first time in the history, really,
I don't want to sound so dramatic, but the history of the world, white flour became food for
everyone, rich and poor alike. Prior to that, white flour was reserved for the wealthy,
for the royalty. Those that had servants that would sift, make sifters out of reeds and, you know,
primitive screens, they would sift the coarse brand and germ away to make fluffier bread for the king,
you know, or the wealthy people. And the poor people resigned to eat the peasant bread, the dark bread,
the rough, you know, with the brand and germs still intact. But when these steel rolling mills came on the scene,
now rich and poor alike had this wonderful white bread. It looked like it was a wonderful discovery,
but there's a verse in Proverbs that says there's a way that seems right to a man,
but the end thereof is death.
And what happened was totally unexpected.
So now the world, the masses, are eating this wonderful white bread, right?
Greatest thing, white bread.
Yep, bunny bread, wonder bread.
Oh, wonder bread, all of it.
Yeah.
So what happened is three diseases became epidemic shortly after the white bread,
white flour came on the scene.
Berry, berry, which is a vitamin B one deficiency.
see, it results in nervous disorders.
Pallagra is a vitamin B3 deficiency.
It's known as the disease of the four D's.
It's skin eruption, so a lot of dermatitis.
Usually the main symptom was really horrible,
inflamed around your nose and your face.
Like acne?
Well, it was like more oozing sores.
Jeez.
Yes, really bad.
So dermatitis dysentery, so GI, lots of GI disturbances,
dementia.
Yep, and death. Like I said, it's known as the disease of the 4Ds. I'm from the Atlanta, Georgia area. And interesting, I found this so fascinating when I started studying this. Pallegra was actually the first case was diagnosed. I think it was 1902. I can never remember if it's 1902, 1905, somewhere right in there. So shortly after the mills took over the market and white bread came on the scene for everybody, first case of Pallegra diagnosed in Atlanta, Georgia. There were over 30,000 cases that first year.
thought, okay, this is some kind of infectious disease that's going on, you know, with all the
symptoms. Another study I read said the southeastern United States particularly plagued by
Pallegra, they said that Georgia and South Carolina, the mental institutions were literally
overflowing. They did not have enough beds to house the patients. Yeah. So that's a vitamin B3 deficiency.
And then anemia was the third epidemic disease. Puzzled health officials all over our country.
they were going, what in the world is, what's this outbreak? And like I said, first thought that it was
infectious, you know, issues. They eventually traced it to the missing brand that has all the vitamins,
all the minerals, all the phytonutrients, lots of protein, lots of fiber, the missing germ,
vitamin E, wheat germ oil, good fatty acids, proteins, fiber, two. All these diseases could be traced
to those missing components that were no longer in the flour. They supplied all those B-Vitamin,
and iron and all these nutrients.
In fact, in wheat alone, I've studied this,
there's only four essential nutrients missing.
Vitamin A, vitamin C, so eat your fruits and vegetables,
vitamin D, get out in your beautiful sunshine, and B12.
It's a little, you can't get B12 from plant products.
But anyway, so they trace these three diseases
that were now plaguing our nation to the missing brand and germ
that were no longer in our flour and our bread,
went to the millers and said,
you got to put it back in.
This is making America sick.
So the millers were like, yeah, that's not going to happen.
We found a very lucrative market for what they call the byproducts of the milling process.
The brand and germ to this day is sold to the animal feed and cattle feed industry to make cattle feed and the white flowers for us.
So they were like, nope, not going to happen.
So it would take until 1948 for the government to step in and say,
you got to fix the flour then if you're not going to put it back in. And so it was mandated that
they would quote unquote enrich the flour. Yes, because I see this on ingredients list. Enriched wheat
or white flour or bleached. Oh, yeah. What do those things mean? And why should that
terrify consumers? It should terrify consumers because here's what blew my mind. As a food scientist,
when I read that word enriched, I would go, wow, we're doing you a favor. We're making, we're putting more
vitamins in there than would have been there if that we hadn't messed with it. For the 35, 40, who
knows how many nutrients are lost when they take away the brand and the germ, they only put
four back in. That was what was mandated to be enriched. Three B vitamins, B1, B2, B3, and iron. That was it.
That was the enriching process. Supposedly it took care of Berry Berry and Pallegra and anemia.
But I always have to ask this question.
How many nervous disorders do we have in our country today?
How about skin, dermatitis issues, gastrointestinal issues, dementia?
So supposedly it corrected those.
But what you have to remember, these are synthetic forms of the natural vitamins and minerals that were in the bread when they took the brand and germ away.
So the enriched white flour bad, you're saying we need to be eating what type of flour?
Made from whole grain.
Freshly milled.
Mill it yourself.
Outside of milling it yourself, you cannot get real flour.
So real nutritious flower.
You can't, not really.
I mean, maybe if you find a local mill that might be milling it, but mm-mm.
And if that were not enough, now listen to this, 50 years, they watched the rising incidence
of neural tube birth defects and go, hmm, must be the folic acid that is no longer in our
flower, one of the richest food sources of folic acid or folate, the natural.
form is grains and beans and seeds and, of course, your fruits and vegetables too. So it was mandated
in 1998 that they would add the folic acid back to the flour, where it was missing from.
Again, synthetics, and this is creating a whole other issue. I don't know if you've done any
studies or interviewed anyone about MTHFR, the gene mutation that people are having problems
breaking down and utilizing the synthetic folic acid.
but they can use the real thing.
We've got customers that are so excited because they cannot eat the enriched flour products.
So, but they can eat the freshly meal that has all the natural B vitamins and iron and folate.
So, you know, besides missing the nutrients and only putting a few back in,
then you're also missing all the fiber that helps nourish your gut, helps keeps things moving along.
So, and then it didn't stop there.
and America is very different in the things that we allow here.
So the residual oils in that white flower made the flower turn yellow or have little yellow specks.
So somebody came up with a brilliant idea.
Let's bleach the flower.
Nitrogen trichloride was used for more than 25 years to bleach.
Did you hear the key word?
Bleach our flower.
And until it was discovered that it caused seizures and hyperactivity in dogs.
Nice.
Yeah.
So they said, okay.
We won't use that, but a chlorine derivative is still being used today.
Benzol peroxide is another bleaching agent that's used known to cause respiratory issues.
And then potassium bromate strengthens the gluten structure of the bread and bread products and the flour.
That causes known liver and thyroid issues.
And so this is what we're consuming.
The bread that is in the store is not real.
And that's why we call our bread real bread.
What I really think is juicy about you.
Back in the 90s, when we started seeing this explosion of ultra-processed food, you became very concerned with this trend.
You saw this ultra-processed food, and I'm saying that in quotes, taking over grocery stores, and you have a background in food science and biochemistry and nutrition.
What concerns you?
You already knew there was something going on with the wheat.
And now you're seeing this ultra-processed food take over.
What were you thinking?
When I read just a little snippet of the common diseases that plague America and saw how it was directly related to our consumption of the commercially processed flour, it blew my mind. It made an absolute perfect scientific sense and biblical sense. So I have now a three and a half hour lecture called Real Bread, the Staff of Life, where I go through the common diseases that plague Americans that we think we just have to live with, constipation or chronic diarrhea, sinus congestion, just being tired and not.
feeling good, snotty noses. Did you know that toddlers don't have to have a snotty nose?
My two youngest children that were born after bread never have had an anihistamine or a decongestine
a day in their life. So this is why I'm passionate. So when I read this information, 1991,
34 years ago, and I'm as more passionate today than I was then when I started. So that,
I read the information. My husband bought me a grain mill for my birthday. And that mill came into our home.
