If you're not eating wholemeal bread often, made from flour milled from 100% of the grain, you need to start right away. Eating more wholegrain cereal increases your chances of a healthy long life, as the phytochemicals found in the bran protect cells from age-related DNA damage. Crisp ryebread (such as Ryvita) and oatcakes can also help enrich your diet this way.
Putting my boffin hat on for a moment, it's good to remember that baking involves ingredients getting all chemical with each other. The flour made from wheat, for example, contains a very complex mixture of chemicals. Some help to make light, aerated bread; some really don't. All wheat flour contains a naturally occurring chemical called glutathione in the starch, which is used by the seed as it sprouts and grows into a plant. But when we try to bake with wheat flour, the same chemical also stops some of that elastic stretchiness we want in the dough. If you use all white flour, the effect of this chemical isn't so noticeable. But change to wholemeal flour, which contains much less starch, and the effect can cause a heavy loaf.
Vitamin C has a way of stopping this chemical causing mischief. It's one of the few additives allowed in organic baking by the Soil Association, and even the protective French baking laws approve of a little being added. You only need a smidgeon, so a half or even a quarter of a vitamin tablet will do, but it will help to make your bread light.
Makes one large loaf
300ml warm water
2 tsp easy-blend yeast
1 tbsp brown sugar, any kind
½ a 500mg vitamin C tablet, crushed to a powder between two spoons
450g strong wholemeal flour
1 tsp fine sea salt
50g unsalted butter, melted
Oil and flour for kneading
Scald a mixing bowl with boiling water, wipe it dry, then add the warm water, yeast and sugar. Stir well, then add the vitamin C, flour and salt, and stir well again. Pour in the melted butter and squidge the lot together to work the fat through the dough. Cover the bowl with a cloth and leave for 10 minutes.
Give the dough three light kneads over 30 minutes (Basic techniques), then cover and leave for 15 minutes.
Lightly flour the work surface, roll the dough into a rectangle, roll up tightly and place seam-side down in a buttered and floured 2lb loaf tin. Cover the tin with a tea towel and leave in a warm place until the dough has doubled in height (about 1½ hours).
Heat the oven to at least 220C (200C fan-assisted), though if you can get it to 240C (220C fan-assisted), even better. Steam the oven if you like (Basic techniques).
Dust flour over the dough with a tea strainer, cut the loaf down the middle with a serrated knife, and bake for 20 minutes. Reduce the heat to 200C (180C fan-assisted) and bake for a further 20-25 minutes until dark golden brown, remove from the oven and tin, and cool on a wire rack.
Variation
Spelt and ale loaf
Bring 300ml dark ale or porter to the boil in a saucepan (don't let it boil over) and simmer for a minute or so to drive off the alcohol, which could slow down or even stop the yeast. Pour the ale into a jug, leave until warm, then top up to 300ml with warm water. Make the dough as above, replacing the water with the ale, and the wholemeal with spelt flour. The malt in the ale makes the dough work very quickly, so bake it as soon as it's barely doubled in height, even after an hour, as the spelt dough will collapse if left too long.