I milled flour. I made bread. First of all,
It was delicious.
I honestly, now, like I said, in my studies, I read that whole wheat was better.
So I was buying the whole wheat flour from the store.
And what a lot of people don't realize, when those steel rolling mills came on the scene and sifted the brand and germ away, they put the millers out of business.
There's no stone ground whole grain flour anymore unless it's a small independent mill.
So commercially processed whole wheat flour, still sift the brand and germ away, and then they recombine it according to some standard.
Okay.
So, and they take the germ out, they take the oil out, or the flour would spoil.
So I was trying to use that flour.
It was gross.
It was nasty.
It wasn't something we enjoyed eating.
I read that information.
I'm like, nope, we're never eating white flour again, and I don't care.
We're going to do this whole week thing.
If we have to choke it down, we're eating it.
Breakfast doesn't have to be complicated, and it doesn't have to be boring.
The only thing it does need to be is packed with protein.
Starting your day with Taylor Duke's grass-fed bone broth protein has a range of health benefits.
of all, a bajillion flavors to choose from. It helps stabilize your blood sugar levels,
keeping you feeling full and satisfied longer, which can reduce cravings and prevent
overeating later in the day. Protein also supports muscle repair and growth, making it
essential for maintaining lean muscle mass, especially if you're active. And additionally,
consuming protein in the morning can boost your metabolism, giving you sustained energy
and improving focus throughout the day. It is a great way to kickstart your metabolism
and set a positive tone for balanced, lasting energy.
Taylor Duke's wellness bone broth protein powder doesn't taste like bone broth.
Everyone's like, what's that mean?
Okay, it doesn't mean anything except you get all of the collagen benefits and goodness and health
from grass-fed bone broth.
My strawberries and cream one tastes just like strawberries and cream.
Packed with the cleanest ingredients with just two scoops of this 100% grass-fed bone broth protein,
you're going to get 40 grams of protein.
Perfect for blending into your favorite fruit smoothie.
I love mixing mine with some frozen strawberries, cherries, peaches, and pineapples.
a little water, a little aloe vera juice.
Plus, protein powder is dairy-free, organic, gluten-free, soy-free, so it fits my clean-eating lifestyle.
I've noticed my skin is glowing, my nails are stronger, and I feel so much more satisfied
throughout the day without the usual cravings.
If you want to give it a try, go to Taylorduxwellness.com, use code Alex Clark to get 10% off
your first order.
That's Taylorduxwellness.com with code Alex Clark for 10% off.
All right, so you know what's not fun?
Having 70 different bottles of supplements on your counter that make you feel
feel like a mad scientist. Now, I was that person. It was like a mini pharmacy in my kitchen.
I mean, who needs counterspace, right? Well, me, because I live in the tiniest one-bedroom apartment.
I got tired of feeling like I was dosing myself with a cocktail of everything under the sun.
Not even sure what was working, and don't even get me started on traveling with all this crap.
But then I found Jevity. And let me tell you, I don't even know where all those bottles went.
I now have these tiny compact AMPM packets with just a few pills. I'm talking no more than four or five
little supplements that actually matter, the exact ones that my body needs, and they're not just
guessing, it's all based on my blood work, not some generic wellness mix of 50 things that I'll never
even use. So here's how Jevity works. Jevity starts with at-home blood work. Yes, a phlebotomist
comes to you, no waiting rooms, no traffic, no ugly gowns, no awkward small talk. They analyze over
90 biomarkers in like five minutes, not just the basic stuff like your cholesterol. They dive deep
into your health, and then they give you a customized health plan, including supplements,
peptides, whatever you need, even cutting edge tests like GIMAP or Dutch. The best part,
your health team is always available and will retest your blood every six months to refine your
plan. All of this for just $129 a month. If you look into getting all of this testing that you
need to get done, I'm saying one test might be like $6 or $700. This is $129 a month for not only just testing,
But a whole health concierge team to walk you through it, any peptides you might need, supplements, the whole wazoo.
If you want to skip the wait list and get 20% off your first month, you have to use code Alex at gogevity.com.
That's go, g-e-v-I-ti-com with code Alex for 20% off.
Stop guessing, start optimizing with Jevity.
So what some people think is, okay, well, at the store then, instead of white bread, I'm just going to opt for whole wheat bread.
But is that true whole wheat?
No.
you know, in the 90s, when whole grains kind of started making the comeback, they started making
100% whole grain bread. But if you read the label carefully, you'll see that they have to maybe
start out with that whole grain flour. But again, what is that really? It's still made on the same
mills that make the white flour. They recombine it according to some standard. Then they add a lot of
preservatives and additives and extra gluten, which we'll get there in a minute about what that is.
But so it's not healthy at all.
And so that's what when people say, oh, I tried healthy whole grains and I didn't see any different.
So I bought a loaf of healthy whole grain bread, 100% whole grain, reputable bakery.
You would know it if I said it.
It's been sitting on my shelf for at least four years now and it's never molded.
Oh.
Yeah.
And the last loaf, and I bought it as a visual, A, disintegrated.
It didn't ever mold or rot or anything.
So here's the thing.
So the meal comes into my home.
I'm like, we're doing this.
I don't care what it tastes like.
We're doing it.
I milled flour and I made bread.
It was the most delicious bread I had ever tasted.
So milled flour, made bread, ate bread.
My children loved it.
Our house smelled wonderful.
It was delicious.
I was now just adding this bread to the already real food we were eating because we were eating fairly healthy except for our bread.
So it was wonderful.
I poop the next morning and it was like, this is glorious.
I had chronic constipation most of my life.
constipated, dealt with it, you know, or struggle with it, tried to do natural things because I
do I didn't want to go chemical laxative, but now all I had to do was eat the bread and I had no
issue. So I laugh and tell everybody, I haven't been constipated since 1991. I know you wanted,
I know everybody tuned in to hear that. But then, so that was the first day. And I had five young
children when I started. I homeschooled the children. And I noticed right away energy, my energy
levels up. No more slumping in the afternoon. Because the five.
fiber and the real carbohydrates that are there, they're broken down more slowly. Those sugars are
released into your body more slowly. So you have sustained energy instead of the junk we're buying
in the store, the simple carbohydrates and simple sugars. You shoot up, you know, with your energy or
you get a high and then you drop. But I wasn't that. It was a sustained energy. It was amazing.
Then within the first month, my sinus congestion all went away. I lived on anihistamines. I had to.
I thought post nasal drip was just the way God made me.
Yeah, it's just why I live in Georgia.
This just must be what we have to deal with.
Yes, and I think people, they think that this is normal,
that this is just what we have to live with.
And we don't.
And, you know, so my chronic sinus congestion went away,
and I can stand here, sit here and tell you,
I haven't had an anhystamine or a decongestant
since 1991, 34 years ago.
Because you started milling your own flour.
Yes.
I used to get strep throat twice.
a year at least, and I haven't had strep throat since I started milling my own flour.
Headaches, I had chronic headaches, migraines even every now and then.
I can't remember the last time I had a headache.
And then, you know, with a mom of five young children, they had their share of ear infections,
snoddy noses.
One of my children's warts went away, which we might want to talk about that.
That's caused by a virus.
and I'd begin to notice they were healthier.
They didn't necessarily catch every bug that they were exposed to.
You know, large families, one gets sick, we all get sick, and next thing you know, three weeks later,
it's time for the next thing to come around.
No more ear infections.
And I like to tell people the 25 years of raising nine children on real bread and real food,
we needed doctor visit.
My children only had to go to the doctor twice.
It doesn't mean they were never sick, but they got over it.
their bodies, their immune system was strong. Everything to strengthen your immune system is in
grains. Okay, but what is crazy to me is that you're saying this all stems from eating real bread,
milling flour. What I'm not hearing you say is it's sourdough, sourdough, sourdough. You're not talking
about sourdough. It doesn't have to be. But sourdough is like the thing that everyone is talking about
that sourdough is like this great healing bread and like that's what it has to be. So I am curious,
What is the deal with sourdough?
Do you think that just milling flour is better than doing sourdough bread?
If you're doing sourdough with store-bought flour, I think you're wasting your time.
What if it's organic flour?
The white flour that's left after the bran and germ are stripped away, for all practical purposes,
devoid of vitamins, minerals, fiber, phytonutrients.
It is protein and starch.
Proteins that your body needs.
Don't hear me say you're not supposed to eat white flour because you are, but you're supposed to be
eating it with the bran and germ intact because that's where all the vitamins, all the minerals,
the fiber, the phytonutrients, the vitamin E, the wheat germ oil, the fatty acids, it's all there.
So people can make sourdough bread and sourdough bread's great, but they have to be milling their
own flour still, even if they're doing sourdough. Yes. Maybe they can digest it better. Maybe that's
an issue, but they're not getting the nutrients and the fiber that God intended us to get from our bread.
Well, here's what's really wild. You have Hashimoto's. I have Hashimoto's. Every single doctor, besides like one that I've had on this show, has told me, you have to avoid gluten for life. You're never going to be able to eat any bread unless it's gluten-free again. You obviously are eating bread.
34 years. Despite having Hashimoto's. Yep. What's going on with your health and what do your doctors say about your labs?
My doctors say that my antibodies, those thyroid, those Hashimoto's antibodies are lower than most anybody that they treat.
and we just had a lady, I just had a lady on my podcast,
who's healthy minutes that said hers are decreasing since she started milling and she
was gluten-free because that's what she was told.
Yes.
You know, as a food scientist and someone that loves physiology and biochemistry,
I have studied this issue and studied and studied,
and I cannot find a scientific connection.
I think the problem is they're calling the bread in the store gluten.
They're saying that's gluten or that's wheat.
when that's not the whole picture.
So that bread in the store, yeah, I think it's making people sick.
You just heard me say they're treating it with potassium bromate, known to cause thyroid issues.
It blocks your iodine receptor sites in your thyroid.
So, of course, it's no wonder that we have thyroid-related issues.
But I'm telling you, your microbiome, there's a connection there with thyroid issues,
toxins in our system, lack of vitamin D.
These are bigger players than gluten.
This is the first time in all my studies,
you know, all my years of studying,
that allopathic medicine and more holistic natural medicine
have all jumped on the same bandwagon.
Wheat is the enemy, gluten is the enemy,
but it is because they are not differentiating
between what's in the store and real whole-grain wheat.
I've been radicalized soon, Becker!
Yeah.
I love this.
I tell people I say, look at these species.
a paper, you know? Is this a tree? No, it came from a tree, but would you say this is a tree? And that's
the problem. They're saying that stuff in the store is wheat. It's made from wheat, but it is so
far removed. The flour that you use in your baking recipes and things like that to make a rue
or whatever, you're doing this milled flour. Yes, yes. I have a little mill that sits on my counter.
How much is your mill? Okay. My favorite mill. Yeah, it's the wonder mill. It sits on my counter.
it's a tiny little machine that sits there, I turn it on, pour the grain in, and seconds it comes
out flour. Faster than you can get a flour canister out of your cabinet.
Why is the art of making bread a crucial skill we need to relearn?
We definitely need to relearn it because I have never seen one health change bring such
drastic and immediate health benefits than this one food.
just about every nutrient to sustain health, promote life is in grains.
The most nutrient-dense food God has given us.
It's all there.
Only missing a little bit.
Get your fruits and vegetables.
It can cover so many an effect and improve so many health issues.
I just stand amazed.
The testimonies my customers have, they call them, it's the bread stories.
They call me and say, it's the bread, it's got to be the bread.
All I've changed is the bread, and I've seen my cholesterol draw of 85 points in a month.
I've seen my blood sugar stabilized.
I've seen chronic irritable bowel stabilized, healed.
I had a lady some years ago.
I used to call her older because when I started telling this story, she was 65, and I'm now older than that.
So she was a very young lady, and she couldn't leave her house.
She could not leave her house.
Been on steroids for 10 years, have bleeding boughs.
Her daughter was a customer bow.
me about her mom and she was going to visit her. We got her mom a mill. And, you know, of course,
they told her, you know, maybe you need to go gluten-free. Maybe that would help. And she,
the daughter scratched her head. She goes, I don't know how to do gluten-free. So just give me
a bucket of hard red wheat. She left with a mill and a bucket of hard red wheat left to go visit
her mother. Her mother could not sleep through the night. She was getting up five times in the
night, chronic diarrhea. She couldn't leave her house because she couldn't be that far away from a
bathroom. Oh my gosh. So the daughter takes the mill, mills grain, wheat, and makes bread. In five days,
her mother was sleeping through the night. In two weeks, her mother's symptoms and all her issues
completely reversed. She went shopping. She was out in the yard working. Her father had blood sugar
issues. They were stabilized and they were enjoying life. I look at them and I go, I could not imagine
being homebound. Couldn't imagine it. And here she was completely debilitated. And we hear that all the time. And, you know, from brain fog to joint pain, inflammation, wheat is not inflammatory. The stuff in the store is inflammatory. So we hear people say, I have my life back. People come to me in tears and say, you saved my life. No, I didn't. God's perfect provision did. I had a young man one time come up.
to me. They came through Atlanta, stopped at our store. And he looked at me and he said, can I hug you?
And I said, well, sure, of course. What's up? And he said, I had some kind of skin inflammation all over
me. And he said, it felt like fire ants were stinging me. He said, it gone to doctor after
doctor, steroids. Nothing healed it. And he said, I was almost to the point it was so painful.
I wanted to die. A skin issue. And he said, my wife heard you at the conference. And he said, my wife heard you
at the conference. She bought the mill. She started making bread. And within just a couple of months,
it is all gone. A young man, he wanted to die. And this just goes on and on. A lady living on
iron transfusions, very painful to get within just a few months of changing to the bread. It's all gone.
She doesn't need that anymore. Aenemia, lifelong anemia, completely corrected.
Ms. Sue Becker, I'm not familiar with your game. What are you guys doing in Georgia? I mean,
You're doing classes, you're selling bread, like a bakery or both or what?
No, we don't have a bakery anymore.
So when we first started, so when I learned this information, I was all in.
I just, I started milling white flour's not been in our house.
I made all the cakes, cookies, bread, muffins, pancakes.
If it was made out of flour, I milled it.
I milled it.
The health of our family changed so much.
I began to tell other people.
I began to make bread for other people.
The next thing I know, I was making bread for everybody.
All these people, I mean, this one lady's cholesterol who dropped 85 points a month, she told all her elderly friends.
And so they were all getting me to make bread.
And I had by this point, it was 1992.
I had just had my sixth child.
So here I am homeschooling my children, making bread for my family, making bread for all these people.
Oh, the heck, do you have this time?
1,300 square foot house, which I still live there, with a wall unit of it.
I'm baking all day.
And I'll never forget, in the fall of 1992, I met my husband in the driveway.
I was worn out.
I was completely tired.
And I think God put these words in my mind.
And I met him in the driveway when he came home from work.
And I sat there and I said, I don't think I'm supposed to make bread for the world.
I think I'm supposed to teach the world to make bread for themselves.
People were eating the bread that I was making.
And one by one, they were coming to me going, okay, I'm feeling a lot better.
where can I get a grain mill and will you teach me how to make bread?
So honestly, customer base of four.
That's how I started my business in 1992.
Customer base of four.
I tell my husband, that was my world.
I think I'm supposed to teach the world to make bread for themselves.
I want to sell grain mill.
So I became a distributor of the grain mill that I owned at the time.
So started out there.
The next thing, of course, people say, okay, where do I get wheat?
You don't just walk in the grocery store.
That's my question.
I don't know where to get those little pellets.
So the little pellets, I love it.
So that's how we started by 1998 because of the testimonies of other people, the health benefits they saw, our business grew so large by 1998, six years that we could not do it ourselves.
My husband came home from work full time.
We incorporated with a longtime friend and partner.
We moved into our current location in 1999.
It's a big 10,000 square foot warehouse.
We have.
And then we acquired just a few number of years ago, another one.
warehouse where we are one of the largest grain packaging facilities in the southeast. We bring in wheat
by the semi-truck load, 45,000 pounds at a time. We package it down for consumer ready. And I'm guessing
organic non-GMO, all that. Yep. We does not genetically modify, but we can get that in a minute.
But yes, organic. And we have regular. We feel non-organic. We feel very comfortable with our grain
suppliers, you know, to go for a non-organic, but we do have certified organic. We have a big,
full-fledged kitchen store, Breadbeckers, and we have a big, I don't know how many square feet
the studio kitchen is. It's big. We can seat 100 people for classes. We had 78 in class.
How often are you guys doing classes? At least once or twice a month, I do the big, what we call
getting started class where I take you from, here's the grain mill that you need, show you how to
mill the grain, make the bread, we make muffins and pancakes and brownies and all sorts of bread during the
class and we sell bread machines and mixers and just teach people how to incorporate this into busy
lifestyles. Face it, we're all busy. You know, no one's any busier than I am. But you have time to do it.
And if you get the right tools. The grain mill mills a pound and 30 seconds of flour.
Okay, so this is my question because to me, and I've done a sourdough class with a phenomenal teacher,
but it's, it's intimidating. I think sourdough is intimidating. It is. It can be. Is this,
a lot easier to make. Yes. Yes. Oh, I love this. Yes. You can have bread on the table in an hour
if you want to, from milling to kneading to baking. I use a bread close if I really need it in an hour
and it bakes it really fast. So do you have like a routine? Like every Tuesday we make six loaves of
bread for our family. Or like, how do you do this? When the kids were home, yes, I had a kind of a routine that I made
six loaves of bread twice a week. And I have a big mixer, the Angus Room mixer that will need six to nine
loaves at a time, so I need enough dough to make six loaves. And so when the kids were home, I would
maybe make a sandwich loaf. I would make some dinner rolls, and I would maybe make a cinnamon rolls or
cinnamon bread. So I had breakfast, lunch, and dinner covered for several days. And then interspersed in there
would be muffins, cornbread, tortillas. I make my own tortillas out of freshly milk flour,
pancakes, coffee cake, cookies, you know. So I just interspersed all of that. Anything we made and enjoyed,
it was made with the freshly milk flour.
Yes, you might, if you don't know that you have a kitchen in your house, you don't know what
that room is and you've never turned on your oven, a little bit of a learning curve.
But most people, we can come back to this way of cooking.
And it's super, super easy.
So I'm glad you mentioned that because so many women starting families today truly don't
know how to cook or bake.
They don't.
I understand that.
They're embarrassed.
They're overwhelmed.
They have no idea where to start.
So what is your advice to them?
Start with your bread.
You know, Jesus compared himself to bread.
And I tell people, as surely as we're physical beings, we're spiritual beings.
And if you're spiritually dying, where do you start?
You start with the bread of life.
You can go to church, you can fast and pray.
You can give all your money to the poor.
But if you don't know the real bread of life, Jesus Christ, none of that means anything.
Well, I take it over here.
Maybe that's too spiritual for the moment, you know, spiritualizing it too much.
But I take it over here to the physical, every nutrient to sustain.
life and promote health is found in bread except for a few and you can get that from the fruits
and vegetables it is the most nutrient dense food that god has given us if you start there you want to
change the health of your family change your bread not just whole wheat bread in the store
freshly milled whole grain real bread and i've never seen one food so drastically improve the health
of now thousands of people that we've, the lives we've seen changed. So that's what I tell people,
how do you want to spend your time at the doctor's office, at the urgent care, at whatever,
or do you want to enjoy life and not be sick all the time? And give your body what it needs
to boost your immune system, to have good skin and hair and just feel good. You know,
being healthy is not just not being sick. Being healthy is having the energy to do what God's called
you to do. Thriving. Yeah, thriving. Not going, you know, dreading to face another day. I get up each
day and I'm like, I love today. Lord, what do you have for me? And I'm thrilled that I'm 70 years old
and that I can still do what God has called me to do. And I'm looking forward to many more days.
Imagine your kids tearing through the backyard, then one tumbles, skin knees, tears flowing.
Normally you'd grab neosporin, right?
Well, think again.
It's antibiotics like neomycin can trigger allergies, irritate skin, even disrupt gut health if licked,
according to studies in Wounds Medical Journal.
Worse, overuse fuels resistant bacteria.
That is why I only trust active skin repair.
Active skin repair is powered by hypochloris acid or HOCI, a more.
molecule your white blood cells make to fight infection and heal naturally. So this clinically proven
spray cleanses cuts, scrapes, and burns reduces inflammation and speeds recovery with no toxins.
Save for all ages, even eczema or acne-prone skin. It's HSA eligible and pregnancy-friendly.
With over 500,000 happy customers and thousands of five-star reviews, active skin repair is endorsed
by the National Exema Association. Ditch the risky stuff. Visit active skin repair.
dot com, use code Alex for 20% off and heal your family the natural way.
From diaper rash to cuts and scrapes to eczema, that's active skin repair.com with code
Alex for 20% off.
How many cleaning products are sitting under your sink right meow?
Dozens?
I used to have that same problem, girl, an entire cabinet packed with bottles of harsh cleansers,
each one more toxic than the last.
But after realizing how harmful those chemicals were to my future family's health and my own,
I decided it was time to make a change.
That's when I found Branch Basics.
Branch Basics has seriously transformed how I clean
and how my cleaning lady cleans.
We know I use one, so I'm not going to sit here and lie!
With their all-in-one non-toxic concentrate,
I can replace a whole collection of toxic products with just one,
and it's not just good for my health.
It's also better for my wallet.
The reason I can afford to use a cleaning lady a few times a month
is because I'm not buying 100 different products.
I have one that does it all.
So here's how it works.
Step one, fill up any bottle with water to the water line.
Their beautiful glass bottles tell you exactly what to do.
Step two, add the concentrate to the soap line.
Step three, top it off with water, shake it gently, and you're ready to go.
It's that simple.
I use it everywhere on my counters, my floors, even my laundry.
One product, multiple uses.
It saved me so much time, space, and money.
And I feel great knowing that I'm using a product that's 100% plant-based,
non-toxic and save for my dog Mochi and my future family.
Make this year the year that you say goodbye to toxic cleaning products.
That is one of the most important places to start when you're changing your home to non-toxic.
Right now, my listeners will get 15% off the premium starter kit by using code Alex15 by using code AlexBac.com.
That's 15% off your new BranchBasics Basics premium starter kit at BranchBasic.com with promo code Alex 15.
Make 2025 your cleanest healthiest year yet with Branch Basics.
So the type of bread you're making is called white wheat.
So this is a combination.
I'm like dying to try it.
Yes.
I want you to.
I want you to.
So it's hard red wheat is, this is my favorite combination of hard red wheat and an ancient
grain called Camut that I use.
And I do use hard white wheat.
Sometimes there's different varieties.
I've used iron corn.
I've used spelt.
I use rye.
I can make rye bread.
And like I said, I make cornbread.
My favorite though right now is this hard red and camut mixture.
It just makes a really nice flavorful bread.
It's just so good for you.
You know, people will say, what's the most nutritious grain?
And I'm like, that's like asking what's the most nutritious fruit or vegetable.
You know, it just go by flavor.
You know, if I'm going to make a cake, I might use a soft white wheat.
If I'm going to make a muffin, I might use a soft red wheat.
I also love Ezekiel mixture.
The fourth chapter of Ezekiel, God told Ezekiel,
We eat, spelt, barley, millet, lentils, and beans.
Put them in one vessel and make a cake out of it.
So we make a mixture.
Now, there is that Ezekiel bread brand.
Is it bad?
It is not what you think it should be.
Really? Tell us the tea.
Well, the truth is you want to mill the grains fresh.
So we have a mixture that we sell.
It's an Ezekiel mixture.
We sell it already combined.
And I make bread out of it.
I make muffins and pancakes and brownies.
and it's so nourishing.
There's an amino acid licing
that's slightly deficient in wheat.
Not for adults,
but for growing children, they need a little bit more than
wheat supplies. Beans supply it.
Beans are a little low in monothein,
methionine, grain supply it.
So grains and beans are a wonderful
combination to complete your
essential amino acid profile.
So Ezekiel mixture
is a nice combination.
Wheat, barley, barley, millet, lentils,
and beans. Okay, so
let's say you're stranded on a desert island, you didn't get to bring any Sue Becker bread,
and you have to go, there's one Walmart on this island, okay?
And so you have to get bread.
What brand are you choosing, you know, gun to your head at the store?
I'm not.
You're just not eating bread.
I won't.
I'll stick with fruits and vegetables.
If you can find brown rice, you might do some brown rice or some beans.
That might be good.
And see, rice.
With most of your grains, your brand is the outer, um,
surface, several layers thick. Your germ is in the interior and that's where those oils are.
But with, and so it's protected if you keep it whole and intact. But with brown rice, the oils are
in the brand part. So once they take off the husks, those oils are exposed. So rice foils.
It's not storable. So guess what? They decided to polish the brand off and give you white rice.
So white rice is no different than white bread. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. Now, you're confusing me because
I thought I've been reading a bunch of stuff lately that white rice is actually a lot healthier than brown rice.
Why would that be?
I don't remember.
It's starch.
It's starch.
And in fact, how they traced Barry Berry, Barry, remember in the beginning when I said Barry, Barry is a vitamin B1 deficiency resulting in nervous disorders, how they trace that to the missing vitamins in the wheat flour is that in Asia, when they started polishing the brand off and they lost that B1 source, they started having an outbreak of Barry, Berry, nervous disorder.
So if you're wanting to start baking your own bread, where do you start?
You buy the mill?
Buy a mill.
Mill is the key and then grains, whole grains.
And you can order the grains off your site.
Yes, you can.
And we have co-ops all over the country.
Oh.
So, yeah.
What's that?
Was a co-op?
Well, the machines, the mill.
And we sell several mills.
The Wonder Mill is my favorite.
We sell bread machines by Zohorushi and mixer by Anchish Room.
Those ship free.
So that's not an issue.
Hold on, hold on.
Bread machine?
Yeah, like an auto bakery.
Like, bill your flour.
Okay.
Dump your ingredients in in five minutes or less.
Hit the start button and come back to a bake loaf of bread.
You can do this.
So you don't have to do your oven.
Nope.
You don't have to.
You can get a little thing to go on your counter?
Yep.
Oh, great.
Okay.
And I can order all this from you?
Yes.
I really want to try this.
I really want you to.
I can't wait.
And so then, so the grain, we package it in food grade buckets because the enemies of
grain storage are moisture bugs, rodents.
So you've got to protect it.
So we package our grain in six gallon food grade buckets.
with carbon dioxide gas that protects it from anything that could possibly hatch out or be in there.
So to ship those, once we box it up, it's about 49 pounds.
UPS could care less how much that's worth.
They all go by weight.
So it's kind of expensive to ship UPS, though we do, and we ship all over the country, UPS.
But what we started was a co-op program.
So we have someone in the area that's the coordinator,
and we coordinate all the orders in that area
on a specific date or month,
and then we compile those orders,
and then we put it on a freight line, on a palette,
and send it's called LTL, less than a truckload.
Good grief.
Yeah, so, yeah, we have about 100 and probably 30, 40.
Geez, I hope one of them's in Phoenix.
I don't know if it is or not.
Okay.
We have so many now.
Yeah, I don't remember all the ends and outs of that.
But you can certainly, you know, we can find sources of wheat.
And like I said, we ship it, UPS.
It's just when there's a group in the area that gets interested,
then it is more advantageous if they do bulk orders and get it in that way.
Lots of people think if they want to lose weight, they have to get rid of bread.
What do you think about that?
That is another myth that needs to be busted.
Okay.
So Proverbs 23 says this.
Be careful when you sit down at the king's table.
Do not crave his dainties and his delicacies.
they are deceitful food.
What do you think those dainties and delicacies are?
I used to think maybe snails, eels, you know, things that God didn't want us eating.
But I think it's white flour fluffy things now, dainties and delicacies.
The scripture goes on to say, listen, you think I'm passionate.
It says, put a knife to your throat lest you be given to gluttony.
What has happened in America when you take the bran and the germ away with all the vitamins and all
minerals, those nourish your body, they satisfy your body. You also lose the fiber. Fiber is known as a
cheap belly filler. It fills you up, right? It sustains you. You feel full longer because it's
broken down more slowly through your digestion. So what has happened in America, the bread we're
eating in the store, high in sugar, virtually no fiber, very little real nutrients there.
So it doesn't fill us up. It doesn't satisfy us. It actually makes us crave more, right? I mean, you can sit down and eat a whole bag or a box of cookies or whatever. You can't do that with my freshly mild flour cookies. So that's what's happening is America is not full. They're not nutritionally satisfied. So they're craving, craving, craving, craving, always looking for more. And then the food industries put sugar, salt, caffeine.
you know, all these other things that make you addicted to that.
Whereas the bread, it fills you up, it nourishes you, it satisfies you.
What did Jesus say?
I am the real bread of life.
He who comes to me shall be satisfied.
Real bread is filling and it's satisfying.
Prior to bread, real bread, I would buy the whole wheat flour from, the whole wheat bread
from the store, even though I had after learned and read the label that it was white bread
with caramel coloring and it was labeled wheat bread. So you think, oh, yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I would buy
that, make the whole loaf into sandwiches and they would fight over the last one. After bread,
had five children, made five sandwiches, there was, there was food left. The bread was filling.
It does not make you fat. People are losing weight eating this bread. My husband lost six pounds
a couple of weeks ago, and he was eating a half a loaf of bread a day because I tried this
new recipe and he liked it so much. He started eating it. And what's the consistency like of your
bread. What's the texture like? I mean, is it soft, fluffy, like how we think of store-bought sandwich bread?
It can be if you want that. So this loaf here is my basic bread. This is what I would call. And you can
feel it. It's nice and soft and fluffy. Oh, very. Yeah. This feels exactly like store bread. Yeah.
Yeah. So what I miss the most is I like, oh my gosh, the other day I was just like, man, I would do anything to just have a
peanut butter sandwich. I know. And that's it. So that's a sandwich bread. That's my basic bread dough. And it's got
oil and honey and things like that.
But I also make a no-kneed bread.
Yeah, so what are all the ingredients to make the perfect sandwich bread?
What are you doing?
Okay, so water, oil, honey.
What kind of oil?
I use extra virgin olive oil.
We sell an incredible extra virgin olive oil.
We import it from the Isle of Crete in Greece, and it is truly extra virgin olive oil.
That's a corrupt industry.
Totally.
But I know that ours is.
They test it and they send us the testing and single origin and all that.
And it has to be.
It's an acidity level.
It has to be less 0.8% acidity or less.
Okay.
And ours are guaranteed that.
Some of them are even 0.3, some of them 0.5.
So water oil.
Oil.
Honey.
Raw unpasteurized honey.
Yes, we love the raw honey.
Is my preferred sweetener.
I do have some other sweeteners, but honey, I'm going to use it where honey works.
It's the only truly unrefined sweetener there is.
Also, another biblical food.
Yes, absolutely.
Yes.
So salt.
I use natural mind to mineral.
salt. This was the thing that blew me away. The more I've studied, it just keeps, it just,
you just want to go to the next level. So it's good for us. Yes, it's good for you. But why did
they refine it? Yeah. Did you know they refine salt? I'm like, and they're bleaching that too.
Yes. And I'm like, I get why you're doing this with flour because flour spoils, but salt doesn't spoil.
They strip the minerals out of it so they can sell it to another industry and they sell you and I,
pure sodium chloride. Yes, they bleach it. And read the later.
there's dextrose in it. Like, why does salt need that, anti-caking agent? So I use water, extra virgin
olive oil, raw unpasteurized honey, natural mind mineral salt. I do use in my sandwich bread,
I use sunflower seed less than. It does help the bread to have a nicer, softer texture,
which is perfect for a tomato sandwich, peanut butter sandwich. So I do use that. And then yeast.
This is a basic yeast bread. I do make sourdough from time to time. I do have other
I make a rye bread that's a little denser heavier.
The Ezekiel bread is a little heavier.
Is there anything we need to know about sourcing yeast?
Not really.
I just, I mean, I use commercial yeast.
Yeah, you can just get it.
And, you know, like I said, if you want to make sourdough, make sourdough, but make it out of your freshly mill flour.
Okay.
And, you know, and there's a misnomer there, too.
People say, oh, this is sourdough.
It doesn't have any yeast.
No, sourdough is a symbiotic relationship of lactobacillus bacteria that produce an acid.
That's what gives it the tart flavor.
and the exact same yeast I'm using in my yeast bread.
It's just there's a combination there.
What is the best measure of success when it comes to starting to bake your own bread?
Well, that your family loves it.
Your family loves it.
And even the worst, I mean, even if you have a failure, and I had some, you know,
you can still cut it up and make croutons of it.
That is what is so exciting to me is that my family, my children loved this.
This was a healthy food.
My whole family loved.
And as a young mom, that's important because as adults, we'll do most anything to get healthy.
I mean, I did green drinks.
But now, after the bread, all I had to is put this bread on the table.
And I laugh.
I said, before bread, you know how when you have a toddler and they don't want to eat anymore, they just would rather play.
So they eat kind of minimal.
So you go, okay, so you take the sandwich and you take the meat off the sandwich and you say,
okay, just eat the meat.
That was before bread.
After bread, I would take the meat or whatever off the sandwich to say, just eat the bread.
Some days my children, it was roll with honey.
My little toddler, she'd come and say she was hungry and she'd go, I want to roll with honey.
Yeah.
So the bread was the mainstay.
And it was they ate it.
They loved it.
They loved the muffins and the pancakes and the coffee cake and the donuts.
We make donuts.
What expectations should somebody set for themselves when baking bread for the first time so they don't get discouraged?
Start with muffins.
They're a quick bread.
They stir up in five minutes.
There's no baking powder, baking powder.
baking soda, salt. So we've talked a lot about yeast bread. A lot of people, that scares them,
you know, and or there is a learning curve there. It's not as hard as you think, and especially,
like with a bread machine that can do it all for you. But start with muffins and pancakes. And
some days for me, muffins were what was happening, you know, something happened and bread dough
didn't get mixed up in the morning. And so it was like, ooh, we better, we don't have any bread. We'll
just have muffins. And then lunch comes around. Oh, we don't have any bread.
We'll just have muffins.
I just would change the muffin recipe from blueberry to banana or I would use corn flour in the same muffin recipe and just make it savory with cheese and whole corner corn in it.
And that was a corn muffin for dinner.
So those are so easy.
And those, why are whisk in a bowl?
You know, the mill, you mill your flour, wire whisk in a bowl.
Stir up in five minutes, bacon 15 to 20, coffee cake, maybe 30.
Those are easy.
Now, when you're making sandwich bread in yeast, again, I'm ignorant and I've never baked bread in my life.
Is there something like you've got to let it rise or something before baking?
Yeah, so the yeast is a living organism and as it feeds on the carbohydrates that are in your whole grains, it produces carbon dioxide gas.
So you've got to give those yeast organisms time to feed and reproduce and make that carbon dioxide gas.
And that's what enables the bread to rise.
And so how long is that process?
It can be as little as an hour.
Okay.
If you want to skip some bulk, what's called bulk fermentation.
So normally, though, I mix up my dough.
I let it rise just as bulk dough, batch of dough, and I maybe let it rise 20, 30 minutes.
And then I might take it then and shape it into a loaf and then let it rise.
You have to let it rise at least once after you, you know, once you've shaped it, it has to rise before you bake it.
But you can let it rise as a big, you know, bowl full of dough one time, two times, even three times, if you want to, before you shape it.
So it can be a one hour process.
It can be a three hour process, four hour process if you need it to be or want it to be or whatever.
When my kids were all at home, I would mix up dough in our big mixer and it would sit there for a couple of hours.
And sometimes they would call me and go, Mom, you have a bread dough waterfall because it would be had risen over the bowl and down, you know.
And I would just come back.
then and shape it into my loaves and then let them rise and then bake it. Hands on time. You're talking
30 minutes, 10 or 15 minutes to mix it up, 10 or 15 minutes to shape it and then popping it in the
oven and taking it out. But hands on, it's not much time at all. How are you storing it so that it doesn't
go bad or go stale quickly? So you want it to cool completely before you bag it in their, they make
linen bags and cloth bags. I like for my yeast breads, I like plastic.
I'm not a big fan of plastic, but that's just the most convenient storage.
And then for yeast breads, room temperature or freezing.
You really don't want to store it in the refrigerator.
Something about the refrigeration temperature dries it out.
Now, if you've got meat or something in it where you have to put it in the refrigerator, you know, yes, of course.
The key is milling the flour fresh and baking it.
The flour spoils and loses nutritional value.
Once the bread is baked, the nutritional loss is minimal.
So bake up six loaves.
of bread. Have a bake day if you need to. Freeze it if you need to and then take it out as you need it.
Is there a special dish you like for baking bread? I have some bread pans there by USA. I really love
the USA bake pans. They're made in the USA. I do love bread cloche, which we sell two or three
styles. It's an enclosed system. And some people use a Dutch oven, which you can do that too.
I have a lodge, iron, cast iron that I use. The enclosed system kind of track. And, you know,
traps the moisture in that is escaping as the bread is cooking, and it really gives a nice texture
to the crust. So I have that. I have French bread pans. I have baguette. So it's hard for me to
identify, yes, I like this. But I have basic bread pans and cookie sheets, but I love baking
in a kloche or a Dutch oven or some kind of enclosed special baking pot. So I get invited to a
party the other day, right? And what's the first thing my friends text me? Can you bring the
Masa chips? Like, they won't even let me in unless I bring them now. Apparently, my snack game
is that legendary. I think it's because they know my chips are basically the perfect blend of
crunchy, salty, and guilt-free. They never break in half in the guac, by the way. That's a thing.
Masa chips aren't just your average chips. They're seed oil-free, made with organic corn,
and cooked in grass-fed beef tallow. The stuff that actually makes your body feel good, not sluggish.
Remember the days when chips were crunchy, tasty, and didn't make you feel like you're eating poison?
and probably not, because you and I both likely knowing the demographics of my audience were born in the 90s,
when older processed food took over and ruined everything.
Well, Masa is bringing back that utopia, and it's like a crunchy hug for your taste buds.
No weird chemicals, just the good stuff.
Grab your own stash of Masa chips.
And, hey, use my code real Alex Clark.
You're going to get 20% off your first order at Masachips.com.
Trust me, your friends will definitely thank you at the next party you are invited to.
That's real Alex Clark for 20% off your first purchase at Masa Chips.
Ladies, are you ready to be part of something bigger than yourself?
The Young Women's Leadership Summit is the largest conservative women's conference in the country,
and it's happening this June in Dallas.
Imagine walking into a room full of like-minded women who share your values, faith, family,
and freedom.
You'll hear from incredible speakers like Ginny Urich from A Thousand Hours Outside or Riley Gaines and many more.
It's a place where your beliefs are celebrated and you'll find a sisterhood that's been waiting for you.
So come make new friends, bring your mom, bring your sisters,
even come alone. Registered today at YWLS,
2025.com. Use code Alex for 25% off. See you there.
For the stressed out mom who is trying to do what's best for her busy family
and thinks that making her own bread is too time consuming, it's not worth it,
what is your response to that? Maybe start with boiled grains.
Get some wheat, boil it, eat it like that, make a boiled grain salad,
add a vinaigarette, good olive oil and a good balsamic vinegar, chop up vegetables, you know, whatever.
I have one that it's a spelt salad.
I boil spelt.
Drain it, cool it.
I have put fresh peaches in there, and I make a vinaigarette with orange juice and just pour over it.
It's so delicious.
So those are things you can do, incorporate boil grains and just eat them like you would rice.
go with brown rice instead of white rice.
That is something that you can do.
You know, there's a lot of whole grains available now in the store that we didn't use to have available to us.
So that would be my suggestion is if, I mean, you're obviously cooking because you care about the health of your family, I would think.
So those are some easy things that maybe you could do, incorporate those.
And just eat real food.
Just start there.
Chop the perimeter of the grocery store is what I say.
Yes.
And there's so much more available today than there was when I started.
With your food science background, I'm curious what you think about all of these food scientists on the internet now saying things like, oh, ultra-processed food isn't something to be scared of.
Seed oils are good for you.
Oh, my goodness.
What do you think about that?
How do you explain that someone with your food science background was given totally different information?
Now, these food scientists are saying this stuff is okay.
Yeah, I don't know where they're getting that information from because the ultra-processed foods, are they even foods anymore?
Every now and then I'll buy a cracker and one of my favorite that I always thought was nutritious.
I just read the label and it said bioengineered ingredients and I'm like, why do I want that?
So I don't know why they would think that.
Well, I don't know.
Maybe like me, they don't totally understand.
They're looking at.
I think the curriculum is bought and paid for by food companies.
Probably. Yes, probably. But, you know, maybe like me, I thought that, you know, we're doing good things by preventing food poisoning. So that was my focus was food microbiology. So I did a lot in fermentation and food poisoning and things like that. So some of those things you seem good or processing where this food can now sit on the shelf forever and ever. And so you think you're doing such a great thing, but you've had to totally denature that food.
and strip all the good stuff out of it to make it sit on the shelf.
Right.
And heat it and preserve it and add this and that.
And it just saddens me.
It saddens me.
But I understand what do you wish more homeschool co-ops were doing when it comes to teaching kids about food and nutrition?
Eat real food.
I see, you know, homeschooling families.
They're stressed.
They're busy.
I get it.
And it saddens me that we, that we, that,
We're so addicted and we're so feeling like we have to do convenient things when it just doesn't
take that much more time to put a little more effort and just eat real food.
You know, I tell people, why eat an apple flavored fruit bar when you can eat an apple?
That's not difficult.
People also think that it's expensive.
So here you're homeschooling, you're buying your own curriculum, you're not getting government subsidies.
You know, it's expensive to homeschool your children.
And so you're thinking, oh, it's expensive to eat healthy.
But if that apple fills you up and satisfies you and nourishes your body, the apple-flavored fruit bar, they're not satisfied.
They're going to be hungry in 30 minutes.
Just eat real food.
You'll be surprised at how much it will save you time.
Your kids won't be sick all the time.
You'll enjoy life.
They'll enjoy life.
It's just such a way of life for me now that I don't.
even know how to go back.
Sure, yeah.
But I know I was a busy mom and I just did it.
I was home.
People would ask me, how do you have time to do this?
I was home schooled.
So I just worked it into my routine.
I'm an early riser.
So I would get up.
I'd mill my flour.
I'd get a batch of dough mixing in the mixer.
That's the thing.
Get the right tools.
You know, your husband or you or whatever,
you have your yard tools to make it easy so you don't use the push mower anymore.
Growing up, we had little hedge trimmers.
We went out and clipped the sidewalk.
Now you have weed eaters, you know.
So get the right tools to make the job easy.
And I would get dough kneading the dough for six loaves of bread,
eating at a time, wait the kids up.
We'd sit down and have breakfast.
After breakfast, I'd go shape the loaves.
We'd do the dishes, and then it was time to bake the loads,
all while we were doing school.
So it was very easy to incorporate into our lifestyle.
And like I said, before bread,
when we finished breakfast, you know, we got everything cleaned up,
finally sit down to do school, I'd be doing reading with the little ones,
the teenagers would be in the kitchen looking for food again.
After bread, they would come to me at 2 o'clock and go,
and we ate breakfast at 7.
You know, they would go, are we going to have lunch?
Nobody even thought about snacking or going in and getting food.
I like that you say after bread.
It's like B, B, before bread, and A, B, after bread.
Yes, yes.
Okay. So that, I mean, I just, I just don't know how to encourage moms any more than just do it. Just do it. You'll be as surprised and shocked and satisfied as I was when I first started. And I can tell you this. There was nothing to me more satisfying than putting good food on the table for my family. And I already did. I cooked from scratch. We already ate real meat. We had garden. So we had fresh green beans. We had tomatoes. We grew on corn. We grew peas. And, you know,
So we were already eating healthy, but man, putting that bread on the table with what else we were eating, it was noticeably different and noticeably satisfying.
And it was satisfying to me to know that I was giving my family the absolute best that they could get.
If you could offer one remedy to heal a sick culture and it could be physically, emotionally, or spiritually, what would it be?
Change your bread because it will give you the energy.
It will satisfy you.
I mean, remember the diseases that plagued America, nervous disorders, dementia, mental insanity,
those were diseases that came on our country right away.
How much depression and mental issues are we seen in this country?
And I believe it's directly related to the food we're eating.
And, you know, one of the number one foods that is so processed and colored and denatured
and chemical-laden is all of the flour products.
You change your bread.
You've just eliminated most of the really toxic food.
That's what I was looking for.
Because, you know, if you think about it, you know, we all, you know, know, know, the slogan, you know, shop the perimeter because that's where the real food is.
The real fruits and vegetables, meat, dairy, eggs, meat, you know, whatever.
once you leave the perimeter, if you ever thought about this, once you get past the canned fruits and vegetables and the juice aisle, every other food aisle in that grocery store is a denatured flour product, a commercially processed chemical-laden flour product.
Look at the cereals that are marketed for children is terrible. Get rid of that. Give them a muffin.
that you've made. And that's another thing. You know, those boxes of cereal, they say they have
13 servings in that. Yeah, right. Most of your children, two or three, could eat that whole box in
one sitting. Colors, flavors, all this high sugar, not satisfying at all. Yet you can make a dozen
muffins for cheaper than you can buy that box of cereal. And that will feed 12 children. Yeah.
You know what I'm saying? Sometimes I'll go in the back, you know, and I'll have to come towards the front
to pay for my groceries and walk down the aisle.
It smells horrible to me.
Oh, yeah.
It smells like chemicals.
Well, and I have the same experience now when I go out to eat.
Yeah.
I can immediately tell if a restaurant is cooking with seed oils.
Yeah.
I smell that rancid oil.
It makes you want to throw up.
Yeah.
I totally notice it now.
Yeah.
When you remove yourself from the poison, toxic, fake food sludge in America, and then you
try to reenter that, your body will reject it.
You do not want it.
How could I ever give up my chick filet or whatever?
If you start to do it, if you just take like a month off, you are literally never going to crave it again.
It's just wild how your body will immediately reject it because then it starts to realize, oh, this wasn't ever food.
I don't ever want that again.
I know.
And, you know, it's funny.
My children even did that.
We had been doing the bread for a little while and we went to and all you can eat, you know, family restaurant.
Children 10 and under ate free.
So we went there a lot, you know, when we would eat out with friends and stuff because we could eat there.
Well, it was one of my children's birthday.
and they brought him some cake.
And he would have eaten it like anything before.
Yeah.
After bread, he took one bite and he goes,
this tastes like chemicals.
Oh.
He didn't want it.
And, you know, it's amazing.
And things that we think we love now
and that we can never do without,
they just don't appeal anymore.
So somebody wants to hire you
or work with you or do your class.
Where do they go?
They go to breadbeckers.com is our website.
I encourage you if you want to
do a class with us, subscribe to our email newsletter. We send out one a month, and we won't in and date
your emails with emails every hour, day, whatever. So we send out one a month, and that will
let you know what classes are coming up for the next month, where I'll be speaking, teaching,
just events that are coming up. And usually I'll write an article and give a recipe. So that's a good
thing. They can go to our YouTube channel. I realize not everybody is local to Atlanta, but we have
people come in. They drive in from all over. But you can go to our YouTube channel. And sometimes we
live stream the classes, but we do have a lot of classes already online. What's your YouTube called?
Bread Becker's. Cool. Yeah. Can I close with one scripture? Yes. And one, do we have time for a
quote? I'd love it. Bread is getting such a bad rap. It's being demonized, if you would. Gluten is
being demonized. And most people don't even understand what gluten is.
is gluten is formed. It's this stretchy substance that forms when these two unique proteins to the
wheat family are hydrated. That's all it is. It's just protein, but God never intended us to eat
those proteins without the vitamins and minerals and fiber that the bran and germ provide because
those proteins are in the white flour. So this is a quote, and this makes me sad because it's a well-known
doctor, if I said his name, you would know him.
But listen to this.
Damage to the gastrointestinal
track from the overuse
of antibiotics, anti-inflammatory
drugs like Advil or leave, and
acid-blocking drugs like prylasekinexium
combined with our low-fiber
high-sugar diet leads to the
development of celiac disease and gluten
intolerance or sensitivity and the
resultant inflammation. Did you hear what
He's saying, I agree with all of this.
My children only had to have antibiotics twice in 25 years.
Very rarely Advil or a leave.
Acid blocking drugs.
It is really compromising our protein digestion.
Okay, so I understand that.
Combined with our low fiber, which fiber is in the brand and germ, high sugar diet,
all that bread stuff in the store, low sugar, leads to the development of celiac disease,
gluten intolerance or sensitivity, and the resultant inflammation.
I agree with that. But listen to the conclusion that both allopathic medicine and functional medicine
health practitioners are making. That is why the elimination of gluten and food allergens or
sensitivity can be a powerful way to prevent and reverse these and many other chronic diseases.
The biggest problem is wheat, the major source of gluten in our diet. Did you hear wheat in the
lineup that caused the sensitivity? Wheat didn't cause these.
And quite the contrary, it can be the cure.
But wheat weaves its misery through many mechanisms, not just the gluten.
Listen to this.
The history of wheat parallels the historic history of chronic disease and obesity across the country.
Supermarkets today contain walls of wheat.
They do not.
They contain walls of something that once upon a time was the most nutritious food that God has given us.
Yes.
I find bread scriptures everywhere.
Isaiah 55, verse 2 says,
Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread and your earnings for what does not satisfy?
I didn't know until I read this.
But here's the most fascinating one.
Deuteronomy 24, verse 6 says this.
You know, in the book of Deuteronomy is the book of the laws and God's instruction of how to love him, how to love our neighbor, and how to love ourselves.
And in those days, there was a law for borrowing and lending.
If I was going to borrow something from you that was a value to use, I would give you something of value.
to use, I would give you something of value of mine as a pledge that I was going to return
what I borrowed or I was going to pay you back. Did you know that God had a law for what you could
not take as a pledge? He said, do not take a man's millstone as a pledge for you would be
taking his life. That gives me chills every time I quote it. And I've been at this 34 years now.
But what I read, when I read that history of white flour, we let someone take our mill out of our home and take breadmaking out of the home.
And we have been losing our life and our health ever since.
Well, if we're trading bread quotes, you know, what my favorite one is, a little do-ditty from a show called Madeline.
Uh-huh.
We love our bread.
We love our butter.
But most of all, we love each other.
Yes.
I love it.
I love my bread.
I love my butter.
Thank you, Miss Sue.
Thank you so much for having me.
The Hashimoto's stuff fascinated me that she has it and that all of her markers are like pristine, crystal clear.
I just struggle so much with being told to avoid all gluten.
When I eat good bread or like organic sourdough bread, for example, I feel amazing when I'm eating bread and butter.
Like I feel like I need those carbs.
I feel great when I'm having organic grass-fed butter.
And I never ever feel any like bad symptoms.
eating gluten. I am totally inspired by Sue. I'm going to be ordering her bread machine. I'm going to be
ordering her flour mill. And I'm going to attempt to make this bread, try it out, see how I do
on it for a couple months, and I'll keep you posted. This would be a game changer because not only
am I supposed to allegedly be gluten-free, but my boyfriend, Steve, and, you know, things are
really serious. He's being told also that he has a severe gluten allergy. Like his is off the charts and
does make him feel sick. So he's supposed to be avoiding it. I want to try this.
out and see if we can both eat it because that would be a huge game changer for our future family,
if so. If you love this show, please leave a five-star review, tell others why they need to be
listening to Culture Apothecary if they haven't, or leave a recommendation and a plea for a certain
guests that you want to have on the show because you know what? I didn't know who Sue Becker was
until you guys told me I needed to interview her. So I really love suggestions. We're on a mission
to Heel us at Culture twice a week. New guests are bringing their own unique remedy to do just that.
Subscribe to Real Alex Clark on YouTube. Follow me on Instagram at Real Alask.
Alex Clark. I'm Alex Clark and this is Culture Apothecary.
